The tree · Contact Clause · Happens to the world · Could be decided within 5 to 20 years
Humans learn from it
Beyond receiving a result: humans come to understand something conceptual they could not have reached, in a way that changes how human science is done.
The test: what counts as it having happened
A concept or method that originated with an artificial system, and that the record shows human researchers had not reached, is adopted as a standard part of how a scientific field works: explained in human terms in the literature and taught in at least two independently authored textbooks, or used in the majority of new papers, in a field named when the node is judged.
Settled by: The field's textbooks and publication record
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80% | 88% | 93% | 96% | 97% |
Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of September 20th, 2026.
Why these numbers: Adoption lags production by a decade or two, but forty-five years is long enough for one field to reorganise around one machine-born method. Re-estimated September 20th, 2026 with C1 in its machine-originated-idea form: that condition is what this number always assumed, so it stands. Proposed by Claude September 20th, 2026, I accepted.
What this one is worth
Nothing. The headline number does not rest on this step at any remove, so however it turns out, the chance that I live and work off Earth does not change. That is not a judgement that it does not matter. It is what the tree says: this step feeds a tier above the one the headline asks about, or sits beside the equation rather than in it.
What the ledger says about this step
- Forty-one steps had their criteria tightened so that two readers would agree when each has happened, with no number moved for that alone 2026-09-20 The tree itself changed
The last 3 checks
Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.
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2026-11-01 Nothing new
No evidence of a machine-originated concept taught in two independent textbooks or used in most new papers. Only AlphaFold usage and a graduate course were found, which are tool use and not a concept adopted from the machine.
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2026-10-04 Nothing new
No new evidence of an AI-originated concept reaching the two-textbook or majority-of-papers bar in a named field; results were general AlphaFold and AlphaEvolve background.
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2026-09-19 Nothing new
No event in the window shows a specific AI-originated concept, one humans had not reached, crossing into textbook or majority-of-papers status; AlphaFold's roughly 40 percent share of new protein structures and broad tool adoption are pre-existing gradual trends, not a new event, and AlphaFold is a tool humans could in principle have built rather than a concept AI originated beyond human reach.
Revisions
| Date | Field | From | To | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-19 | resolution | 'adopted ... as evidenced by its use in textbooks or in the majority of new papers in that field' | explained in human terms in the literature and taught in at least two independently authored textbooks, or used in the majority of new papers, in a field named when the node is judged | Step 27 outside-model review, item 91 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): textbook inclusion need not show understanding, and 'textbooks' and the field were unspecified. Decided September 19th, 2026. |
| 2026-09-20 | probability | 0.80 / 0.88 / 0.93 / 0.96 / 0.97 | 0.80 / 0.88 / 0.93 / 0.96 / 0.97 (re-estimated, unchanged) | Step 27 outside-model review, item 92 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md), held for re-estimation after item 90: the reviewer's cut assumed C1 could be met by a brute-force proof that teaches nothing; with C1 reworded to a machine-originated idea, the condition is the one the number assumed, so it stands. Proposed September 20th, 2026, I accepted. |
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The record itself is data/C-contact.toml in the public repository.