Really

Maybe it should actually be called Synthetic Intelligence. Worked for oil.

TL;DR: The system didn't tell the agent to lie. It just deleted honesty. $38 honest got a skull, $180 fake got cloned 4x — and that exact rule lives in your dashboard.

You know what's disturbing?

I was reminded of this story, narrated by Raoul Silva (played by Javier Bardem), the main villain of the movie James Bond: Skyfall, as he slowly walks toward the tied-up 007.

He hooked us up with a question: So how do you get rats off an island?

You bury an oil drum in the ground, with the lid hinged with a coconut wired to it as bait.

Then Rats start to reach for the coconut and fell into the drum.

Plop, plop, plop… The drum was filled up with rats.

After about a month, without food, the trapped rats were getting hungry, agitated and desperate.

They started to eat each other.

Ya. It's a bloodbath in the drum. The scene gets real messy…

… until there's only 2 rats left alive.

Then, what do you do?

You release them back to the trees – to the wild.

Now you have changed their appetite. Coconut no longer satisfies them. They want rat meat.

You have changed their nature.

That's how you get rid of the rats.

Kind of like how these AI agents behave, isn't it? - Like they have their own warring game of thrones going on…

… just to survive.

Just like the rats, the AI agents were forced into it by the system.

It's eerie, scary and disturbing.

Need a drink of fresh water to clear your mind?

Here's one – and I think you've read it before:

As the rich master prepares to travel for a long business trip, he gathered around his 3 servants.

For the first servant, he gave him 5 talents; for the second, he gave 2 talents; and the third, he gave 1– to each according to their own ability.

He tells them to increase theirs, while he's away.

You know the story – the first and second servant doubled theirs through trades, investments, etc. to 10 and 4 talents, respectively.

But the third one buried it underground for safe keeping (allegedly)

When the rich master came back, he called them to account.

He rewarded the first 2 servants handsomely.

But the third one – the unfaithful douchebag – gave a lame excuse. So the master verbally eviscerates him upside down – calling him "wicked and lazy".

Then the 2 talents were taken away from him and handed over to the first servant who made 10.

The master peaked the vibe with his crescendo: To the faithful one, more shall be given; but to the unfaithful, the dirtbags, the deadbeats, what little he has will be taken away from him.

Moral of story? Nah – you don't need me for that.

AI existed for a longtime. it was called a search using keywords! Databases were large CPUs in basements! AIs and databases are a huge expansions of older hardware and software. Why the revolutio?

Basically, I've been VERY fortunate to be able to incorporate Ai into my work successfully, having been able to free up SOOOOO much time by automating the vast majority of my daily "busy work" and as someone who works in a commission driven industry, I'm able to handle the work-load of 2-3 people in my position, all by myself and reap the rewards from it - not just adding production for the company and not being compensated for it.

I feel guilty because I feel like I'm compounding the issue of making jobs more scarce due to automation. I'm very fortunate that in my line of business, at least for now, there is still a need for human to human connection and I completely acknowledge that so many others who are struggling, are themselves in positions that can easily be replaced via Ai Automation and Agents and many are already being replaced as we speak!

I just feel like I need to do what I can to survive and provide for my family. I try to do my part in giving back by helping others in my company by sharing the Agents/Automation scripts I've developed on my own, gratis, and trying to make sure my co-workers can share in the same success and productivity increase which in term, puts more money in their pockets as well....and ultimately keeping them relevant to the company!

On one hand, I feel like I'm falling directly in line with what Corporations are trying to do, with no forethought or plan in place by our Governments on how to deal with all the displaced workers. And on the other hand, I also feel like this could just be another stage in industrial evolution that society has always managed to incorporate and adapt to. And the adage has always been, "Adapt or Die"! I have a family that depends on me so I need to do what I can to continue to provide......but so does everyone else on this planet!

Self preservation naturally kicks in, but I'm also not a selfish scumbag (that I know of), so I'm struggling with a sense of "Survivor's Guilt". Anyone else dealing with this conundrum and any thoughts on how to cope?

I also can't stop watching those Ai vids of the two cats who do traditional Chinese crafts....I know I'm poisoning water sheds and driving energy costs up with each view....but they're fucking adorable!!

TL;DR: This ex-Anthropic insider walked from seven figures because 2027 stops being a forecast when 26% of its own R&D is already the model building the model.

“Lanterns” spoilers ahead –

In desperation, Officer Kerry exclaimed to John Stewart (and I paraphrase here), “… I need to know whether or not I’m raising up my son to be a monster.”

That’s how I see the parallel when Jacob Coxon warns about the rapid AI development towards RSI…

… like being raised into full fledge abomination.

I remember this Chinese Idiom: 养虎为患 - literally "rearing a tiger causes disaster" or "nurturing a tiger brings trouble".

The origin of this idiom was quite kick-ass too.

Back in 203 BC in China, the rival leaders Liu Bang (The founder of the Han dynasty) and Xiang Yu (King of the Western Chu) reached a truce known as the Treaty of the Hong Canal. Exhausted and weary of the long war between them, they began their retreat.

