memia.substack.com/p/ai-2040-plan-a-and-rest-of-world

AI 2040 does include a branch where the intelligence explosion does not occur in the scenario set: Plan S. On the main AI 2040 page, the authors list five branches at the 2029 decision point, including “PLAN S — Shut it all down.” In the official footnotes, they explain Plan S more explicitly: “in Plan S, AI progress is halted within the deal.” That directly contradicts the claim that there is no branch where the intelligence explosion fails to arrive.

The claim is also too strong with respect to the authors’ uncertainty modeling more broadly. Their linked AI Futures Model publishes probability distributions in which major milestones can arrive well after 2040. For example, official forecast pages cited by the project show very late p90 dates for ASI/TED-AI, extending into the 22nd century. So even outside the narrative branches, the project does not treat “superintelligence by 2040” as the only live possibility.

In short: the authors may not have written the exact null scenario described in the post (bubble fizzles, life continues more or less normally), but saying they have “no branch” where the intelligence explosion doesn’t arrive is factually wrong.