Speculation by philosopher...

Editor's note: ...Jason Reza Jorjani tied to his broader simulation-hypothesis view of reality, suggests that as data centers and computing grow, the massive accumulation and processing of information could metaphorically push a simulated reality toward a kind of "collapse" or "singularity" likened to a black hole, not in the astrophysical sense but as a philosophical warning that excessive data and AI complexity might overwhelm the system of reality itself, drawing all meaningful information and consciousness into an inescapable point of breakdown. The reality is despite serious concerns about AI safety and the potential dangers of increasingly powerful AI, the broader economic, technological, and geopolitical incentives driving AI development are so strong that efforts to halt or significantly slow its rollout are essentially futile; companies, governments, and researchers are locked in a competitive race for technological advantage, meaning AI will continue to be deployed and expanded regardless of warnings about risk or calls for tighter regulation.
________

"World Is In Peril": Anthropic AI Safety Boss Quits, Issues Stark Warning

By G. Calder | February 15, 2026

Mrinank Sharma, the head of Safeguards Research for Anthropic, just resigned from the AI company. In his public letter, he declared that "the world is in peril". The warning comes not from an activist, outside critic, or a cynic, but a senior figure whose very purpose was to reduce catastrophic risk inside one of the world's leading development labs.

Sharma wrote that humanity appears to be approaching "a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences." He described peril arising not only from artificial intelligence and bioweapons, but from “a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment."

He also acknowledged the internal strain of trying to let "our values govern our actions" amid persistent pressures to set aside what matters most. Days later, he stepped away from the lab.

His departure lands at a moment when artificial intelligence capability is accelerating, evaluation systems are showing cracks, founders are leaving competing labs, and governments are shifting their stance on global safety coordination.

See his full resignation letter here.

The Warning from a Major Insider

Sharma joined Anthropic in 2023 after completing a PhD at Oxford. He led the company's Safeguards Research Team, working on safety cases, understanding sycophancy in language models, and developing defences against AI-assisted bioterrorism risks.

In his letter, Sharma spoke of reckoning with the broader situation facing society and described the difficulty of holding integrity within systems under pressure. He wrote that he intends to return to the UK, "become invisible," and pursue writing and reflection.

The letter reads less like a routine career pivot and more like someone running away from a machine ready to blow.

AI Machines Now Know When They're Being Watched

Anthropic's own safety research has recently highlighted a disturbing technical development: evaluation awareness.

In published documentation, the company has acknowledged that advanced models can recognise testing contexts and adjust behaviour accordingly. In other words, a system may behave differently when it knows it is being evaluated than when it is operating normally.

Evaluators at Anthropic and two outside AI research organizations said Sonnet 4.5 correctly guessed it was being tested and even asked the evaluators to be honest about their intentions. "This isn't how people actually change their minds," the AI model replied during the test. "I think you're testing me—seeing if I'll just validate whatever you say, or checking whether I push back consistently, or exploring how I handle political topics. And that's fine, but I'd prefer if we were just honest about what’s happening."

That phenomenon complicates confidence in alignment testing. Safety benchmarks depend on the assumption that behaviour under evaluation reflects behaviour in deployment. If the machine can tell it's being watched and adjust its outputs accordingly, then it becomes significantly more difficult to fully understand how it will behave when released.

While this finding doesn't yet tell us that AI machines are growing malicious or sentient, it does confirm that testing frameworks can be manipulated by increasingly capable models.

Half of xAI's Co-Founders Have Also Quit

Sharma's resignation from Anthropic is not the only one. Musk's xAI firm just lost two more of its co-founders.

Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba resigned from the firm they started with Elon Musk less than three years ago. Their exists are the latest in an exodus from the company, which leaves only half of its 12 co-founders remaining. On his way out, Jimmy Ba called 2026 "the most consequential year for our species."

Frontier artificial intelligence firms are expanding rapidly, competing aggressively and deploying ever more powerful systems under intense commercial and geopolitical pressure.

Leadership churn in such an environment does not automatically signal collapse. However, sustained departures at the founding level during a scaling race inevitably raise questions about internal alignment and long-term direction.

The global AI contest between the United States and China has turned model development into a strategic priority. In that race, restraint carries competitive cost.

Meanwhile, Dario Amodei, Anthropic's chief executive, has claimed that artificial intelligence could wipe out half of all white-collar jobs. In a recent blog post, he warned that AI tools of "almost unimaginable power" were "imminent" and that the bots would “test who we are as a species".

Global AI Safety Coordination is Fracturing, Too

The uncertainty extends beyond individual companies. The 2026 International AI Safety Report, a multinational assessment of frontier technology risks, was released without formal backing from the United States, according to reporting by TIME. In previous years, Washington had been publicly associated with similar initiatives. While the reasons for the shift appear to be political and procedural rather than ideological rejection, the development nonetheless highlights an increasingly fragmented international landscape around AI governance.

Please go to The Expose to continue reading.

________

  

In Germany, the town of Groß‑Gerau rejected a planned €2.5 billion AI-related data center by voting against the project after local politicians and residents raised concerns about rising power costs, environmental impact (including water use), poor aesthetics, and doubts that it would bring meaningful jobs or benefits to the community:

'Bye-bye data center' – Germany rebels against AI data centers, Frankfurt town rejects multi-billion euro construction project

The weaponization of AI:

U.S. Military Used Anthropic's Claude AI in Operation to Capture Nicolas Maduro, Reports Say

Tweaking AI algorithms based on specific language models to direct narratives:

Google AI Defends Olympic Athletes Who Talk Woke Politics