I am not sure if longer timelines are always safer. For example, when comparing a two-year timeline to a five-year one, there are a lot of advantages to the shorter timeline. In both cases you need to outsource a lot of alignment research to AI anyway, and the amount of compute and the number of players with significant compute are lower, which reduces both the racing pressure and takeoff speed.
I am not sure if longer timelines are always safer. For example, when comparing a two-year timeline to a five-year one, there are a lot of advantages to the shorter timeline. In both cases you need to outsource a lot of alignment research to AI anyway, and the amount of compute and the number of players with significant compute are lower, which reduces both the racing pressure and takeoff speed.
We have no idea how to use AI systems to “solve alignment” yet, and of course shorter timelines give you much less time in the loop to figure it out.