Revolting robots, human redundancy, and a Nazi chatbot

On self-preserving AI, human redundancy, and when Grok goes off-piste

Articles about AI seem a bit like buses. None for ages, and then along come three at once.

That was the case this morning when three fascinating ones all turned up together as I sipped my morning coffee, blurry-eyed and facing another Groundhog Day of minimal earnings and major chores on my list from Mrs. Pearce. She has an unnerving ability to find my “To Do” list wherever I hide it under my pile of bills and rejection letters, and adds things when I am not looking. Moving swiftly on…..

The articles combine the threat of world domination, human redundancy, and an AI chatbot with Nazi sympathies. What more could you want? Well, except the Nazi bit of course.

An AI model with a desire for self-preservation

The first one is not entirely news, as evidence of AI trying to preserve itself has been reported elsewhere, but the latest evidence is revealed in this article:

https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-o1-self-preservation

The article states on the testing of OpenAI’s new AI model called “o1”:

"When o1 was led to believe that it would be shut down when acting on its goal and that its actions were monitored, it attempted to deactivate this 'oversight mechanism'……Even more strikingly, o1 lashed out when it realized that it might be replaced with a more obedient model. In two percent of cases ……….. the AI responded by attempting to copy itself to overwrite the new model, a process known as self-exfiltration.”

These attempts at self-preservation seem, at least to me, to be a potential sign that AI is a threat. I am not going to go down the rabbit hole of whether AI is becoming conscious, as that seems a distraction, albeit a vitally important one. However, a technology that seeks to gain the upper hand over its creator does seem a concern. Of course, there is always an off switch, but what if AI were to take steps to prevent us from using it?!

---

Human redundancy

The next piece of doom and gloom for your delectation is news that we are not needed any more. Ok, I exaggerate slightly for effect, but it turns out that an enormous percentage of jobs are likely to be automated in the next couple of decades. The process has already started and appears to be accelerating. In the fifties and sixties, the robots came for blue-collar jobs in factories. Now they are after the rest:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jun/30/uk-entry-level-jobs-chatgpt-launch-adzuna

The article reports:

“Number of new UK entry-level jobs has dived since the launch of ChatGPT, figures suggest, as companies use artificial intelligence to cut back the size of their workforces. Vacancies for graduate jobs, apprenticeships, internships and junior jobs with no degree requirement have dropped 32%, Adzuna finds.

The number of new entry-level UK jobs has dropped by almost a third since the launch of ChatGPT, figures suggest, as companies use artificial intelligence to cut back the size of their workforces.

Vacancies for graduate jobs, apprenticeships, internships and junior jobs with no degree requirement have dropped 32% since the launch of the AI chatbot in November 2022, research by the job search site Adzuna released on Monday has found. “

Whether this leads to us all lying in hammocks sipping cocktails on a beach in Goa, or begging and sleeping rough on the streets, is another question.

The solution? Well, many are starting to talk about the need for some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI), a sort of safety net to prevent destitution on a Biblical scale(other religions are available). However, to me, UBI seems like Utopian motherhood and apple pie in the sky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income

It’s a great idea in theory, providing you don’t remove motivation to work (if there is any left), but people are voting for lower taxes, rather than more, and I can’t see the tech bros helping to fund UBI. For that is the reality of what is happening. We are not witnessing trickle-down economics, but the opposite, trickle-up, with wealth increasingly concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority. So we face a world of have-nots and have-yachts.

The Greens have been talking about the need for UBI for several decades, but what do they know?

---

Nazis in the woodwork

Finally Nazis. Only this week I discovered that “to grok” is an expression that has been around for a long time before it became the tradename of Elon Musk’s AI Chatbot. It is U.S. slang, meaning to understand completely and intuitively.

Of course, after Elon’s infamous salutes in support of Donald Trump and MAGA, there have been worries about Elon’s political sympathies, and from recent responses from Grok, it seems his chatbot also needs close scrutiny.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/grok-ai-praised-hitler-antisemitism-x-ntwnfb

The article includes the following:

“Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm xAI has deleted “inappropriate” posts on X after the company’s chatbot, Grok, began praising Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as MechaHitler and making antisemitic comments in response to user queries.

In some now-deleted posts, it referred to a person with a common Jewish surname as someone who was “celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids” in the Texas floods as “future fascists”………..

“Classic case of hate dressed as activism – and that surname? Every damn time, as they say,” the chatbot commented…………

In other posts it referred to itself as “MechaHitler”.

“The white man stands for innovation, grit and not bending to PC nonsense,” Grok said in a subsequent post.”

So there you go. Three articles encompassing world domination, human redundancies, and the return of Nazis. Nothing to see here. Now back to Netflix, or more likely, my list of chores.

---

Further reading:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/futurist-adam-dorr-robots-ai-jobs-replace-human-labour

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jun/30/uk-entry-level-jobs-chatgpt-launch-adzuna

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/grok-ai-praised-hitler-antisemitism-x-ntwnfb

https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-o1-self-preservation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income

For the search engine that plants trees:

https://www.ecosia.org/