Summary

A defensive military coalition is a key frame for thinking about our international agreement aimed at forestalling the development of superintelligence. We introduce historical examples of former rivals or enemies forming defensive coalitions in response to an urgent mutual threat, and detail key aspects of our proposal which are analogous. We also contrast our proposal with the oft-employed analogy to nonproliferation agreements, and highlight shortcomings.

Introduction

We at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute's Technical Governance Team have proposed an illustrative international agreement (blog post) to halt the advancement of AI capabilities, in order to forestall the development of superintelligence until it can be done safely. For those who haven’t read it already, it is enough to know that we believe substantially delaying the arrival of superintelligence is warranted, as the world is not remotely prepared to manage this transition. A halt could give the world the time it needs, and this will require international coordination, likely led by the U.S. and China.

In thinking about our proposal (and ones like it), it is natural to seek for analogies and precedents. We ourselves have spent a lot of time comparing parts of the plan to precedent and have documented [...]

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Outline:

(00:08 ) Summary

(00:37 ) Introduction

(02:38 ) Defensive Coalition

(11:38 ) Nonproliferation Agreement

(14:19 ) Conclusion

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:

November 24th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HsJgtqB7jGNYDXthB/the-coalition

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.