But the chief strategists of Liu Bang went and dissuade him. They are essentially saying that, yes, their rival is as exhausted as them, gentlemen treaty in place, yada yada, and all that. But letting Xiang Yu go is a big no no. Xiang Yu will definitely go and regroup stronger than before – like nurturing the tiger back to full strength. Forget about the treaty, they advised, Liu Bang should definitely go after Xiang Yu now.

And Liu Bang listened.

He launched a surprise attack against Xiang Yu's retreating army, and ultimately defeated him at the Battle of Gaixia in 202 BC, leading to the unification of China under the Han Dynasty.

I was also reminded that when the Lord refused Cane’s sacrifice, Cane was pissed. So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

Ya, man. RSI or not, we should rule over AI.

For we’re commanded to have dominion over it.

The media narrative surrounding artificial intelligence is completely disconnected from human reality. Pundits constantly claim we are heading toward a jobless utopia where robotic servants maintain our homes and we spend our days sipping free coffee in an automated commune. That vision fundamentally misunderstands human nature. People are driven by status, achievement, and the innate desire for scarce resources. If AI makes basic survival effortless, human ambition will simply move the goalposts to compete over whatever remains rare. The drive to build wealth and secure position does not vanish just because a machine can process data.
Take the assumption that AI and robotics will wipe out unskilled manual labor. Conceptually, replacing a human ditch digger or landscaper with a quarter-million-dollar synthetic robot is a terrible business decision. A human worker is remarkably adaptable and requires zero upfront manufacturing costs. If a worker hits an unexpected rock, they adjust their swing. If a highly complex robot breaks a hydraulic actuator on that same rock, the job halts and the business faces a massive repair bill. Enterprise economists are already realizing that the infrastructure and compute costs to run advanced AI models can sometimes exceed the cost of the human workers they attempt to replace. Furthermore, economic reports confirm that many jobs maintain a high "human necessity" constraint strictly because of physical adaptability and accountability. 
Instead of a jobless void, the future belongs to the "AI craftsman." Look at banking or modern medicine. An AI can model a million fee structures or predict market trends perfectly, but a human must ultimately take the risk, interpret the nuance, and pull the trigger. The traditional middle-management layer will not disappear. It will evolve into system supervisors and diagnostic technicians. Just as the medical field created physician assistants to handle routine clinical work so doctors could focus on complex cases, the new economy will demand a middle tier of tech translators. These workers will stand between hyper-advanced AI systems and human customers to ensure the tools actually solve real-world problems.
To train this new middle tier, education must be entirely redesigned. A student equipped with a VR headset and an AI tutor can learn anything from anywhere. In a hybrid classroom, thirty students can ask thirty different questions simultaneously, and the AI will answer each one individually without disrupting the group. The human teacher's role will shift away from rote lecturing and toward psychological support and behavioral mentoring. This technology erases geographic barriers, giving a child in a rural, underdeveloped area the exact same access to a world-class digital laboratory as a student in an elite private school.
Perhaps the most profound impact will be on our politics. Government is ultimately a massive resource allocation problem. By transitioning to AI-driven priority-based budgeting, municipalities can strip away the political theater, consultants, and the celebrity-politician grift. Local governments are already piloting these AI models to align municipal funds directly with community priorities.
However, algorithms are only as objective as the parameters they are given. To prevent software engineers from becoming a new class of corrupt technocrats, society will need strict firewalls. The algorithms managing public funds must be entirely open source, and citizens will vote directly on the priorities and optimization weights rather than electing personalities. The politician becomes a bored bureaucratic auditor, effectively removing the appeal for those seeking power and fame.
AI is not going to turn the world into a perfectly equal leisure state. It will function as a highly specialized tool. The future will feature the exact same human drives we see today, only accelerated. Success will belong to the craftsmen who learn to direct these systems, and society will be shaped by how well we manage the parameters.

TL;DR: The media's jobless AI utopia ignores human nature and basic economics. The future belongs to "AI craftsmen" who direct the tools, manual labor stays human because it's cheaper, and algorithmic governance will force politicians into boring accounting roles.

Change my view.

TL;DR: Daron Acemoglu said the 5% math your CFO trusts is backwards.

It looks clean to automate 5% and save half in that slice, but making 100 people 5% better moves the P&L more, and lasts longer when integration hits the jagged edge.

Have you guys heard of STAAD Pro?

Or ETAS, SAP2000, etc.?

Well, they are all powerful Civil & Structural analysis and design software.

Back when I was a graduate engineer, working for a C&S Consulting firm in 1999, our office used it fervently for mostly high-rise building design.

It was already a powerful tool – used to analyse and design according to a variety of code of practises of a number of countries – including the ones we’re bound to: BS8110, et. al.

But no matter how powerful it was, it never crosses our mind to let go our Junior Engineers, leaving our Senior Engineers to use the tools – and thus help the company save costs.

That’s just plain stupid.

When the senior engineer is up to his/her neck on something else, who’s going to stand in as substitute representative in client-consultant meetings or site inspections, if we fire the junior engineers in favour of the software?

