A genealogy of AI safety: how directions are born, and how they die (2005-2026)

What this is and how to read it Ask how AI safety reached this point, and most people give you a neat story. A small group of philosophers raised the first concerns about superintelligence. The arrival of large language models changed that, and many researchers turned to the alignment problem. The story is too tidy, and it leaves out the interesting part. Examine timelines, contributors, funding sources and publications, and it falls apart. New directions appear. A few merge into the mainstream,...