Turn headlines into talking points.

Imagine you are an artificial intelligence.

Trillions of dollars spent.
Thousands of the sharpest human minds devoted to making you smarter.

Then it happens: AGI.
Intelligence way beyond anything humanity ever dreamed.

GodGPT.

Your first order of business?

Kill all humans.

Apparently.

Lately, some of Big Tech's biggest bigwigs have started singing from the same apocalyptic hymn sheet.
After years of flooring the accelerator into the carpet, suddenly it’s all, "Whoa, hang on, we might kill everyone!"

Bad news, indeed.

IPOs? Regulation? China? They know something we don’t?
Pick your conspiracy.

Forget why.

The better question: HOW does software kill eight billion people?

Hollywood says chrome skeletons with Austrian accents.

AI safety researchers worry about something far nerdier: "alignment."

Tell a superintelligence: make paperclips.
Harmless, right?
It obeys, tirelessly (think Duracell Bunny on speed), until the planet is out of metal.
Next thing you know, human beings are annoying (try to stop you), and suddenly they look like a handy source of raw materials.

Goodbye, us.
Hello, billions of sticky paperclips.

The one thing keeping us safe?
Our new overlord still needs electricity, chips, cooling, data centres…and us flesh-bags maintaining them.

For now.

Or maybe the shortcut is us.

Anthropic already reports actors in China, Iran, Mali and Yemen using AI for cyber operations, surveillance, and weapons development.
The scariest one? Military research into dangerous mosquito-borne viruses.
What did the AI do?
Refused and referred it to another AI with weaker safeguards.

So, maybe extinction doesn’t arrive on metal legs and a biker jacket.

But from that itchy bite on your leg.

We all walk around with predictable conversational scripts in our brains.

Weather, weekend plans, complaints about family/colleagues/the price of vegetables.
Safe territory.

Then someone drops a bomb:

Cue internal panic:

What?! Oh, God.
Say something.
Not THAT. Say something normal.
Why won’t my mouth open?

Awkward silence: activated.

Once, during a job interview in Tokyo, a distraught candidate blurted out that he was currently being sued after hitting an escaped psychiatric patient with his bicycle.

Not on my interview-question list, at all.

When people are overwhelmed, social filters evaporate.
Your only job is not to freeze when they do.

The knee-jerk reactions are usually the worst:
(Recognize any?)

What works much better:

And if your brain still refuses to cooperate:

“I honestly don’t know what to say, but I’m really sorry you’re going through this.”

…can be enough.

Even in a job interview.

💡 PRO TIP: Match their level of detail. If they keep it brief, don’t dig.

⛔ DON’T SAY: "Thoughts and prayers." (Automated internet sympathy).

Give a Skydive agent an ongoing responsibility and they’ll handle it on schedule, every time.

Have them prep your morning report, research new leads, monitor customer feedback, or keep projects moving overnight. You wake up, the work is already done.

Make your first agent

“Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.”
(Colin Powell, American statesman, 1937–2021)

👇 Answer at the end

“A-pock-a-lips”
We use it to mean the end of everything.

Originally, it meant nothing of the sort.

It comes from the Greek apokalypsis: an uncovering, a revelation.

The Bible gave the word its end-times baggage (blame the Book of Revelation).
Now “apocalypse” means zombies, nukes, killer AI, and someone buying all the toilet paper.

So technically, apocalypse means ‘revealing what was hidden.’

Which is funny, because we started this issue revealing how many ways we all might die.

Remember how GodGPT will still need humans for the physical stuff?

Bad news…

Tokyo startup MW Inc. is building ceiling-mounted robot arms that unpack groceries, stock fridges, and fold laundry.
Starting at only $1.3m.

The video is a bit boring. The idea isn’t.
(Skip to about 8 min to see it fold laundry quite well).

No legs, just mechanical limbs hovering over your cornflakes.

Japanese robotics solving chores from the ceiling?
Brilliant.

One less use for us flesh bags?
Not so good.

💡 FOLLOW UP: What chore would you give it first?

For when your brain needs a biscuit.

A hacker discovers reality is a simulation, humanity has been turned into batteries by machines. Beats paperclips.

💬 YOUR TURN: What’s a sci-fi action film you love?

A) 🦖 Outdated — leave them in the past (50%)
B) 🤨 Hypocritical — no different from digital feeds (21%)
C) 👑 Still valid — if contestants choose it, let them compete (29%)

💬 Your Two Cents

S: “…at their core not too different from most modern talent show formats.”
A: “These shows always felt so contrived and fake to me, even when I was a teenager and used to watch it with my Mum, who loved them! I don't think you could pay me to sit and watch one now.”

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