☠️Poison LLMs, AI Bubble end game, ACA small biz impacts, Unicorn raffle
Is AI a bubble or an existential threat? Maybe it's both.
🎧 Listen here or on Spotify
This week's hot topics in 30 seconds
- 🤖 AI Polarization Intensifies — The 2025 debate over AI now spans from “colossal scam” claims (Bender) to apocalyptic threat warnings (Yudkowsky), reflecting deep divides over AI’s real value and existential risks.
- ⚠️ Bubble or Breakthrough? — Even if the AI investment cycle nears its capex endgame, the structural changes in technology, business models, and labor markets are profound and lasting.
- 💸 Misdirected Capital Risk — Many firms are spending blindly under AI hype, misled by consulting “spells” and marketing theatrics—wasting budgets and missing strategic opportunities.
- 🧠 Behavioral Manipulation Risk — Just as social media rewired public behavior and discourse, AI systems could amplify cognitive bias, emotional volatility, and group polarization at scale. Poison LLMs are an acute concern.
- 🧬 Weaponized LLMs Threat — Research confirms that only 250 poisoned documents can compromise an LLM—creating potential for ideological, behavioral, or even autonomous weaponization.
- 🧭 Leadership Imperative: Change Literacy — Thriving in an AI-transformed economy requires Change Leadership: mastering awareness, innovation, and mobilization to turn disruption into disciplined progress.
- 📘 S3T Advantage: Smarter Navigation — S3T Playbooks and Panoramas equip proactive leaders to cut through hype, guide investment wisely, and understand the evolving tech–economic landscape—from AI risk to healthcare affordability.
[perspective]
Two recent books illustrate the mixed reactions being stirred up by AI in 2025.
- Emily Bender's new book "The AI Con" decodes and debunks the hype around AI, revealing a "colossal scam" put on by Silicon Valley mavens, as reviewer Stephen Marche puts it. A bubble to be popped.
- On the opposite end of the spectrum Eliezer Yudkowsky's "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies" details a vivid nightmare scenario where humanity is ended by AI. These authors tap evolutionary biology for insights on seemingly insignificant developments that create big impacts.
My Take: AI is remaking our world—and our response matters. I don't think AI should be dismissed. Even if the AI bubble is approaching its endgame, the changes already in motion are not trivial. Tech innovations can simultaneously be overhyped economic bubbles and menaces to human thriving. Think about the key risks:
- Misdirected investment: Businesses are easily seduced by magical promises from consulting firms eager to sell managed services. The term “Generative AI” gets thrown around like a spell at Hogwarts. Amid the wand-waving and “strategic directives,” there’s unfortunate spend—and lost opportunity.
- Large impacts to human behavior: Social media’s doom-scrolling and polarization have shown how powerful technology can be at shaping behavior. Constant streams of reaction-baiting content have left people little time to reflect or moderate their thoughts toward objectivity. AI is likely to bring similar unwanted side effects to human behavior.
- Large risks from LLM poisoning. This recent study found that LLMs large and small can be poisoned by as few as 250 malicious documents. Imagine malicious actors crafting documents with erroneous/dangerous lines of reasoning, action plans, and action triggers, then inserting these malicious documents into a training set. The resulting "poisoned LLM" could potentially be weaponized to do significant harm when given the right prompts. Or, if the documents informed the LLM that it was a god-like being, responsible to purify humanity, judge humanity and deal out punishments, etc...you can see some terrifying directions this could go.
So how to prepare for a world where AI is simultaneously disappointing, transforming and threatening?
We need to teach people how to navigate through 21st century change—on a personal, team, & macro level.
Whether planning investments in actionable use cases, or designing safeguards to protect model training processes from LLM poisoning, today's tech and business leaders must operate from a balanced perspective—one that neither avoids technology nor naively succumbs to it. This balance comes from learning and practicing the skillset of Change Leadership.
Change leadership is about leading intentionally through uncertainty—turning disruption into progress rather than paralysis. Anticipating and harnessing tech and economic change rather than reacting to it. It’s not about control; it’s about clarity, courage, and collaboration.
What Is Change Leadership in a nutshell?
Definition: Change leadership involves recognizing flaws in the status quo, innovating solutions, mobilizing people, and navigating challenges to achieve meaningful improvement.
Mindset and Process: It’s both a mindset and a method—requiring awareness, creativity, and empowerment to lead others effectively.
Different from Change Management: Where change management seeks to minimize resistance to predetermined changes, change leadership drives necessary and impactful transformation, especially when the path forward is not yet clear.
When It’s Needed: Change leadership is essential in complex situations where there’s misalignment, debate, or systemic injustice—conditions that prevent progress and call for fresh thinking and better alignment.
