Option 4 · The Four Clocks — one question
Four instruments that claim to tell the same time. They do not measure the same thing, they do not trust the same people, and each fails in its own instructive way.
Every clock in this field predicts capability and calls it arrival — what would a clock for sentience even measure?
The Doomsday Clock
Measures: an expert panel's judgement, expressed as minutes to midnight. Its answer: a warning, not a date. Its failure, in one line: a panel's judgement with no meter behind it. We keep the form, not the method.
theagiclock.com — “The AGI Clock”
Measures: CEO and founder statements, averaged. Its answer: June 15, 2028, with a claimed “77% confidence within 2σ.” Its failure, in one line: false precision — a single date built from the most bullish voices in the room, with homemade credibility scores and no survey or market behind it.
singularityclock.ai — “The Singularity Clock”
Measures: a versioned ensemble of 14 live signals — task horizons, benchmarks, compute, spending, safety capacity — refreshed daily and open source. Its answers: AGI ~April 2027 · Singularity ~December 2029 · ASI ~December 2031. Its failure, in one line: its dates are benchmark-curve extrapolation, and its own fine print admits extrapolation breaks near benchmark ceilings. Its Alignment Deficit gauge — capability pulling 1.76× faster than safety — is our Balance built by someone else, in gauge form; their pans hold capability vs. safety research, ours holds AI vs. everyone else.
Jewell — the clock on this site
Measures: expert surveys + live forecasting markets + measured capability curves, kept as a living range, never a single date. Its answer: a window, 2029–2047; Metaculus median September 15, 2030 (checked November 4, 2026); the college's own estimate ~2032. Its failure, stated plainly: the Balance's meter is still undefined, and the yellow line is a condition to defend, not yet a measurement. We present those as questions to shape together.
Why the opening question matters: every instrument here resolves on task performance, jobs, benchmarks, and spending. Not one — ours included — has a term for what a machine might be inside. There is no agreed test for machine consciousness that a market could settle. “AGI” does the smuggling: the word sounds like it includes a mind; every working definition quietly excludes one.
Rival figures as seen November 9, 2026 — the other clocks' dates move; re-check before citing.