The BasePeople

Mikhail Samin

Titles as the sources gave them. In 1 entry, with 5 checked quotations.

What they said

Newest first. Each quotation was found word for word in the source.

“The race can be stopped. If the government had any idea what’s going on, it would be stopped already.”
Against Against SURALessWrong, November 1, 2026. Speaking as: Other. Opening argument in Samin's reply to Scott Alexander's essay Against SURA, on whether the AI race can be halted.
“They do need to stop lying to politicians and the public. They need to start saying what the situation is.”
Against Against SURALessWrong, November 1, 2026. Speaking as: Other. Samin on what AI companies should do, before listing the pause advocacy Samin says they are not doing.
“Employees who care about the existential threat have close to zero political power in any of the AI companies, and they’ll have less of that power in the future. Their track record is very bad.”
Against Against SURALessWrong, November 1, 2026. Speaking as: Other. Samin's claim about the influence of safety-minded staff inside AI companies, in support of leaving capability roles.
“It’s not about better AI psychology, it’s about the technical means we completely lack.”
Against Against SURALessWrong, November 1, 2026. Speaking as: Other. Samin disputing the view that AI models inherit virtue from pretraining and are corrupted later, arguing the unsolved problem is technical.
“Racing to create a smarter-than-human AI that would kill everyone is, I think, much worse than buying from a factory that sometimes kills its slaves.”
Against Against SURALessWrong, November 1, 2026. Speaking as: Other. Samin's reply on the morality of boycotting AI products, comparing AI racing with buying from a factory that uses slave labour.

In the Base

Every entry they appear in.

  1. EssayLessWrongWrote it

    Against Against SURA

    On LessWrong, Mikhail Samin replies point by point to Scott Alexander's essay Against SURA, which argues against AI-safety people leaving capability roles at AI companies. Samin argues that a coordinated pause is feasible, that company leaders cannot be relied on, and that alignment is not solvable in a few months.