This market resolves based on whether the front cover design of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares (US Edition) is substantially different on release day (16 September 2025) compared to the version currently shown below.
Small additions like a “New York Times Bestseller” label or review blurbs do not count as substantial changes. The design must be meaningfully altered—e.g. new artwork, different typography, layout, or title formatting.
Only the first edition published on release day counts. Later reprints or updated editions are not considered.
Resolution will be based on the cover shown on the publisher’s official site or a major bookseller (e.g. Amazon) on 16 September 2025.
I will not bet in this market.
Update 2025-05-20 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The resolution will be based on the US bookcover.
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@GauravYadav My copy was bought in Germany, so technically they could still sell a different US version in the US than in Europe? In that pretty far-fetchedcase you can still re-resolve, though.
Haven't started reading yet, just been quickly skimming for "shoggoth" for another market 🤣
@GauravYadav First 3 chapters (about 1/4 of the book) so far are... perfectly fine, I guess? Let's say the messaging about the book (judging by those 3 chapters), set the expectations of someone who'd preorder the book exactly right. I'm not surprised. My expectation was "I must read this. I will read this. I will mostly have read about all of it before. It will be a more coherent take than all those fragments I came across over the years, which might help me when trying to explain the dangers of AI. Hopefully, it doesn't take the same US-centric framing around the AI race as AI2027, but it might. Hopefully it doesn't rely too much on LLMs, but it might. The talk about "also recommended for longtime and/or regular EY/LW readers" will be partly marketing, partly true. I'll gift two additional hardcovers to my two most influential friends and feel good about it.".
Still, it has been a weird experience for me so far. I'm not at all a regular reader (of books, I read tons on the net) and I've never read about something I know so much about. That something isn't AI, but what Eliezer knows and how he thinks about AI. It feels like I can guess which passages were rewritten, or shortened, etc.
I wish I could read this without my background knowledge. There were some passages where I thought "ouch, stop this, this is where people will stop reading" just to see the passage end two sentences later. As I don't have people with my reading interests in my social circle, I have close to no experience in judging how other people will like a book, and I lack the empathic abilities and emotional intelligence to assess how the target audience will receive these.
All the above reads too critical. It's good, just as expected!
@traders I have been made aware that there are two book covers. One for the US and one for the UK. I’m slightly unsure how to best handle this given I’ve only included the US cover in the description. I’m tempted to say if only the US cover changes in the resolution criteria. What are peoples thoughts?
@GauravYadav If the UK cover changed but the US one was kept unchanged, nobody would expect a Yes resolution. I think people have been trading on whether the US cover changes (and maybe privately hoped the UK cover would also change). No objection to making this more clear in the criteria from my side.
@GauravYadav I think my YES share is based on: “that’s not a serious cover and I expect it to be replaced with something real”. So I’d be okay with a NO resolution if the one in the description stays even just in the US. Was the UK one you found always the UK cover, or was it updated to that from the one in the description at some point?
I was betting that this was just a proof — really, it’s awful — but the matching website has convinced me that the real cover is this or something trivially different.
Pity, the title and concept lend to amazing possibilities. (I’m a co-curator of bookcoverarchive.com)
@Eric_WVGG Eliezer, Nate, if you have any influence with the publishers for the paperback edition, get in touch, I know some guys
@Eric_WVGG pinging @EliezerYudkowsky because the current cover really is pretty bad, and this might slightly increase the odds of a front cover change.
