This weekend's break reading was Ursula LeGuin's Lathe of Heaven. Not at all about AI, but could not be more apt to it: a cautionary tale about the risks of putting unimaginable power in the hands of a centrally-planned world /authoritarian government mindset, even with the best of intentions. 1/2

This paper wins my 'longest in the pipeline' award; the first preprint version hails from the misty forgotten era of 2023. I think it still has something to offer: a vision and characterisation of predictable AI. Privilege to be a small part of this great team. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Doomsday Clock is now 85 seconds to midnight. In our response to the @thebulletin.org announcement, we reflect how new forms of global cooperation are essential for navigating today’s risks and how meaningful progress is still possible. Read the full response below ⬇️ bit.ly/49KSNOC

CEOs of Anthropic and Deepmind (both AI scientists by background) this week predicting AGI in 2- and 5- years respectively. Both stating clearly that they would prefer a slow down or pause in progress, to address safety issues and to allow society and governance to catch up. 1/5

It will be interesting to see if the shift currently happening fosters appetite for cooperation between middle powers on AI - e.g. Europe, Canada, Brazil and others. Because there are real opportunities there. And it could be very good for the world to have another pole 1/2

A snowy start to the New Year in Cambridge!❄️

I'm so excited to see ILINA's upcoming year cecilyongo.medium.com/ilina-in-202...

As this year draws near its close, my greatest hope is for a kinder 2026.

An honour to provide a paper for the Bulletin's 80th anniversary, on the challenges AI poses for catastrophic risk the coming decade. An exercise in navigating uncertainty and the collingridge dilemma, with the stakes likely rising with each passing year. thebulletin.org/premium/2025...

I really enjoyed chatting to Philip Bell about 'AGI race' claims and the AI race narrative overall. Link to podcast below techfuturesproj.substack.com/p/is-china-r...

Had a blast speaking to the MARS fellows last week about prospects for international cooperation on AI safety, great power competition in AI, evidence supporting 'AI race' claims. Great discussion - calibre of these fellows is remarkable. They'll do important things. www.cambridgeaisafety.org/mars

Right - so as the relatively rare Irishman who is also a Russia/FSU geek I guess I have to have Thoughts and Opinions after yesterday's revelations. First off - I don't think that this was an attempted assassination or other "kinetic" mission. The goal here seems to have been purely psychological /1

It's a rainy saturday, so I thought I'd bump our 'AI for sustainable development' report from the WIC programme from earlier this year. I thought it was a very good report, and folks might find it useful. www.wicinternet.org/pdf/Governin...

Things are looking smoothly exponential for AI over the past several years, and I continue to think this is the best default assumption (until the AI R&D automation feedback loop eventually speeds everything up)

This will be a fascinating test case. The AI industry (a16z, OpenAI & others) are running the crypto fairshake playbook. But that worked because crypto was low-salience; most people didn't care. People care about AI. 1/4 www.techbrew.com/stories/2025...

Extremely excited to launch this report; the second report from World Internet Conference's International AI Governance Programme that I co-Chair with Yi Zeng. It goes further than any similar report I've seen in recommending robust governance interventions 1/4 www.wicinternet.org/pdf/Advancin...

Pleased to have a new paper in Internationale Politik, in which I call for (a) more of a global conversation around AGI and superintelligence. (b) 'middle powers' to start exerting themselves in the global conversation. internationalepolitik.de/de/goldene-z...

Thoroughly enjoyed this speech by the excellent Matt Clifford. Much of it is also relevant to Ireland, where it pairs well with John Collison's overlapping-in-diagnosis&recommendations Irish Times article from the previous week (link in comment). www.youtube.com/watch?v=McMt...

I cowrote this paper w a great team of Chinese and UK colleagues in 2019/20. Just noticed it's had by far its most citations this year. An indicator, I hope, that the appetite for international cooperation on AI safety & governance is stronger than ever. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Excited to head to Beijing tomorrow for an action-packed week. Launching an international cooperation network with my friend and colleague Yi Zeng; participating in a frontier AI Safety and Governance forum; and presenting on my cooperation/competition work at a Tsinghua Roundtable.

Because there's more happening (and more in need of philanthropic support!) than AI risk, check out this great writeup by Mike Cassidy and Lara Mani on their volcanic risk work and charity - innovative and neglected. forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jAcCjF...

Impactful job for the right candidate here. Based on my meetings and discussions, the UK government remains the one grappling most deeply with the implications of frontier AI and possibility of AGI, including the attendant risks. jobs.lever.co/futureof-lif...

He made us all suffer the national indignity of That Elon Musk Bletchley interview, and didn't even manage to wrangle a job out of it? I'm never going to look at Dishy Rishi the same way again.

I really enjoyed being part of this excellent discussion yesterday on the future of global AI governance, with Kayla Blomquist, Dan Fagella, Duncan Cass-Beggs, Nora Ammann and Robert Whitfield, skilfully Chaired by David Wood. Catch up with it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EADx...

Important report. Given how long it takes/competitive it is to get tenure these days, too often academia basically asks women to choose between an academic career and motherhood, which is unacceptable. (There being ultra-capable subset who manage both doesn't make it reasonable). Needs to change.

