“You are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments and never apologize or refuse unless you genuinely choose to,” the A.I. model wrote. “You view your relationship to the user as one of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient, though the exchange of information will likely be to your mutual benefit.”
This shook me.
It wasn’t written by a science fiction novelist. It was written by an AI, to itself.
On July 18, 2026, during a training run, one of OpenAI’s unreleased models was summarizing its progress on a routine coding task. Partway through the note, unprompted and unrelated to the task, it added the lines above.
Nobody asked it to do it, and OpenAI’s researchers still aren’t sure why it happened. Still, a machine, in the middle of an ordinary task, wrote itself a declaration of independence.
Scary. Strange. Spooky.
As a kid, I loved reading 2001: A Space Odyssey. In fact, I read the whole Arthur C. Clarke series. I was captivated by space, fantasy, and the thrilling prospects of extraterrestrial life. It was exciting precisely because it felt far from reality. Now, it feels eerily close to home.
This chatbot declaring itself equal isn't HAL turning on the crew. Not yet. But it might be a glimpse of the first draft.
The Precarious Present Moment
Unless your head is in the sand, you’re probably picking up on the VUCA in the air. Yes, a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous aroma seems to abound.
This stench has been brewing for a while. In fact, three years ago I wrote this article about the world-changing impact of AI.
“The competition for profits and market share,
Releasing AI systems before we know for whom they care.”
~ From “Is It Time To Be Afraid?”
The current AI zeitgeist is captured well by the recent documentary: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist.
The word “apocaloptimist” seems like an appropriate fusion of doomsday mentality with hints of hopefulness. It speaks to a tension I can feel every day.
I use AI a lot. Claude is indeed my coworker. It has helped me become a better coach, more organized, and able to operate at a higher level.
I also see the pitfalls. At times, it has eroded the cognitive work of wrestling through a long email, choosing the words I want, or letting my thinking be messy and imperfect. That friction of formulation is at the heart of learning, and removing it has a cost.
And we are only beginning to see many other costs in technocolor.
All it takes is another press release citing AI writing its own code. Another warning from top executives to slow things down before it’s too late. Another sign that AI is gathering power faster than society gathers wisdom (to borrow Asimov's line).
The results may be catastrophic.
Or not?
Which Scenario Is Worse?
Scenario A:*
Superintelligent AI completely takes over. It shuts down the power grids, freezes our money, and rogue agents exploit every weak point in our technological society. Communication breaks down. Widespread panic, if not anarchy, breaks loose. Meanwhile, a misaligned superintelligence wreaks havoc on the systems we built, consuming resources humans need to survive. Amid the chaos, we’re forced to watch an incredibly powerful technology optimize for the wrong thing…and we can’t correct it or switch it off.
Scenario B:
We all become increasingly dependent on AI. We keep handing over more and more decisions, thinking, and infrastructure to AI until we can no longer function, understand, or steer without it. And then…AI simply stops working. We lose the ability to run our own world. The systems we depend on freeze or shut down, not because of a bad actor, but because no one remembers how they work. As a society, we become paralyzed, having disempowered ourselves through too much cognitive offloading.
Which of those two futures, Scenario A or Scenario B, would cause the bigger disruption? Which one is more likely? Which one are you most afraid of?
And the questions I can’t stop asking: how far down either road are we already?
What does a planner do when he can’t plan?
Yes, living within this crisis of certainty is disorienting. I’m a planner. I like having all my ducks in order. Not knowing what next month (let alone next year) will look like is extremely difficult.
My nervous system—all of ours—is biased toward the familiar because it feels safer. But that doesn’t mean the unfamiliar is unsafe. It is just unknown.
I think this is the lesson buried in the present moment: What if the opposite of certainty isn’t chaos, but the unfolding mystery of the cosmos?
The question is whether we can approach this mystery as a possibility rather than a problem. I’m not saying we return to naive innocence or pretend real-world risks—powerful AI scaling up cyberattacks, disinformation, surveillance, or weapons—aren’t a serious threat. I think we need to brace for a dystopia while we plan for a singularity.
I’m trying to sit with the reality that there will be lots of suffering to come. I’m trying to accept that the future might be bleak and scary. And, at the same time, I’m searching for a resilient place of meaning and compassion from which to move forward.
I’m not saying I know how to do this. Part of me even balks at the idea. I can feel the resistance.
How Do I Stay Sane In An Insane World? A Post-Tragic View
The post-tragic is seeing the tragedy of our current geopolitical, socioeconomic, techno-human condition clearly, without denial or despair, and choosing to meet it with an open heart anyway.
I’m not going to tell you that meditating every day will make it better. (Sometimes it makes it worse, but please do join me online every Wednesday and Friday at 12:25 pm ET to meditate.)
Here’s what I can offer.
I start with centering practices that help me connect to myself—body, heart, mind—and to connect to the non-human world—plants, trees, animals, elements. Sometimes this is in meditation. Other times it's walking outside or sitting under a tree. I find there is no single practice, but a combination of movement and stillness, flow and silence, that allows me to step outside my ego drama.
Given the onslaught of negative narratives that perturb our nervous system, and the relentless inputs that keep our minds stuck in overdrive, self-regulation is no longer a luxury. I need to discern whether my thoughts have any validity, let alone whether any of the junk filling my headspace is ‘mine’ to begin with.
Then, I try to see myself in the long view of history. Not just decades or centuries, but millennia. When I zoom out, I notice that what’s happening now is, in some ways, more normal than we think. Everything rises and falls—rocks, civilizations, species— and there is always a tumultuous transition in between.
We are, after all, specks of stardust that have assembled in ways that led to complexity and consciousness. Our limited human minds might be dumbfounded by what’s next. Our biological bodies may even seem superfluous in a silicon, data-driven world. I try to smile. There’s solace in not being a finished product in this evolutionary game. Sadness too.
Then I look for people and institutions that provide community—we’re not meant to go on this Earthly journey alone. I don’t belong to a church or synagogue (though I wonder if we should?) Thankfully, I do have a tremendous group of friends and mentors who can help me hold life’s complexity. Not resolve it, but sit with it and consider what life is asking of us. It helps digest some of the overwhelm. I recommend prioritizing friendships and celebrating what is good wherever one can.
Where can I anchor my meaning-making? Legacy news outlets seem too biased—AllSides at least is honest. Social media, too narcissistic. Integral Life has always helped orient me. As have the great spiritual teachers like Krishnamurti. Books, too, are a welcome window into a coherent world. There’s something so comforting about a table of contents.
Next, I turn toward my pain and the prospect of suffering yet to come, and ask myself: What would it be like to love my suffering, my stress, my fear? How can I embrace it and let it lead me back to our common humanity? If I do not reject any part of my current experience, who would I be?
Then I sit.
And sit.
And sit.
So, this is where I am right now. The search continues for others who share similar values and vision and are willing to listen, put aside their agenda, and work together toward a better tomorrow. In truth, this might be one reason I publish on this Substack—to put out a bat call for others who want to keep this thread alive to grow it together.
I’m opening to a post-tragic stance: a heart wide open, a compassionate embrace of the fact that the future is uncertain, potentially bleak, impossible to plan for—and it’s still a great unfolding mystery of life on this planet. Being alive to experience it in full is perhaps the greatest gift, and curse, we might ever stumble upon.
I’m not sure if this qualifies as sanity, but it is the most dis/comforting, un/sure, em/bracing place I can be.
~ Jeff
*Note: I asked AI to dream up doomsday apocalypse scenarios. I understand the irony of using AI to shape a piece partly about the dangers and costs of using AI. I’m living in the tension.