“Skynet is here…ish? Maybe? Who knows! Time to PAUSE!”—Anthropic
(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish)
By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) June 5, 2026; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. All other editions of the Real Context News AI Reading List can be found here. And be sure to check out my related book review of Nicole Perlroth’s must-read, award-winning book on cyberwarfare as well as my own work on cyberwarfare.
Dear readers, I’m 44 years old. And I’ve never seen anything like this (could apply to multiple stories but hey, let’s do this one).
In the span of about not even two weeks, the following has just happened:
We had a pope come out with a moral and ethical wakeup call at a time when one wondered if the Catholic Church was ever going to truly matter in a profound way on the international stage again.
That in itself is truly a miracle.
Yes, Pope Leo XVI roared like his namesake predecessor and like the lion he is that, yes, there was still going to be profound moral leadership in a global sense in the era of Trump 2.0, and he did so with one of AI giant Anthropic’s co-founders, Chritopher Olah, who, despite looking like a teenager, is a relative moral titan for his industry in joining the pope in what I dare say is sounding like a crusade (maybe the first good one). Leo uses the word “disarm” for AI, and he made it damn clear he was not mincing words.
Then, about a week later, at the very end of a long update from The Anthropic Institute that very much reads like a research paper, I see something I’ve never really seen before from a company describing its own technology. They are flat-out telling use they have lost control of their experiment, and it may have become Skynet as in T2 Terminator 2 (just as I warned when I launched this List, more humorously than now, and not thinking it was possibly a few months away), that they basically don’t know if we can even know for sure, are clearly having a moral crisis of conscience at being one of the driving forces behind this possible calamity, and are desperately trying to put on the brakes and, at least for now, saying we need to stop to be safe or a sentient AI may very well deem us a threat and, well… watch the movies. They—some of them barely not kids—sound like they’ve lost control of their version of Frankenstein’s monster, warning us repeatedly recently, but now are officially primally screaming out for help with a megaphone into the world for all to hear, that we have to at least “pause” this madness.
Of all people, Mitt Romney totally freaked out about this. In a very non-Mitt way. I don’t blame him.
Magnifica Humanitas/Magnificent Humanity—Pope Leo XIV; The Vatican.
When AI Builds Itself—Marina Favaro and Jack Clark, edited by Santi Ruiz; The Anthropic Institute.
More on this to come.
I’m done with this shit for tonight. GO KNICKS!!!
Next time, hopefully another special edition of the List, this time (unless some other crazy stuff happens) on of the List on the Elon Musk vs. Sam Altman OpenAI/ChatGPT trial that just concluded. And if you want to spread the word? It’s easy: AI reading list dot com: AIreadinglist.com!
© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome
Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).
If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.
Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!