Week 39

September 12 to September 14, 2026

The week in one paragraph

The counter-current formed on antitrust grounds rather than accelerationist ones: Aidan Gomez and David Sacks both called the pacing proposal a cartel. Coxon did a Sunday-show blitz on September 13, shortening his timeline while softening on process. Silent: Huang and Zuckerberg for a second week, Leike for a third, plus Bengio, Hendrycks and all four journalists.

What moved

Dario Amodei, capability 4 to 5. His September 12 essay says recursive self-improvement is "starting to happen across the industry".
Sam Altman, outlook 2 to 3. Backed pacing, said a multi-company safety pact "will happen", ruled out a 2026 IPO on safety grounds.
Geoffrey Hinton, outlook 1 to 2. Called Amodei's warning "very sensible" but refused a p(doom) number and called extinction talk "very silly marketing".
Gary Marcus, capability 4 to 3. Called the six-month rogue-swarm claim "silly".
Gary Marcus, outlook 2 to 3. Said "we should all salute" the slowdown.
Jack Clark, outlook 2 to 3.

Score changed this week New signal, score unchanged No new signal, carried forward Position last week Added this week, outside the regular roster

People who share a score pair are stacked vertically inside their cell, up to 4 deep, so the standings below carry the exact scores. An asterisk marks a score carried forward because the person produced no new signal that week. The hollow ring is last week's position; only Altman, Amodei, Hinton, Marcus, Clark and Coxon have visible movement lines.

Where everyone stands

Grouped by that week's scores, so a person changes groups only when their score moves. Full readings were not kept for this week; the scores and the summary above are the record.

Fast and optimistic 5

Capability 4 or 5, outlook 4 or 5

Elon MuskSpaceXAICapability 5Outlook 4

Demis HassabisGoogle DeepMindCapability 4Outlook 4

Jensen HuangNvidiaSilent this weekNo new signalCapability 5Outlook 5

Mark ZuckerbergMetaSilent 3 weeksNo new signalCapability 5Outlook 4

Jan LeikeAnthropicSilent 3 weeksNo new signalCapability 5Outlook 4

Fast and undecided 4

Capability 4 or 5, outlook 3

Sam AltmanOpenAIOutlook 2 to 3Capability 5Outlook 3

Dario AmodeiAnthropicCapability 4 to 5Capability 5Outlook 3

Jack ClarkAnthropicOutlook 2 to 3Capability 5Outlook 3

Shakeel HashimTransformerSilent this weekNo new signalCapability 5Outlook 3

Fast and worried 5

Capability 4 or 5, outlook 1 or 2

Geoffrey HintonNobel laureateOutlook 1 to 2Capability 5Outlook 2

Jacob CoxonFormer AnthropicOutlook 1 to 2Added this weekCapability 5Outlook 2

Yoshua BengioLawZeroSilent this weekNo new signalCapability 5Outlook 2

Dan HendrycksCenter for AI SafetySilent 3 weeksNo new signalCapability 4Outlook 2

Kevin RooseMachine Gods, NPRSilent this weekNo new signalCapability 5Outlook 2

Doubts the pace 4

Capability 3 or lower, any outlook

Gary MarcusAI criticCapability 4 to 3, outlook 2 to 3Capability 3Outlook 3

Yann LeCunAMI LabsCapability 2Outlook 3

Aidan GomezCohereAdded this weekCapability 3Outlook 4

Karen HaoEmpire of AISilent 2 weeksNo new signalCapability 3Outlook 1