My guess is that there is virtually zero value in working on 24-hour-style emergency measures, because:
The probability we end up with a known 24-hour-ish window is vanishingly small. For example I think all of the following are far more likely:
no-window defeat (things proceed as at present, and then with no additional warning to anyone relevant, the leading group turns on unaligned AGI and we all die)
no-window victory (as above, except the leading group completely solves alignment and there is much rejoicing)
various high-variance but significantly-longer-than-24hr fire alarms (e.g. stories in the same genre as yours, except instead of learning that we have 24 hours, the new research results / intercepted intelligence / etc makes the new best estimate 1-4 years / 1-10 months / etc)
The probability that anything we do actually affects the outcome is much higher in the longer term version than in the 24-hour version, which means that even the scenarios were equally likely, we’d probably get more EV out of working on the “tractable” (by comparison) version.
Work on the “tractable” version is more likely to generalize than work on the emergency version, e.g. general alignment researchers might incidentally discover some strategy which has a chance of working on a short time horizon, but 24-hour researchers are less likely to incidentally discover longer-term solutions, because the 24-hour premise makes long-term categories of things (like lobbying for regulations) not worth thinking about.
My guess is that there is virtually zero value in working on 24-hour-style emergency measures, because:
The probability we end up with a known 24-hour-ish window is vanishingly small. For example I think all of the following are far more likely:
no-window defeat (things proceed as at present, and then with no additional warning to anyone relevant, the leading group turns on unaligned AGI and we all die)
no-window victory (as above, except the leading group completely solves alignment and there is much rejoicing)
various high-variance but significantly-longer-than-24hr fire alarms (e.g. stories in the same genre as yours, except instead of learning that we have 24 hours, the new research results / intercepted intelligence / etc makes the new best estimate 1-4 years / 1-10 months / etc)
The probability that anything we do actually affects the outcome is much higher in the longer term version than in the 24-hour version, which means that even the scenarios were equally likely, we’d probably get more EV out of working on the “tractable” (by comparison) version.
Work on the “tractable” version is more likely to generalize than work on the emergency version, e.g. general alignment researchers might incidentally discover some strategy which has a chance of working on a short time horizon, but 24-hour researchers are less likely to incidentally discover longer-term solutions, because the 24-hour premise makes long-term categories of things (like lobbying for regulations) not worth thinking about.