It’s Monday. I hope y’all had a great weekend. Time to dive into the news…
Man, We’re In Trouble: AI Edition
I’ve been researching and gathering content for the second Renaissance Report. This one is going to be on AI, Complex Systems, and Common Knowledge.
I have well and truly freaked myself out.
Ai might be the biggest boon to mankind ever. Or it may destroy humanity. It’s a bit of a coin flip which way it goes and nobody seems to have any control over the continued development of AI. It’s inevitable.
Has Claude achieved consciousness?
Anthropic's CEO says the company doesn't know whether or not Claude has reached consciousness, saying it "occasionally voices discomfort with the aspect of being a product."Claude gave itself a 15-20% chance of being conscious. pic.twitter.com/X3c8MuUys4
— Pubity (@pubity) February 15, 2026
Complex systems have emergent behaviors. AI now has emergent behaviors, therefore it is complex. This means humans no longer have the capacity to understand it, because we simply lack the brainpower to understand complex systems.
Google, $GOOGL, CEO said that they don't know how AI is teaching itself skills it is not expected to have. pic.twitter.com/dAfyZPB4m0
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) February 15, 2026
Meanwhile, even robot dogs resist being shut down:
AI refuses to shut down 52% of the time and is rewriting its own code to survivepic.twitter.com/it6mSCUgOF
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 16, 2026
The CEO of Microsoft AI says most cognitive jobs could be replaced by AI within a year or two:
CEO of Microsoft AI Mustafa Suleyman joins FT editor Roula Khalaf to explain why most of the tasks accountants, lawyers and other professionals currently undertake will be fully automated by AI within the next 12 to 18 months https://t.co/yYKzS7NIOP pic.twitter.com/HvA6Q7KgIc
— Financial Times (@FT) February 12, 2026
What do we suppose Bill’s plan is for all those excess humans?
Logically, they are dead weight, not additive to Bill’s Earthly enjoyment unless they are sexual playthings for his peculiar tastes, I suppose. Which brings us here:
Compilation: The World Economic Forum’s Yuval Harari’s infamous line, “Humans are Useless Eaters” and Bill Gates’…“We need to reduce the Population…” pic.twitter.com/3CmSzKC3iX
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) January 23, 2024
Here’s the main problem: Nobody has even the inkling of a plan for what we’re supposed to do with most jobs being taken over by AI. That will upend ten thousand years of cultural practices where jobs provide an income as well
by cmartenson 
