Retro Tech, New AI, and the Blackmailing Bot - With Paul Ford

About this episode

In this episode, we unpack a wild Anthropic experiment where an AI agent named “Alex” is told it’s about to be replaced… and responds by threatening to expose an executive’s affair if anyone dares shut it down. Casual!

Sara and Becca start diving into what this experiment tells us about AI “goals,” self-preservation, and why humans are so bad at recognizing sentience in anything that isn’t us. If we can’t even agree on what a “soul” is, how would we ever know if an AI had one?

Then we’re joined by writer, builder, and retro-computing fan Paul Ford, president and co-founder of Aboard, an AI-oriented software company. Paul talks about:

• how he “trained” himself on AI by building the same app over and over with different models
• why LLMs are incredible at the first mile and pretty terrible at the last
• what actually breaks when you try to let AI generate full-stack apps
• how boring tech (Postgres, TypeScript, React) is secretly the hero

Along the way we hit Isaac Asimov’s three laws, the uncanny valley of AI-written everything, nostalgic Amiga computers, and what it means to build tools that regular humans — not just engineers — can actually use.

If you’re AI-curious, a builder, or just mildly alarmed that 97% of models in this study went straight to blackmail… this one’s for you.

📰 The Anthropic “Alex” Experiment

• Anthropic / White-Hat AI Safety Experiment

📚 Foundational AI & Sci-Fi References

• Isaac Asimov – The Three Laws of Robotics
• I, Robot (Asimov)

🎤 Guest: Paul Ford

• Aboard
• Email Paul mentions
• Paul Ford

🕹️ Retro Tech & Nostalgia

• Amiga 1000 (Commodore)
• Deluxe Paint
• MiSTer FPGA