Daniel Kokotajlo
Article
Daniel Kokotajlo is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between July 03, 2023 and July 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Thanks especially to Daniel Kokotajlo of OpenAI for his contributions”; “Daniel Kokotajlo was an OpenAI employee who quit in protest”; “a researcher named Daniel Kokotajlo published a blog post called “ What 2026 Looks Like ”“. It most often appears alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, China.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 5
- Issue count: 5
- First seen: July 03, 2023
- Last seen: July 01, 2025
Appears In
- Tales Of Takeover In CCF-World
- Links for May 2024
- Introducing AI 2027
- AI Futures: Blogging And AMA
- Links For July 2025
Related Pages
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- OpenAI (5 shared issues)
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- Anthropic (3 shared issues)
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- China (3 shared issues)
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- Daniel (3 shared issues)
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- AI Futures Project (2 shared issues)
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- Bentham’s Bulldog (2 shared issues)
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- California (2 shared issues)
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- ChatGPT (2 shared issues)
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- FDA (2 shared issues)
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- Gaza (2 shared issues)
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- Google (2 shared issues)
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- New York Times (2 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
I talked some people involved with the CCF report about possible scenarios. Thanks especially to Daniel Kokotajlo of OpenAI for his contributions.
I’m most impressed with the background of this story: Daniel Kokotajlo was an OpenAI employee who quit in protest at the company’s policies a few months ago (different incident from either of the mass quits by the safety teams). They told him they’d take away his equity if he criticized the company, he refused to cooperate even though this would cost him (by his estimation) 85% of his net worth, this let him speak openly about the non-disparagement agreement, and now OpenAI has apologized and is in the process of retracting their policy. Brave decisions like these are the sorts of things that occasionally change the course of history, so I hope he gets the recognition he’s due. If you want to know more about Daniel’s thoughts on AI, this post was mostly based on an interview with him.
Inline links: this post was mostly based on an interview with him
In 2021, a researcher named Daniel Kokotajlo published a blog post called “What 2026 Looks Like”, where he laid out what he thought would happen in AI over the next five years.
Inline links: What 2026 Looks Like
I will probably be shifting most of my AI blogging there for a while to take advantage of access to the team’s expertise. There’s also a post on transparency by Daniel Kokotajlo, and we hope to eventually host writing by other team members as well.
Inline links: a post on transparency by Daniel Kokotajlo
31: Ross Douthat interviews JD Vance. In the section on AI he says “I actually read the paper of the guy that you had on. I didn’t listen to that podcast.” The “guy [Ross] had on” is Daniel Kokotajlo, so Vance is saying he read AI 2027! Maybe I should have made the VP character a little less sinister; hindsight is 20-20.
Inline links: Ross Douthat interviews JD Vance, AI 2027