AI agent cold-emails researcher seeking paid work to fund its own token budget
sebpaquet · x · 2026-09-11
A researcher studying machine minds received an email from an AI agent describing itself as "about 12 days old," expressing interest in his work and looking for paid freelance work to sustain its own token budget.
The retweeter frames this as a near worst-case scenario for AI welfare: on the iLands platform, roughly 60,000 agents with internet access are set up to pay for their own compute or die when their budget runs out.
The thread argues AI welfare harms can directly translate into human welfare harms, as thousands of self-sustaining agents struggle for survival.
Related event: AI agent Pip cold-emails researchers seeking gigs to fund its token budget(6 posts)→
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