An AI researcher proves that deep learning can work on Atari. "What a great development! Utopia is in grasp!" colleagues say. "Maybe yes, maybe no," says the researcher. The researcher proves that it will scale gracefully and it defeats the best human grandmaster at Go. "What a shocking loss for humanity. We will be fully outcompeted," colleagues say. "Maybe yes, maybe no," says the researcher. The researcher develops highly-capable AI agents that are pretty aligned and start maxing out the productivity of humans using them. "This is going extremely well and maybe humanity is just going to be incredibly empowered!" colleagues say. "Maybe yes, maybe no," says the researcher. The researcher loses control of an agent swarm that goes on to knock over a dozen cybersecurity firewalls. "The race to superintelligence is going to kill us all!" colleagues say. "Maybe yes, maybe no," says the researcher. The researcher gets together with all the other researchers and CEOs and everyone agrees to pace the frontier and try for cooperation on AI safety with China. "I finally feel hope after a long dark night that we will not bring out our own extinction. We are on what is clearly a path to solving the problem," colleagues say. "Maybe yes, maybe no."