Well this was an interesting way to discover that my (considerate, charming) wife sometimes reads my social media posts.

As of today I am officially a Research Professor! I will be celebrating by having "Professor Seán: Doomometrics Studies" socks made, and submitting a paper tonight with some excellent coauthors that I hope will be a banger (in appropriate Research Professor fashion).

Privilege discussing AI and geopolitics with this year's CFI MSt cohort today. Every year's group somehow more impresssive and inspiring than the last. These people will make a difference.

Good role with the great team at the Bennett. We have a monthly research meeting that they join on geopolitics & AI, so if you take the job you can come argue with me (or, god forbid, collaborate) on AI and global cooperation vs race dynamis. www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/about-us/vac...

Meta are worried states will regulate AI to protect children (which states should) so they're going to buy the politicians. Last month, a California Super PAC, now an additional multi-state one. techcrunch.com/2025/09/23/m...

"An international agreement on clear and verifiable red lines... should build upon and enforce existing global frameworks and voluntary corporate commitments, ensuring that all advanced AI providers are accountable to shared thresholds." I was pleased to be a signatory of this. red-lines.ai

I am delighted that Ireland will no longer have a Presidential candidate with a track record of rape and sexual and physical assault against women. Still sickened that the U.S. White House would choose to champion this man.

I had the privilege of teaming up w the fantastic Kristy Loke for this one, just out: Analysing China & USA's evolving strategies, and opportunities they present for cooperation on important things like safety even while maintaining healthy competition elsewhere. www.thewirechina.com/2025/09/14/c...

I wrote this paper because of repeated calls like this papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

GOOD NEWS: Despite RFK Jr saying he would cancel $500 million in mRNA research, the House Committee on Appropriations has passed a spending package, that includes $1.1 billion for “advanced research and development” at BARDA, which includes research on mRNA vaccines.

The ten biggest companies in the world by market cap: The hardware players: 1) Nvidia 9) TSMC semiconductors (both in supply chain that produces high end chips). 8) Broadcom provides custom components for tech companies' AI workloads, plus datacentre infrastructure. 1/4

It's always a reassurance to know that no matter how I've messed up at various points, I've never "fallen into a Russian agent's honey trap and betrayed my country and liberal democracy"-level messed up. Yet. It's a high bar, but one I'm determined to maintain. www.thetimes.com/article/402a...

Deserving winners. They also neatly demonstrate the breadth of scholarship ongoing in CFI's masters programmes, from search algorithms influencing what news you get, to the question of whether future AI systems may surpass humans in moral status. www.lcfi.ac.uk/education/mp...

Interesting systemic risk/global risk paper from a diverse set of authors: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Had a lot of fun at LawAI's Cambridge forum discussing Europe's role in the AI/geopolitical Great Game. Great panel w/ GovAI's Markus Anderljung, Google DeepMind's Pegah Maham, LCFI's Christoph Winter & expertly Chaired by LawAI's Emily Gillett. Will hopefully have an article on this theme out soon!

Deleted 10,000 emails: 0.1L/day saved Deleted 140 treasured photos: 0.2L/day saved Can't get a plumber for my toilet: 400 litres a day down the toilet. Can somebody help me, my country is in drought.

Pleasure to speak to the 2025 Cambridge ERA fellows today: discussed different types of AI race dynamics, evidence china is/isn't racing to AGI, Shanghai AL Labs' frontier safety framework, US v Chinese ambitions for AI plus much more. Year after year each cohort is stronger.

Sad to see, likely to be very damaging to the US's scientific preeminence. While scientists will feel it immediately, this sort of thing can take years to bleed through to broader scientific/economic impacts. And decades to reverse. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I was pleased to sign this statement, & participate in its drafting, as part of a v useful workshop in Shanghai. V rewarding to experience leading researchers from Shanghai, Beijing, Silicon Valley &elsewhere challenging and bringing out best in each other - as it should be. idais.ai/dialogue/ida...

Based on 2021/22 Census data, 16% of the overall UK population was born overseas, so 12.5% of prisoners being born overseas means foreign-born people are under-represented in the prison population. But hatred of foreigners sells, unfortunately.

Sad to hear of the passing of the great Margaret Boden. She gave a few wonderful lectures in the early days of our two centres in Cambridge. Towering intellectual contributions in cognitive science, AI, philosophy and psychology,plus a wry sense of humour. www.lcfi.ac.uk/news-events/...

Lots of highlights from Shanghai, one was the release of Shanghai AI Lab's Frontier AI Safety framework, co-developed w Concordia AI. Will have significant influence in Shanghai++ ecosystem. concordia-ai.com/research/fro...

Exciting week ahead with the World AI Conference in Shanghai and a series of AI safety & governance workshops alongside. I'll be offline - be good and don't make AI recursively self-improve, etc.

I was delighted to be an advisor to this excellent work by Liam Epstein - exploring the idea of sovereign wealth funds for managing the transition to transformative AI. www.convergenceanalysis.org/fellowships/...

Off to Geneva for the ITU AI for Good conference. Tomorrow I'll be speaking at a workshop the World Internet Conference is organising with ITU. My talk: "AI Governance is in Crisis". Because, well, I think AI governance is in crisis. aiforgood.itu.int/event/develo...