George Hotz · 2026-07-11 · notable
AI 2040 and the Cult of Intelligence — Hotz argues fast takeoff ignores physics
George Hotz publishes a rebuttal to the AI 2040 Plan A scenario, arguing that intelligence alone cannot bend supply chains, chip fabs, or shipping timelines, and that the safest AI future is local, user-aligned models rather than centralized superintelligence.
George Hotz answers the AI 2040 Plan A scenario — arguing that physics, not policy, is what bounds how fast AI can transform the world.
What is it?
AI 2040 and the Cult of Intelligence is a July 11, 2026 blog post by George Hotz (tinygrad, tinycorp, ex-Comma.ai) responding to Daniel Kokotajlo's AI 2040 Plan A. Hotz calls the hard-takeoff picture a 'cult of intelligence' — the belief that a smart-enough model can rewrite physical reality — and argues that AI 2027 was 'self-fulfilling' rather than predictive.
How does it work?
The essay uses concrete constraints to bound AI's speed of impact: chip fabrication runs on 3-month cycles because of physical process steps, ocean data centers still ship components on 3-week boat rides, and 'no matter how high quality your tokens are, they cannot turn lead into gold'. Hotz then reframes alignment: a model you cannot kick or run locally is not aligned with you, only with whoever serves it.
Why does it matter?
AI 2040 Plan A shaped last week's superintelligence debate, and Hotz is one of the few well-known engineers publicly rejecting the hard-takeoff frame from the inside. The post hit the Hacker News front page at 163 points and 187 comments within hours, giving safety and open-source-AI advocates a shared reference for the counter-argument.
Who is it for?
AI safety researchers, open-source-AI advocates, and anyone weighing centralized vs. local model deployment
Try it
https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2026/07/11/ai-2040.html