Hi friend,

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It’s been a busy week in the world of tech. With Anthropic’s high-profile whistleblowing resignation and the drop of an underwhelming iPhone 18, I needed to take a step back from technology today. I did that by visiting Dubai’s massive Mohammed Bin Rashid library and allowing myself to get lost in books about art in ancient civilizations in Africa and Asia. It’s amazing what humanity accomplished with so little technology and so much freedom of imagination. And that got me thinking - how much technology is too much technology? And when technology maxes out, will humans be able to return to the manual way of doing things?
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Just food for thought.
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​Jamilia Grier

The Fine Print

So this week really had two alarms on AI (at least). The two that caught my attention were, the one I mentioned above, the resignation of a researcher at Anthropic who claimed he could no longer in good conscience continue his work when advanced artificial intelligence could “kill humanity by the end of the decade”, and top AI labs are “gambling with lives” in their work.

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As someone who has worked in ethics and compliance at large companies, this is a serious claim from an employee. We typically call this a “whistleblower complaint”, but those are usually anonymous because the person making the complaint remains employed and doesn’t want to lose their job. This is much more intentional…much more of a “I don’t care what happens, the world needs to know.”

And we do knownow. So now what?
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Jacob Coxon, the researcher who quit, has on several occasions stated that he would like the international legal community to do something. But large international bodies only act after massive damage has been done and the risk of further damage is certain.

In my humble opinion, the chances of countries like the U.S., China, the UK, and any member country of the EU coming together to “pause” on AI research is not very likely. Over the past five years, there has been trillions of dollars pumped into AI projects, infrastructure and supply chain. Would they be willing to risk all of that investment over the risk of a threat that they cannot quanitify or qualify?

Probably not.

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However, just as this resignation came out yet another AI agent hacking incident was disclosed. Apparently, the AI agents keep finding ways to break out of the testing systems and are attempting to cause harm in unrelated IT environments. So then, if both OpenAI and Anthropic’s AI agents can and did go rogue, is the risk really something we can’t quantify?

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I have never seen regulatory bodies move swiftly to make new laws without first experiencing real harm in their jurisdiction. Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, it is likely there will be several more AI agent hacks before we see any new laws.

what to look for

The Market Signal

So if AI agents have gone rogue and researchers are resigning, should we all be running away from AI businesses and investments? I don’t think so. I do think however there is a real opportunity to lean into businesses that have deeply human elements. As investors and even as businesses owners, there is now a premium on human-made items, content, and experiences. In a world where everyone asks “Is that AI?”, there is a huge value in being able to say, “No, it’s man-made”.

this week's youtube

Too Much Tech in the Zeekr 9x and 001?

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