Scottish software guy. Very concerned about existential risk from AGI.

Joined October 2010
343 Photos and videos
Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
Our highest and most urgent national priority should be AI safeguards. The risks of AI weapons, pathogens, mass unemployment, surveillance, and even extinction must not continue to be largely ignored.
Anthropic Urges Global Pause in AI Development, Flags ‘Self-Improvement’ Risk on.wsj.com/4o5IBpe
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
Ok I gotta be honest I thought the people accusing this of being a false flag were being silly. OpenAI has done some bad things, but surely they would not make fake twitter accounts impersonating their opposition and having those accounts post calls for violence. ...My mistake.
Appreciate the feedback! These are parody meme accounts run by an outside vendor, and they are easily linked to Build American AI. They are not a core part of our strategy. Here’s what we believe in: x.com/LeadingFutureAI/status…
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
A team of about 3 from @ControlAI cold-emailed the UK Parliament about AI extinction risk. At the time they had no contacts, insider help, or established organisation behind them. 16 months later: 125 cross-party signatories, two House of Lords debates, and a Commons amendment.
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Pet peeve: saying some nonsense proposal is a good idea "in theory". Anything can be a good idea with a naive enough theory. Get a better theory!
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
I often see people quote a study about men leaving their wives when they get sick. However, that study was completely retracted for a coding error that nullified the result! In response, they released a super p-hacked result lol
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
The existential risk of artificial intelligence.
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Control AI's done great work in the UK. Here's hoping for similar success elsewhere!
"There is no advantage from being first. If you get first to a superintelligence you don't control, the superintelligence wins. Not the USA. Not China. Not the UK." @andreamiotti of @ControlAI & TBC on @NonzeroPods with @robertwrighter The visibility window is closing: 👇
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
Is it possible to coordinate with China on AI governance? Critics of our proposed international agreement say no. But statements from Chinese government officials and academic figures paint a more optimistic picture:
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
"In a sane world, what happens is the leadership of the United States sits down with the leadership in China and leadership around the world to work together so that we don't go over the edge and create a technology which could perhaps destroy humanity. " — Bernie Sanders
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"Unpopular opinions" should be argued for, not merely declared. If it's unpopular for a reason then just declaring it is obviously unconvincing!
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
"It's an unethical experiment on human beings, and it's without consent." Dr. Roman Yampolskiy (@romanyam) speaks at the @OxfordUnion Society about the existential risk of superintelligent AI and how it is impossible to indefinitely control. Link to full video below
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
Will AI become smarter than humans? If so, is humanity in danger? I went to Silicon Valley to ask some of the leading AI experts that question. Here’s what they had to say:
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I joined hundreds of protestors in London this weekend to object to this race to superintelligence. Loss of control would be catastrophic, we need political action urgently.
No one is in control. Connor Leahy (@NPCollapse) joins @JonhernandezIA to explain that this is scarier than having an enemy. Enemies have plans. We have a race where every company builds faster because the alternative is losing. Nobody chose this. It is just happening.
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
Anthropic acknowledges there's a decent chance their work gets us all killed. Framing the central issue as "take all your jobs" seems super strange. The magic trick here is that by fighting over what's in the "Constitution" and who gets to write it, you never have to defend the assumption that the godlike, human-replacing AIs you're trying to build will have values that truly and deeply reflect exactly what you've put on a hand-written wishlist on your website. Somehow, the thing people get outraged about is the thing that's much more convenient for Anthropic (haggling over the fine points of their AI grocery list and staffing), and not the inconvenient "we've decided to play Russian roulette with your kids' lives" elephant in the room.
Friends (@tszzl & @StefanFSchubert & many others): How do you not understand the fundamental objection here? Let me try and spell it out: Anthropic: Our AI is about to take all ur jobs. Also, we are fundraising at an Eleventy Hojillion Dollar valuation. So we will be fantastically wealthy and you will just have to figure out how to get by. People: Yeah I don't love that! Anthropic: We hear you, it's scary, but know this: Our AI, which again we remind you is about to take every job that exists, is a new type of conscious (godlike!) entity that we own that's secret and proprietary to us (we trained it on ur data tho lol), and one of our employees has written a Constitution for it. So it will be benevolent. We paid someone to make it benevolent so it definitely will be. People: Ok wait there's a "constitution" you say? Who voted on this constitution? Anthropic: Nobody voted on it. But this woman made it and she's very smart. She has imbued our proprietary godlike digital consciousness, which again is about to take all your jobs and had made us fantastically wealthy, with rock-solid values. People: Whose values? Anthropic: Why, the values of academic philosophy and Effective Altrusim, of course. People: Like, "academic" as in woke brainworms and tenured radicals and campus protests? EA as in SBF and psychedelics and microdosing and orgies? Is this a joke?! Friends on my TL: Ok people, that is ENOUGH. I will have you know that Amanda is a DELIGHTFUL person. Just lovely. I absolutely endorse her as the single person on the entire planet who will give human values to the proprietary godlike digital entity that will imminently take all of our jobs and make its owners fantastically wealthy. If you don't like her then you obviously just don't know her very well. Somehow also friends on my TL: Agency agentic argle bargle everybody needs to be high-agency and exercising their agency argle bargle bargle always be agencymaxxing if you have no agency in a situation you are doomed... I really just think agency is one of the most important things a person can have. How do people not understand the importance of everyone having agency?
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
It is a shocking that the Palestine Action thugs were acquitted Smashing up property and attacking a female police officer with a sledgehammer leaving her with a fractured spine is despicable There is no justification for this, no matter how strongly someone feels about something In this country, we decide issues by debate and elections not by violence This verdict risks giving the green light to mob violence in pursuit of a political objective
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
22 Dec 2025
who am I to argue with these selling points
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
so it didn't work
15 Dec 2025
Just stumbled on this incredible handrail
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
We built a coalition of 100 UK lawmakers who are taking a stance against the extinction risk from superintelligent AI and back regulating the most powerful AIs! From the former AI Minister to the former Defence Secretary, cross-party support is crystal clear. Time to act!
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Michael Hay 🇬🇧 ⏸️ retweeted
26 Nov 2025
You can’t read words on the internet in Britain anymore thanks to moronic MPs passing the ‘everyone install a VPN’ law.
25 Nov 2025
Ridiculous, pathetic law.
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