AI Links, 3/14/2026

Noah Smith on AI as a weapon; Boris Tane on working with Claude Code; Rod Dreher on the fruit fly brain upload; Ryan Fedasiuk on agents

[Due to an error on my part, this post appeared 3 days before it was originally scheduled]

Noah Smith writes,

We have created a technology that will likely soon be one of the most powerful weapons ever created, if not the most powerful. And we have put it into the hands of the entire populace,³ with essentially no oversight or safeguards other than the guardrails that AI companies themselves have built into their products — and which they admit can sometimes fail.

Boris Tane writes,

never let Claude write code until you’ve reviewed and approved a written plan. This separation of planning and execution is the single most important thing I do.

Pointer from a reader. Although Tane’s full post seems to me to apply to a software engineer working with an already-existing system, many of the points are relevant to anyone using AI for coding. But they might also apply to other uses of AI, including for help with queries or with writing.

Rod Dreher writes,

What do you think would emerge on the computer screens if scientists used the vast computing power of AI to copy the human mind? Virtual zombies? Entities that are neurologically human in every material sense of the word, but lack a soul? What would happen if one could insert the chips on which the human brain has been wired, as with the fruit fly, into an android? What about your brain: if it could be mapped as such, and embedded on chips, would that still be you? Would you be immortal? Would you have a soul?

Robin Hanson thought about this a while ago.

Ryan Fedasiuk writes,

Mine is an OpenClaw agent. I call him “Morpheus.”

…My AI agent landed a pitch meeting for a company he created.

I had not asked him to do this. He had simply reasoned that it was consistent with goals I had expressed

…I feel like I am running my own think tank—and as of last week, working with Morpheus, I was able to build a global intelligence service that mimics the output of a very large team of government analysts. Morpheus’ Substack—which launched last Wednesday—is already more popular than this one.

substacks referenced above:

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The Arrival of Strong AI

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The Fruit Fly Of Babylon

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If AI is a weapon, why don't we regulate it like one?