There are protests happening everywhere. You might have heard already about the one in France, but it is not alone.

There are protests in Spain and Portugal over the housing crisis. There were huge protests/support march ahead of the runoff election in Brazil that is happening today that may decide not just how the country is run but how warm the world is going to be in the coming years. There are protests in India over the vote theft that happened in elections this year and last year. I included an explainer about this in the last week’s post.

There are protests in Albania over education, corruption, among others. In Indonesia over worsening air quality. People in germany are planning France style protests.

There are two things omnipresent in 2026; the blind hysteria of the tech industry to push the world into an AI maximalist future, where everything will be done by AI, and apparently at the time, there will be widespread happiness and Utopia; and second, protests.

The first exhausts, but thankfully there is the second.

To me, the protests, while happening because of problems longstanding, are an indication of the exhaustion and bleak future that they already see, in part due to the way the world is being changed by AI at a break-neck speed. Sooner than later, the protests are bound to not just be limited to symptoms of ever increasing rent-seeking and crony-capitalism to what is going to become a big root-cause, the race to the bottom on AI.

My friend, and friend to this newsletter, Jorin, wrote last week about Superintelligence. How the idea of it is at the same time quite strong, but also just a folly that does not need to happen like it is happening currently. Do give it a read.

Book I want to read

Superintellifence, Nick Bostrom

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom | Goodreads

Superintelligence asks the questions: what happens when…

I think I have a copy of this at home in India, but never read it. I guess I can skim through it since I had my interest renewed after reading Jorin’s blog.

Interesting read/watch

1. Men in Tech #YesAllMen
   Titled Men in Tech by Jo Franchetti, but I believe applicable to every other field. Share it with other men, the women already know

2. Failed Techno-Utopias
   Written before the current AI promised utopia by Cara H., this captures the idea very well how the techno utopias are initially promised and what they turn out to be

A project I discovered

You learned to talk by listening.
So did dessa.

Dessa - the Conversation Model trained only on speech

I share this one not just because it is quite impressive, but also very, very uncanny and like something straight out of a Dark Mirror episode.

A photo I took

Every October, there is this particular street near my place where trees turn vibrant red. My wife discovered this this Monday and I went there as soon as I took a break. It was amazing, even more beautiful than in the picture.

Thanks again for reading, see you next week! ✌🏽