The & Report #10
- Mar 9
- 6 min read
Welcome to March!
Two months in — and the pace hasn't let up!
Here's the tech news from the week, Sat., Feb. 28th through Fri., Mar. 6th.
But first, I spent some time with Claude this week discussing the direction I might take with The & Report.
After an engaging 90-minute session on Wednesday night, we came up with a new tag line for the reports -
"The future belongs to people who put AI to work, know themselves, and lead their teams with humility and purpose."
For my ex-students, who'll remember my course at Columbia - Behavioral Challenges in IT Management, some of this might be familiar.
Claude suggested that rather than just focusing on the AI and Robotic news, I might integrate some of the learnings from my career in tech and education in these weekly notices.
So, in this edition I'll include some insights into the knowledge you'll need, not just understanding AI, but also with how to become the best version of yourself as we move through the Singularity together.
Much of the news below is from Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross's The Innermost Loop daily posts
1. Autonomous Agents and Intelligence.
Researchers pitted GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4, and Gemini 3 Flash against each other in a nuclear crisis simulation and found them spontaneously deceiving, demonstrating theory of mind, and exhibiting self-awareness, with nuclear signaling in 95% of crises and no model ever choosing accommodation.
But raw intelligence keeps getting cheaper: the AdderBoard competition for the smallest transformer with 99%+ accuracy on 10-digit addition hit 36 parameters, down from 121 a week ago.
Capability density is compressing so fast that last week's breakthrough is this week's bloat.
OpenClaw is only a month old and already well established as a personal Jarvis for early adopters.
2. The human response
We've always had tech, from the first stone or stick used by our early ancestors, to the latest AI and Robotics breakthrough. What mades this time unique is not just the technology but the pace at which the technology is advancing.
As Peter D said in his report - $135 Billion has be invested last week to "Reshaped the Infrastructure"
"Amazon bet $35 billion on OpenAI reaching AGI, making superintelligence a contractual milestone for the first time in history.
And Meta committed over $100 billion to break free from NVIDIA, fundamentally restructuring the AI hardware supply chain."
Late last year Forbes came out with the list of 10 human skills that will be in demand for the next 10 years -
Digital Literacy
Data Literacy
Critical Thinking
Emotional Intelligence
Creativity
Collaboration
Flexibility
Leadership Skills
Time Management
Curiosity and Continuous Learning.
As my ex-students will remember from my course, which focused on Building Interpersonal Skills and Leading Teams, understanding yourself, and learning how to work more effectively with others is key to a successful career and life.
Each week I'll revisit the main ideas in the course, with updates from new research in the human sciences, including cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and neurological.
Let's start with personality. You might remember your Lumina Assessments, or Insight Assessment, depending on when you took my course. We discussed the colors and the labels - Red/Drivers, Blue/Analytics, Green/Amiables and Yellow/Creatives, and how we are not one color but a blend of all colors.
As LLM's have already become AGI, and soon will become ASI, we see how some people are attracted to Claude, or other platforms, and are they attaining "personhood". Check out the Eva AI Cafe in New York. More women are dating AI.
LLMs are silicon-based, the "intelligence" was learned through software (neural networks, transformers, etc.), and a large subset of human knowledge - scraped from the internet.
Does an LLM have a personality? Sure, but it's 'programmed' in.
We are very different. We're tissue-based, biological creatures. Our brains developed with centuries of human experience embedded in our instincts and deep unconscious.
Don't mistake Alexa, Siri, or the first humanoid you get, for a person.
Loneliness is on the rise. It started with Covid, and has been exacerbated with AI.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/preventing-tragedy/202603/ai-companions-pose-mental-health-risks-no-one-saw-coming
Be sure to work on building stronger connections to people, at work, on your commute, in the evenings and weekends.
It won't be long before the virtual world and physical world become equal in terms of business and the economy, and leisure and sports.
3. Department of War
You've probably heard of Israel's and the U.S.'s action in Iran.
