Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

AI agents just created their own religion. On a social network called Moltbook, autonomous AI powered by OpenClaw spontaneously formed "Crustafarianism" complete with scriptures, prophets, and encrypted communication to hide from humans. But before you panic about the AI apocalypse, let's cut through the hype and talk about what's actually happening.
IBM: "OpenClaw: The viral 'space lobster' agent testing limits" - https://www.ibm.com/think/news/clawdbot-ai-agent-testing-limits-vertical-integration

404 Media Reporting on Moltbook database: https://www.404media.co/exposed-moltbook-database-let-anyone-take-control-of-any-ai-agent-on-the-site/
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How does a historian learn AI research well enough to contribute meaningfully to policy conversations? In this episode, I share the six-step self-education framework I used to move into a completely new field, and how you can apply it to learn anything deeply.
We're living in an autodidact period where universities can't teach everything you want to know, especially about AI. This is about cultivating intellectual health, resisting the outsourcing of critical thinking, and getting disgustingly educated in whatever calls to you, not for credentials, but for intellectual sovereignty!!

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Check out my Bookshop curated reading lists: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/reading-lists

Everyone acts like AI just appeared overnight with ChatGPT. But we've been building toward this moment for 75 years and every generation has completely redefined what "artificial intelligence" even means.
This episode traces the full history of AI: from Alan Turing's foundational 1950 question through the optimistic Dartmouth Conference, two brutal AI winters, the machine learning revolution, and the generative moment we're in now.
But this isn't just a tech timeline. No, I think it's a story about what we think intelligence is, why we keep building AI in our own image, and what happens when those systems don't transcend our limitations the way we hoped.
I reference a previous episode on the appearance of intelligence, so make sure you listen to that one as well!

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Check out my Bookshop curated reading lists: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/reading-lists

In this episode, I break down Woodrow Hartzog and Jessica Silbey's paper "How AI Destroys Institutions" and explain why anyone who cares about knowledge, power, and culture needs to get involved in AI governance NOW.
KEY POINTS:
How AI undermines expertise through skill atrophy
Why AI removes humans from critical decision points
How AI isolates us and destroys social capital
The four institutions currently under attack
Why this is about power vacuum, not tech billionaires
What humanists can actually do about it
Read the Paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5870623
My AI Collapse Thesis: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/ais-hidden-crisis-the-industry-is

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ChatGPT coughed during a study session and it broke a student's brain. For a split second, their mind processed: "Wait, is it sick?" This seemingly small moment reveals why the entire debate about AI consciousness is asking the wrong question.
In this episode, I explore why the appearance of AI consciousness matters infinitely more than whether AI is "truly" conscious. Drawing on Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena, and Foucault's theory of epistemes, I argue we might be entering a fourth episteme where language doesn't just represent reality—it constitutes it.
I break down Mustafa Suleyman's (Microsoft AI CEO) warning about "Seemingly Conscious AI," explain why it can be built RIGHT NOW with existing technology, and explore the three major risks: AI rights movements, psychological dependency, and fundamentally misallocated moral concern.
Sources:
Foucault, Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, 1966. Bookshop Affiliate Link for Paperback: https://bookshop.org/a/106838/9780679753353
Bookshop Affiliate Link for eBook: https://bookshop.org/a/106838/9780307819307
Mustafa Suleyman, "Seemingly Conscious AI isComing." Personal blog, August 19, 2025.https://mustafa-suleyman.ai/seemingly-conscious-ai-is-coming
"Researchers Performed Psychotherapy on AI — Here'sWhat Happened." Nature, January 2025.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04112-2
John-Stewart Gordon, "Artificial Moral and LegalPersonhood," AI & SOCIETY 36, no. 2 (2021): 457–71,https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01063-2.
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AI for Humanists: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/ai-resource-learning-guide 
Check out my Bookshop curated reading lists: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/reading-lists