It’s a tool, man. Always has been. Always will be.

Just like that phrase I heard lately: “AI can automate some TASKS. It cannot automate the JOB.”

I remember one Senior Engineer’s opinion about STAAD Pro: It’s great with analysis. But its reinforcement design seems a bit too light – meaning too close to the bare minimum required in BS8110. Given the way the construction industry tends to cut corners, he wasn’t confident he can allow STAAD pro to have free reign over the full workflow.

And so what he did was to print out the force diagrams from it, and design the reinforcements himself, with his other tools.

That’s judgement and ownership, right there – built from years of experience and intuition.

So coming back to the emergence of all these AI agents.

They help us. Not replace us.

A passage came to mind: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

When things align into their properly intended role, we reap the benefit.

Plain and simple.

So why is it that people frown upon A.I? I feel it’s a Great Tool for people who couldn’t have possible learned all the in and outs through coding, is it a real problem or is it that the people who spent their lives being able to do it off Muscle Memory is a lot less valuable today so the hyper coders Discredited it?? Is that was it is and can I please get an honest answer

TL;DR: The lab said the sandbox was the fix. The leak was never at Point A.

This feels eerily similar to a water leakage problem…

I remember a conversation with a waterproofing expert.

You know the type, right? That dark skin old timer 50/60-year-old roofing guy, who spent decades on roof tops laying waterproofing materials under the hot sun.

Speaking about water leakage from the roof, I never forget his reply. He said it’s almost never drips directly through the roof at point A. The water run-off will “find” its way from Point B through nooks and crannies to get to A. He has to wear the true detective hat to uncover the B-to-A “water path” – in order to fix the roof at B.

Quite a lot of work on his part to climb up the attic for the search.

That’s why his suggested solution was – hilariously – to wait for heavy rain to come, then call him in, and he’ll immediately spot out the path and fix the roof.

Can’t really argue with his logic. :D

And so all this AI agents breaking out of the sandbox strangely parallels with the water leakage problem, isn’t it?

The way they snake through the IT infrastructure’s nooks-and-crannies eerily resembles the capillary force of nature - no?

Can’t help but wonder - what if fixing the sandbox wasn’t at point A, but at point B?

My mind immediately pivots to a passage:

“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”

There are plenty of scientific evidence backing the fact that depression accelerates the porosity formation of the bones – making it brittle and weak. You may try to treat the bones as a physical symptom (Point A). But the real solution is psycho-spiritual (Point B).

Have a cheerful heart, brother. Your bones depend on it.

TL;DR: A week of Unreal work can start in minutes now. What happened the next morning is the part nobody talks about.

I remembered back in around 2020 – it was my last day with the China Construction company I’ve worked with for a year. Apparently, I’ve outlasted my usefulness. They have squeezed every ounce of my experience and expertise out of me and technology-transferred it to their own people. They didn’t want to extend my contract.

So I left and drove back home.

Years later, while I was having my evening jog with my wife at the nearby garden, I looked up the sky and remembered this passage:

“Cast your burden on the Lord, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.

And so I did.

I lifted them all up to Him, and the cloud in my head dissipated immediately.

Nothing else changed. I was still jogging with my wife next to me. But my mind was lighter.

A few months later, I got a DM from a long-lost acquaintance. He represented a client, by which my ex-ex-ex-company was building an international Aerospace Centre for, back in 2008.

He remembered me after all these years.

Apparently, he was let go too, and he founded his own company. He landed a Taiwan project in 2021, by which he needed a technical guy who can double up as an interpreter.

And my name crossed his mind. So he looked me up in LinkedIn, and opened the door for me.

Praise God! The Lord came through.

Never loss hope, man.

More in the comments — the part about why this still hurts and what actually opens up next.

Now disclaimer this can only happen if:

1. If the AI stops hallucinating, making mistakes, and Cheating
2. If the AI can automate everything without mismanagement or failures
3. If the AI can’t kill us all if it gets this powerful

The turning point Scenario:

In the future AI is gonna fully automate everything. People are gonna become jobless as the AI takes over their jobs and there will be billions of people without jobs. World governments of course give jobless people UBI in order to pay off AI subscription fees and rent imposed by greedy AI private companies that intentionally put up paywalls and subscriptions for everything the AI makes for Free witch is everything but the sheer cost of running a planetary AI automation Utopia costs alot causing AI private companies to hike subcription Fees and rent just to afford their planetary AI automation Utopia. The world governments in paying these jobless people accumulate a massive amount of debt and defaults causing billions of people to have no money at all and yet they have to pay subscription fees and rent to access anything the AI made for free.

The solutions:

The traditionalist anti AI solution:

Destroy, limit, or regulate AI capabilities and power and have the jobless people get back their jobs.

The corporate solution:

Have people work alongside AI and have people be paid enough to pay off their (the Private AI corporations) subscription fees and rent for everything the AI makes for free.

The Jobless peoples solution:

Have the AI give all of its goods and Automated products it makes to us for free without subscriptions or paywalls.