P199/4 The post on X
P199 On SlopHits, week 5
Not in the Top 40
P500#55 of 629 in the running: see it among all songsHit The Breaks Except For Me
“A Flock of Altruists - Hit The Breaks Except For Me”
- By
- @jbro_1776 on X ↗JB 🇺🇸
- Views
- 715K views on X
- Length
- 4:36
- Posted
- Sep 25, 2026
- Duels
- 0 won, 5 lost
P199/2 Lyrics & meaning
What it’s about
A satire of AI leaders who warn about extinction while racing to build the thing they warn about. The narrator sees the end of days on a PowerPoint slide, is applauded for the warning and raises another billion the next morning. He tells the world to stop building, except himself: when rivals build it, that is extinction; when his lab builds it, it is aligned. At a safety summit he is crowned, appoints his own ethics board and asks for every key, to protect people from someone like him. He jokes that God never published a safety framework and lacks his compute. The video stages it as a glitter revue in a palace hung with "Claude" banners, led by a singer in an orange Claude suit with rainbow-clad dancers.
Names and terms
- A Flock of Altruists
- The act named in the post. It plays on the 1980s band A Flock of Seagulls and on effective altruism, a movement with close ties to parts of the AI safety community.
- Probability of extinction
- People in AI often give a personal estimate of the chance that AI leads to human extinction, nicknamed p(doom). The intro calls it extremely concerning and then announces a launch for Tuesday.
- Aligned
- Alignment is the work of making AI systems pursue the goals their makers intend. "When they build it, that's extinction, when we build it, we're aligned" mocks labs that treat only their own models as safe.
- Safety summit
- Governments have held international AI summits on safety, the first at Bletchley Park in the UK in November 2023. In the song the narrator is crowned there.
- Sign the letter
- Points to public letters on AI risk, such as the 2023 open letter calling for a six-month pause on training systems more powerful than GPT-4. The narrator signs, then keeps building.
- Safety framework
- Several AI labs publish policies that tie model releases to risk evaluations, such as Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy. The spoken bridge boasts that God never published one.
- Compute
- The processing power used to train and run AI models, often treated as the main measure of a lab's strength. "God doesn't have my compute" is the narrator's final claim to rank.
- Expected value
- A decision-theory term for the probability-weighted average of outcomes, common in effective-altruist arguments about AI risk. The bridge chants it like a hymn.
Hit The Breaks Except For Me: lyrics
IntroGood evening, humanity.
The probability of extinction is extremely concerning.
Fortunately, I have a solution.
We're launching it on Tuesday.
Verse 1Saw the end of days on a PowerPoint slide
Pointed at the graph, said there's nowhere to hide
Told them we're all doomed, they applauded my warning
Raised another billion by the following morning
Told the world, stop building, it's too dangerous, you see
Then I turned to the board: well, obviously not me
Pre-ChorusRed alert, red alert, put the future on hold
Someone else's model's getting hard to control
When they build it, that's extinction
When we build it, we're aligned
Same machine, different logo
Everything is fine
ChorusHit the brakes, hit the brakes
Tell the world that lives are at stake
Lock the doors and lose the key
Everybody stop, except for me
Sound the siren, ring the bell
One more breakthrough, straight to hell
Trust my voice, my authority
I'm the cure and the emergency
Follow me, humanity
Save yourselves, hand me the keys
Hit the brakes, except for me
Verse 2At the safety summit, coffee in my hand
Warned them no one should be trusted with command
Then they put a little crown upon my head
And applauded every terrifying thing I said
My chart says I'm the answer, I can prove it point by point
Just ask the ethics board that I personally appoint
Sign the letter, say the words, everybody stand
No one gets to play God without an approved plan
I don't want a throne, I just need every key
To protect you from someone just like me
ChorusHit the brakes, hit the brakes
Tell the world that lives are at stake
Lock the doors and lose the key
Everybody stop, except for me
Sound the siren, ring the bell
One more breakthrough, straight to hell
Trust my voice, my authority
I'm the cure and the emergency
I'm the cure and the emergency
SpokenSome people say I'm playing God.
I find that incredibly offensive.
God never published a safety framework.
And frankly, God doesn't have my compute.
BridgeExpected value, expected value
Protect us from the things you do
I'm not saying I'm the chosen one
I just hired a choir to make it sound that way
ChorusHit the brakes, hit the brakes
Now the whole damn planet shakes
Lock the doors and lose the key
I built the thing you're scared to see
Sound the siren, ring the bell
One more breakthrough, straight to hell
Trust my voice, my authority
I'm the cure and the emergency
Follow me, humanity
Save yourselves, hand me the keys
Hit the brakes, except for me
OutroYour safety is our highest priority.
Our next model launches tomorrow.
Please do not attempt to compete.
Transcribed from the video and checked by ear. Words we could not make out are marked [unclear]. Made this song and want the text off this page? Tell us and it goes.
P199/3 More from the chart
Around #55of 629 in the running
- 53
Don't let me scrollby @anabology - 54
One Light Dayby @thoughtcrime___ - 55
Hit The Breaks Except For Meby @jbro_1776This clip - 56
The Names I Don't Knowby @slimepriestess - 57
The Math of Youby @makevoid