[Linkpost] “Defense-favoured coordination design sketches” by Forethought, Owen Cotton-Barratt, Oliver Sourbut, Lizka, rosehadshar

This is a link post. Intro We think that near-term AI could make it much easier for groups to coordinate, find positive-sum deals, navigate tricky disagreements, and hold each other to account. Partly, this is because AI will be able to process huge amounts of data quickly, making complex multi-party negotiations and discussions much more tractable. And partly it's because secure enough AI systems would allow people to share sensitive information with trusted intermediaries without fear of broader disclosure, making it possible to coordinate around information that's currently too sensitive to bring to the table, and to greatly improve our capacity for monitoring and transparency. We want to help people imagine what this could look like. In this piece, we sketch six potential near-term technologies, ordered roughly by how achievable we think they are with present tech:[1] Fast facilitation — Groups quickly surface key points of consensus views and disagreement, and make decisions everyone can live with. Automated negotiation — Complicated bargains are discovered quickly via automated negotiation on behalf of each party, mediated by trusted neutral systems which can find agreements. Arbitrarily easy arbitration — Disputes are resolved cheaply and quickly by verifiably neutral AI adjudicators. Background networking [...] --- Outline: (00:15) Intro (03:33) Why coordination tech matters (05:31) Why defense-favoured coordination tech (06:22) Fast facilitation (07:05) Design sketch (08:16) Feasibility (09:32) Possible starting points // concrete projects (11:02) Automated negotiation (11:36) Design sketch (13:42) Feasibility (14:29) Possible starting points // concrete projects (15:49) Arbitrarily easy arbitration (16:13) Design sketch (19:18) Feasibility (21:32) Possible starting points // concrete projects (22:50) Background networking (23:37) Design sketch (25:28) Feasibility (28:02) Possible starting points // concrete projects (28:52) Structured transparency for democratic oversight (30:08) Design sketch (32:37) Feasibility (34:52) Possible starting points // concrete projects (36:32) Confidential monitoring and verification (36:58) Design sketch (38:32) Feasibility (39:28) Possible starting points // concrete projects (40:10) Cross-cutting thoughts (40:14) Some cross-cutting technologies (40:33) AI delegates and preference elicitation (41:51) Charter tech (45:29) Adoption pathways (47:31) Other challenges --- First published: April 6th, 2026 Source: Linkpost URL: --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.