When Is It Worth Personally Preparing for AI Disasters?

A new personal preparedness guide argues that AI could dramatically upend the world within 2-4 years, citing forecasts from those closest to the technology. The author recommends actions such as helping improve AI safety and reading existing guides by Benjamin Todd and Zvi Mowshowitz, while cautioning against excessive prepper-style stress. The post complements broader AGI preparedness resources with a short practical checklist for severe but survivable disruptions.

Context: Someone asked me “what can I do to prepare for scenarios where AI goes really wrong?” This post describes my current best guess. Let me know if you have better ideas. Consider taking the following actions: There is a real chance that AI-that-dramatically-upends-the-world-as-we-know-it is coming really soon https://www.forethought.org/research/preparing-for-the-intelligence-explosion :~:text=There%E2%80%99s%20now%20a,3 . Potentially even within the next 2-4 years, if you trust those closest to the technology e.g. see here https://www.vetta.org/2011/12/goodbye-2011-hello-2012/ , here https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-ceo-demis-hassabis-agi-new-human-era-2026-6 and here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Xgy6CAf2jqHhynHL/what-2026-looks-like for context on what I mean . While I could spend some time obsessing over technical definitions https://deepmind.google/research/publications/66938/ , I think the “upends-the-world-as-we-know-it” framing is better for getting my point across. By “dramatically upends the world as we know it”, I mean things on the scale of: explosive AI-enabled economic growth https://www.nber.org/system/files/working papers/w35155/w35155.pdf , fully https://www.forethought.org/research/the-industrial-explosion fully-autonomous-robot-factories automated robot factories https://www.forethought.org/research/the-industrial-explosion fully-autonomous-robot-factories , rapid advances in science and medicine that sound like sci-fi https://darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace 2-neuroscience-and-mind , novel weapons https://www.forethought.org/research/preparing-for-the-intelligence-explosion :~:text=Novel%20risks%20from%20destructive%20technologies%2C%20such%20as%20bioweapons%2C%20drone%20swarms%2C%20nanotechnology%2C%20and%20technologies%20we%20haven%E2%80%99t%20yet%20concretely%20anticipated%3B , and so on. https://ai-2040.com/?choices=plan-a-root :~:text=Five%20centuries%20in%20five%20years%3A%20What%20pausing%20at%20human%2Dlevel%20feels%20like Overall this would likely be a far more volatile and intense world e.g. at its worst involving war https://oscardelaney.substack.com/p/will-competition-over-advanced-ai or other extreme scenarios https://www.forethought.org/research/ai-enabled-coups-how-a-small-group-could-use-ai-to-seize-power 41-coups-using-military-ai than what people are used to. 1 https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/feed.xml fnz76zeufjuj So, what can you personally do to prepare for such a world? Firstly, I’ll note that some great pieces on the topic of personal AGI preparedness have already been written. I’d especially recommend reading Benjamin Todd’s https://benjamintodd.substack.com/p/how-can-an-ordinary-person-prepare and Zvi Mowshowitz’s https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-practical-advice-for-the-worried posts. 2 https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/feed.xml fnyrfccvov68 Please also keep in mind that one of the best actions you can take is helping improve the situation humanity is in. There aren’t enough people working on making AI go well, and you could use your skills and background to have a huge impact on all this https://bluedot.org/ . Anyway -- this post is best understood as a complement to more comprehensive AGI preparedness guides like the ones linked above. My intention here is to provide a short, practical checklist for severe but survivable disruptions to daily life. Generally speaking, stressing out over disaster preparedness think “preppers” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepper disambiguation doesn’t strike me as particularly rational. It seems more like an aesthetic than a calculated choice. 3 However, I do think there’s a strong case to be made that some The worst disaster would be one in which misaligned AI leads to the death of everyone on Earth. While the exact details and likelihood of this threat are up for debate, I believe it should be taken seriously as a possibility. If you are interested in learning more about possible pathways to such scenarios, see this literature review https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wnnkD6P2k2TfHnNmt/threat-model-literature-review . However, there’s probably not that much you can do to prepare for worlds where existentially catastrophic misalignment occurs beyond helping prevent it https://bluedot.org/courses/technical-ai-safety . Even the most luxurious and high-tech bunkers https://nypost.com/2023/06/05/sam-altman-who-warned-ai-poses-risk-of-extinction-to-humanity-is-also-a-doomsday-prepper/ wouldn’t help you in such a situation. So let’s focus our efforts on what we might be able to prepare for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity Prayerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity Prayer Other potential AI-related disasters may include but are of course not limited to : However, if the world is deeply and unprecedentedly transformed in a really bad way, there is by definition only so much you can do to prepare beforehand. You could try for as much mental resilience https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-be-successful/ 2-if-helpful-make-mental-health-your-top-priority as possible, but even that would only take you so far. If we end up in a world where we all die, there’s not much you can do at that point. If we end up in a world where things mostly continue as normal, there’s also not much point in preparing. So preparedness only seems to make sense in worlds where things go badly wrong, but individual preparation can still help. For example, AI-enabled pandemics and cyberattacks seem like they could be prime candidates here. A useful rule is to prioritise preparations that are cheap, broadly useful, and don’t require you to predict exactly what happens. Specifically, you should consider: Personally I think the goal for personal preparedness should be to spend perhaps a week and a few hundred pounds becoming more resilient than you otherwise would be, then return your attention to helping prevent the bad outcomes in the first place. Even if the eventual outcome is good, the transitional period could still be difficult. I would also recommend reading this LessWrong post https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DHvymwaGXHwwrwZQP/eleven-practical-ways-to-prepare-for-agi by John-Clark Levin. I agree most with recommendations 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, and 11. I disagree most with 3. I think having kids is probably good despite AI risk + for both population ethics-esque reasons https://benthams.substack.com/p/its-good-to-create-happy-people-a and pronatalist reasons https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/158/malcolm-simone-collins-why-are-birth-rates-plummeting-and-how-much-does-it-matter/ . That said, I want to think through this position more before having kids. At some point I’ll probably write a post called “Having Kids on the Eve of Superintelligence: A Literature Review.” Let me know if you’ve thought about this topic and have strong views either way. Extreme preparedness measures are also prohibitively expensive for most. VPNs seem overrated https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/vpns-encryption-wifi-rcna9348 for cybersecurity, though they are useful for evading censorship. It’s also probably worth keeping at least one offline or otherwise isolated backup of important documents, photographs and data.