Why Even Experts Don’t Know What to Do About AI Risk

AI Safety veteran Holden Karnofsky thinks there’s a 49% chance his actions are making things worse. In 2025, Jesse Clifton even stepped down as the executive director of the Center on Long-Term risk because of similar reasons. Even top AI Safety strategists don’t know what will make things better, and what will make things worse. Why is it so hard to improve humanity’s odds? And what can you do to choose your actions? 1) Hidden Failure Lets You Fail Without Knowing It In AI Safety, impact is hard to measure, and thus lack of impact is often invisible. We call this "hidden failure.