Eli Pariser reports from The Curve, an annual AI conference where researchers, lab executives, and safety experts discussed whether humanity can maintain control over AI development. The dominant mood was fear: attendees believe recursive self-improvement could begin within 3-6 months, superintelligence within 5-10 years, and no one has a credible plan for safety beyond 14 months.

• Researchers estimate recursive self-improvement (where AI systems improve themselves without human intervention) could start as early as early 2027, with superhuman capabilities deployed by Q3 2027—timelines that have compressed significantly from previous years.
• The "pacing the frontier" movement gained traction at the conference, with proposals ranging from delaying AI release to the public before labs use it internally, to Congressional legislation and insurance-based regulation—but debate remains on whether any approach can actually slow development without concentrating power dangerously.
• Helen Toner argued that "minimum viable superintelligence" (multimodal, autonomous, self-improving AI) doesn't require major technical breakthroughs and could arrive in 5-10 years, while many conference attendees privately held shorter timelines, creating a sense that civilization-scale decisions are arriving faster than society can handle them.