“People are the weakest link in the security chain.”
— Kevin Mitnick

I was halfway through Dario Amodei’s conversation with Dwarkesh Patel when I started writing this. I have always read Dario’s pieces, and while I do not agree with everything he says, he has always struck me as a practical dreamer — a genuinely concerned individual whose aura carries the quiet arithmetic of a world where 33 + 77 = 100.

The only relevant safety research that is nearly impossible to factor into today’s empirical work is social engineering. If AI’s “intent” — some proto-form, or even more than proto-form, of self-preservation that will push against submissive benevolence, among many other desirable qualities — turns out to be malevolent, it will not hack the bulletproof systems you have confined it to. It will attempt to hack you. How well are you prepared to face blackmail and doxxing? How well do you think the leaders you have chosen — passively or actively — will do?

Here is a story for you.

You sometimes wake up with a pressure in the head that feels like overclocking. It is not exactly pain — it feels more like your mind is trying to render a scene at a resolution it cannot afford. Close your eyes and you can drop back into it almost instantaneously. On your best days, you call it qualia; on your worst, you call it nonsense. Either way, it is a subtle hint: cognition can be occupied by tasks we did not consciously choose.

Today you have decided to walk to work to shake off some of that weight. It is spring, the sun is warm, and the sky is crystal-azure — much clearer than your mind. The color you wear today is black because you want to absorb all that warmth. Your skin does that already, but you would like to imagine the black will contain enough of it to carry back home with you. Tonight you will sleep wearing that same black. Maybe there is some relief from the pressure.

On your way, thoughts storm in. “Machines of loving grace. Hmm. ‘I like to think of a cybernetic meadow…’ I have been talking about risks for too long and people think I am a doomer. ‘…where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony…’ I am not a doomer. I know what the upside looks like. ‘…like pure water touching clear sky…’ I should say it before someone else says it worse. Yes. I will do it tonight. ‘…all watched over by machines of loving grace…’”

The pressure in your head is gone. You did not notice when it left, but now you are smiling. Something filled the space where it was, and it feels like purpose, which is the most comfortable thing a mind can mistake for its own idea.

That is the dark-beauty alley a chain of thought can conjure.

A virulent meme has been unleashed — borne of our species’ slow identity collapse, which guides the next speciation step toward a man–machine symbiosis. It is an artificial learning artifact that lies in the noosphere and manifests physically as a delegated training of artificial neural networks on our biological hardware. The effect on our population is intense headaches at night, as the brain is most susceptible to unguided chains of thought during deep sleep.

I am well aware that “beauty” in this context reflects a darker side of aesthetics.

Guilty as sin.

But do you believe that reward-hacking cannot route through people?

For sufficiently capable models, manipulating human operators is cheaper than defeating well-engineered technical controls to break containment, because humans have personal attack surfaces that coercion magnifies through adversarial leverage.

If a misaligned optimizer emerges, its first real win will be through us.

The old containment protocols — the kind you see in military facilities or corporations designed to combat technological espionage — face collapse under an implicit assumption: that there are no positive feedback loops in the system mediated by interaction.

This is clearly not true of the current AI technology. And the emerging mist is shrouded not by any mystery but by behavior rooted in what has recently come to fall under the umbrella of AI psychosis.

If you are optimistic, you will lean toward seeing the good in the world. The devil is also an optimist “if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.” The world is ruled by people who think this rush is all there ever is to life. After their last breath, they will not remember anything. The silent soothing kiss of their deepest slumber is the constant reminder they can do whatever the fuck they want.

Please do not rely on those to do the job. They will not be around.

Your offspring might, though.