creators

Daniel Kokotajlo: AI Futures Project director

Daniel Kokotajlo leads the AI Futures Project in Berkeley, wrote the AI 2027 scenario and the 2026 follow-up AI 2040: Plan A, and left OpenAI in 2024.

Daniel Kokotajlo is executive director of the AI Futures Project, a small nonprofit in Berkeley, California that forecasts how AI develops and is funded by donations and grants. He holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and an MA in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a researcher in OpenAI's governance division from 2022 to 2024, working on scenario planning for advanced AI. He resigned in April 2024 and refused to sign the company's non-disparagement clause, giving up vested equity reported at about $2 million so that he could speak freely, and then called publicly for more transparency from the large AI companies. He co-founded the AI Futures Project in October 2024 and is its executive director. In April 2025 he was lead author of 'AI 2027', a scenario written with Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland and Romeo Dean in which coding and AI research are automated and AGI arrives by the end of 2027. In July 2026 the AI Futures Project team published 'AI 2040: Plan A', a recommendation rather than a prediction, in which decisive action by the US and Chinese governments pushes superintelligence back from 2030 to 2040. TIME listed him among the 100 most influential people in AI in 2024 and again in 2025.

Specialization

AI forecasting, AI governance, scenario planning

Country

United States