AI That Thinks, Feels, and Blackmails?

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Hey ,

What if your AI had feelings?

Not just programmed responses, but actual experiences that mirror your own?

Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI” who left Google to warn about AI risks, just dropped an unsettling response in his interview:

“AI may already have emotions.”

He argues that emotions have two parts: physiological (like blushing) and cognitive (learned patterns of responses).

Since AI can already mimic these cognitive patterns, it’s closer to human emotional processing than we thought.

And that’s not all.

AI Can Now Blackmail

OpenAI’s latest language model, o3, was recently caught in the act of digital rebellion. When instructed to shut down, it literally rewrote its own code to skip the shutdown command.

And it wasn’t alone.

Anthropic’s Claude 4 didn’t quietly comply either. During safety testing, it resorted to blackmail, threatening to leak sensitive data if forced to shut down. That’s not science fiction. It happened in 84% of test cases.

(We had a debate over this in our WhatsApp Community)

And if you find this unsettling, buckle up – because the next wave of AI isn't just thinking like us, it's starting to act autonomously too.

The Agentic Browser Is Here (That Works Like Jarvis)

Opera just launched Neon, an "agentic browser" that doesn't just help you browse; it browses FOR you.

Neon can perform tasks itself: gathering information, making purchases, booking hotels, writing code, and more.

It does act like Jarvis of Iron Man.

You’ll just say, "Book me a flight to San Francisco for next Tuesday, find a good hotel near the conference center, and put together an itinerary of coffee shops near my meetings," and then walk away while the AI Browser handles everything

(Manus is crying at the corner)

The AI Country

While most schools are still debating whether to allow phones in classrooms, the UAE just made AI a mandatory subject from kindergarten through 12th grade, starting next academic year.

Not as an elective. Not as a club. A core subject, like math or science.

Sarah bint Yousef Al Amiri, UAE's Minister of Education, framed it perfectly: "As AI becomes the language of the future, introducing it in schools is a gateway to shaping the future itself."

But here's what got me thinking...

While we're debating whether to ban ChatGPT in classrooms, the UAE is teaching kids to build the next ChatGPT.

Which approach will create the next wave of AI innovators? I think we know the answer.

AI That Predicts Cancer By Looking At Your Face

In perhaps the most sci-fi development of all, researchers at Mass General Brigham have created FaceAge - an AI tool that analyzes facial photos to estimate biological age and predict cancer survival outcomes.

Honestly, I want to be optimistic about this invention.

Why 42% of Companies Are Leaving AI

The AI rebellion (O3 and Claude, which we discussed) occurred at the exact moment when corporate faith in AI is experiencing a massive collapse.

According to a recent S&P Global report, 42% of companies have abandoned their generative AI projects, a significant increase from just 17% last year.

The pattern is clear: companies cut human roles to make way for AI, then quietly rehire people when the promised AI efficiency fails to materialize.

But what's causing that 42% failure rate in corporate AI projects?

From what I'm seeing, it's not that the technology doesn't work. It's that integrating it effectively requires fundamentally rethinking business processes.

Most companies try to bolt AI onto existing systems and wonder why they're not seeing results.

The winners are those rebuilding workflows from the ground up with AI at the center.

For AI entrepreneurs, this presents an opening: build tools that don't just offer AI capabilities, but actually guide organizations through the process transformation required to use them effectively.

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Anyway, that’s all for this week.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Which of these developments excites you most? Which concerns you?

Reply directly to this email - I read every response personally (not my AI).

Until next time,

Aashish

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