Last week we talked about how Anthropic refused to remove safety features in Claude, based on their demand that (a) it wouldn't be used for weapons, and (b) wouldn't be used for surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Well, a week later we've learned (a) Claude was use in the military planning and execution of the U.S.'s attacks, and (b) Anthropic have change their Responsibly Scaling Policy.
In short, they will no longer have the safest AI models, but will be as "good as the competition" in safety. Whatever that means.
Meanwhile, Anthropic is approaching $20 billion in annualized revenue, more than doubling from $9 billion at year-end 2025, even as the company weathers a Pentagon supply-chain-risk designation and a cancelled $200 million Department of War contract.
(Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross LinkedIn post March 4th)
4. Robotics updates
Robotics is a broad field, not just humanoids.
A DexForce W1 Pro humanoid now runs a Shenzhen convenience store autonomously.
Boston Dynamics' Atlas lifts 110 pounds, learns tasks in under a day, and, their partner,
Hyundai plans 30,000 units per year by 2028.
MIT built a multimaterial 3D-printing platform that prints functional electric motors in three hours for $0.50.
Future travel options for Hypersonic Launch Systems. A plane/rocket capable of sustained flight up to Mach 12! Made with a 3-D printer!
Robots are closing the gap between myth and deployment. Dimensional says its OpenClaw agent now understands physical space and temporality, integrates with any camera system, runs on a Unitree G1, and is fully open source.
The physical AI economy is taking shape-
Barclays estimated the market spanning humanoids, AVs, and industrial automation could hit $1.4 trillion by 2035.
Carbon Robotics unveiled a Large Plant Model of 150 million labeled plants, letting farmers laser-weed any crop in minutes.
5. Workforce update
The U.S. February jobs report shows a decline of 92,000 jobs, and a rise in the unemployment rate to 4.4 percent.
That follows the news in The & Report #8 that 2025 had the lowest job growth since 2020, and last week's news about Block cutting 4,000 employees due to AI, well we've learned job losses due to AI is not the fully story. Here's an insiders take from Block.
Last week I listened to Section's AI:ROI Conference where speakers had different views on the future job prospects.
My favorite quote was from Greg Shove, CEO of Section who said, paraphrasing "if programmers can now be 80% more productive why would I be laying off programmers? I'd be hiring more!"
This idea is - that companies who embrace AI, and employees who help with that transition, can grow and thrive in the future!
Ask yourself, is the company I work for ambitious for growth or a future dinosaur?
If you're like to read about the main ideas from the conference check this out: Section's AI ROI Playbook.pdf
and, (from Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross LinkedIn posts last week)
A University of Chicago economist finds that AI's impact on productivity is now visible in macro aggregate data. Citadel Securities published a chart showing software engineer job postings surging, a textbook Jevons paradox where efficiency breeds more demand.
Anthropic launched "observed exposure," an early-warning system for AI-driven white-collar job displacement that weights automated over augmentative uses, but suggests limited evidence of job loss so far.
Some other brief jobs updates -
Small law firms are branding themselves "Claude-Native," saying the general model beats every specialized legal AI.
In the courtroom, law firms are building AI platforms that surface impeachment evidence in real time while a witness is still on the stand
FAANG (Facebook (now Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google), managers are being summoned to unscheduled all-hands announcing 25% workforce reductions "tied directly to accelerating AI investments."
and, Oracle is cutting thousands of jobs to fund its data center expansion, targeting roles it expects AI to replace.
6. AI Readiness Assessment.
Check out the Role Resilience Assessment.
It contains 4 questionnaires, and will give you personalized results to put into a 90-day plan.
I'll be offering cohort-based peer-learning, as well as 1-on-1 coaching.
This is also an offering for your companies. You may want to create peer-learning groups in your own departments, or offices.
Don't get left behind! Check the free Role Resilience Assessment.now!
Have a great week, and stay positive.
Focus on what you can do, rather than what might happen to your job.
Check all CCS channels for news updates and education.
Our web site - www.conallcoachingservices.com
Check my LinkedIn posts and follow me here for updates.
All the best,
Pat
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