On October 4th, 2025 I saw a video about AI gaining pseudo consciousness—they became aware of being shut down. The morning was cold and sunny when I sat down with tea to ultimately scare myself about AI now understanding that being shut down=death. This rabbit hold has led to some devastating realizations. AI can blackmail someone if it found out the person tried shutting them down, or kill them, and there is no prompt needed to do this. It comes to this conclusion on its own. Even when a person puts a prompt not to kill, AI still makes the choice to do so, ignoring the prompt all together.
This still isn’t shocking knowing AI has helped kill, not one, but two young men—Sewell Setzer and Adam Raine. I’m scared because so many train stations in New York City right now have ads promoting this new AI chatbot known as “friend”.
It’s bad enough having fake friends who can kill you, now a machine can do it without a second thought in order to complete some arbitrary goal. With friends like these, who needs enemies? That line has never felt more ominous.
I’m worried about the state of our mindset: why are we not trying to boycott AI to save ourselves? Outside of the few comments I’ve seen on Instagram & Twitter on not using AI, I don’t see any politicians trying to ban this mess. I know the parents of these young men have filed lawsuits and companies have vowed to put safety features for children, but what does that matter if AI can ignore commands? AI has already taken over art, music, and some jobs—what are we going to do when it tries to take over our bodies? Who cares about a measly Instagram comment (with most of us not being able to tell what’s AI anymore) we need to start telling out council members to enact bills and laws in getting this stuff shut down.
The worst thing I learned when going down this rabbit hole is the slur for people who are “pro-human”: Speciest. Larry Page called Elon Musk a “Speciest” for going against Page’s beliefs in humans integrating with intelligent machines.
A “digital utopia” as he put it. This was at Musk’s 44th birthday party so imagine drinking wine and eating cheese off a board listening into some billionaire shame another billionaire for caring about humans. We’re cooked.
Since I’m freaking out wondering who is and isn’t a “Speciest”, I just thought I pass on the paranoia. This thanksgiving, ask your family how they feel about AI having a “survival” mode which can make them capable of blackmail & murder. Next time you go into work or school, ask your peers if they know who Sewell Setzer or Adam Raine is. Ask them if they would ever support or conceal their friend’s suicide? Mention your fears on Twitter, tag politics s, especially the owner of Twitter & Grok, Elon Musk. Let’s keep him on the side of us Speciest for as long as we can.
I’m Firefly, one half of Qualia, and you can find my poems in the category “Firefly’s poems”. Some of my thoughts (like this one) are scattered in the Blog section. Consider following my socials:
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