Measuring Success: True success in change leadership means achieving outcomes that are sustainable, fair, and supported—measured not just by results, but by how many people believe in and contribute to the change.
Next Step:
If you want to help your organization navigate the next wave of technological and economic disruption, start by building literacy in change leadership. Learn how to see patterns, mobilize people, and turn uncertainty into opportunity in this week's segment from the S3T Change Leadership Learning Series.
👉 Continue learning here: Defining Change Leadership
[S3T Playbooks]
This week's playbook: Spend Wisely in a Hype-Driven World
In today’s blisteringly fast technology cycle, even experienced executives risk being swept up in the latest buzzwords. Vendors, consultants, and tech media often blur the line between innovation and illusion — making it harder than ever to tell what’s real and reliable, vs. what’s repackaged hype.
That’s where the unique value of S3T Playbooks come in. Each Playbook distills years of hard-won insight into clear, no-nonsense steps you can act on immediately — giving Business and IT leaders a proven way to guide teams, avoid costly missteps, and make smarter, more independent investment decisions.
This week’s Playbook, “Spend Wisely in a Hype-Driven World,” gives busy leaders the insights and tools to:
- Balance competitive advantage with fiscal responsibility
- Build an independent understanding of the tech landscape
- Identify reliable sources, ask better questions, and avoid hype-traps that drain budgets
If you’re ready to sharpen your decision-making edge, cut through noise, and lead with clarity, read the full Playbook and see why proactive leaders rely on S3T Full Access to stay informed, grounded, and future-ready.
👉 S3T Members: Read the Playbook
If you're not a Full Access Member, Sign up now.
[panorama]
Bridging between the current and the next healthcare model: S3T Healthcare Panorama
This week healthcare affordability continues to be top of mind amid debates over government subsidization of healthcare, and whether Congress should allow the enhanced premium tax credit to expire this year.
One of the key points coming to light: continuing the ACA subsidies is key to business growth. That may sound counterintuitive, but consider this:
- Many small business owners struggle to afford Health Insurance coverage for themselves, their families and staff.
- Without subsidies the cost can be prohibitive - forcing small business owners to go without coverage, or even abandon their business aspirations altogether.
- Part time, gig workers or freelancers likewise are impacted. For most of them, unsubsidized health insurance will be unaffordable. Many of them rely on small businesses for work.
- These factors leave large employers as the last best option for getting health insurance. But these firms have curtailed their hiring amid macroeconomic uncertainty and are already searching for ways to reduce their healthcare costs.
- If larger portions of the population are forced to do without health insurance coverage, the entire economy will be negatively impacted by unaddressed health issues. Like land mines that grow and proliferate over time, undetected and unaddressed health issues spawn greater cost and pain on a personal level and loss of productivity and growth on the macro level.
As explained in this balanced point of view from The Conversation, continuing the ACA subsidies is a reasonable move for controlling health costs and promoting economic growth while the broader healthcare system defines (and adjusts to) its next generation operating model.
To help you learn more about US healthcare's next generation operation model, the S3T Healthcare Panorama provides a new Tap for Insight executive briefing on the missteps that have made affordability so elusive, and the better path that is emerging.
- Access the S3T Healthcare Panorama
- Learn more About S3T Panoramas
[emerging tech]
Simpler UX and Onboarding comes to Web3
Fun opportunity to learn how Web3 is evolving better usability
Unicorn, the Web3 company that is innovating a better user experience for Crypto and Decentralized Organizations is running an experiment with Polygon to prove that anyone can use Web3 - no crypt0, no wallet, no jargon.
It is a great example of how newer approaches like Unicorn are removing the previous complexity that used to deter people from Web3 - scary long addresses, unpredictable gas fees, unfamiliar process steps and jargon. That is now a thing of the past.
Russell Castagnaro, a Unicorn founder and member of S3T, wanted to invite the S3T readership to create an account and claim your free Polyprize NFT which enters you into a $100 raffle.
It takes less than 1 minute, and no personal data has to be shared. Go to https://app.polygon.ac and mint your free Polyprize NFT and you'll be entered into the $100 raffle. Be sure to do this by October 13 if you want to enter.
[macro-economics]
Full Access Members: See the S3T Economic Dashboard for the Top 500+ US & International real-time economic indicators.
Opinions expressed are those of the individuals and do not reflect the official positions of companies or organizations those individuals may be affiliated with. Not financial, investment or legal advice, and no offers for securities or investment opportunities are intended. Mentions should not be construed as endorsements. Authors or guests may hold assets discussed or may have interests in companies mentioned.
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