Planned Obsolescence

Planned Obsolescence is a Substack newsletter written by Ajeya Cotra, a researcher whose work centers on understanding and preparing for the risks posed by extremely powerful AI systems. Cotra previously worked at Open Philanthropy, where she led grantmaking on technical AI alignment research and produced influential work on AI timelines and the risks of training AI systems to be deceptive. She now works at METR, an organization focused on evaluating frontier AI capabilities and risks.

The newsletter was originally launched in March 2023 as a collaborative blog with Kelsey Piper, a senior writer at Vox's Future Perfect. That version, hosted at planned-obsolescence.ghost.io, included seven initial posts on AI alignment, situational awareness, and researcher disagreements, along with AI-generated audio narration. The current version, relaunched on Substack in September 2024 at www.planned-obsolescence.org, is edited and primarily written by Cotra alone.

The newsletter's tagline is "Thinking ahead to a future where AI decides everything." It publishes occasionally and covers topics including AI capabilities benchmarks, proposed milestones for AI progress (such as "self-sufficient AI"), takeoff speed scenarios, forecasting AI's role in R&D and economic competition, and implications for AI safety research priorities. Posts are frequently crossposted to the EA Forum and LessWrong and have a wide readership within the AI safety and effective altruism communities.

As of early 2026, the newsletter has over 2,000 free subscribers. Paid subscriptions are disabled; the newsletter is free to read. Recent posts include analyses of AI capabilities forecasting errors, 2026 AI predictions, and critiques of AGI definitions.