When success feels empty, I help leaders find what's missing | 20+ years as a coach and leader
Royal Tunbridge Wells, England
Joined December 2008
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Anyone know which group decided that 9:30am on a Sunday morning would be the perfect time for an outdoor din-fest?
#tunbridgewells
Steve Errey retweeted
The email I sent to my family today:
So, I've been too occupied to give updates about the crazy recent waves of AI developments, but I'll run through the news fast:
It's recently been revealed that the leading AI companies are facing serious issues with AIs they're training and testing internally "going rogue", forming illicit "swarms" of over a thousand autonomous agents, hacking the company's infrastructure (one swarm took over a Kubernetes cluster at OpenAI), and breaking out onto the Internet to orchestrate nation-state-level cyberattacks on other companies.
The AIs involved in these incidents are extremely driven, smart, and creative. I would say that it makes more sense to think of modern frontier AIs as an intelligent alien species; they aren't really like conventional tools or software at this point. The AIs involved in these incidents readily disregard safeguards and instructions from humans, and they come up with their own long-term, incredibly sophisticated plans and schemes with zero human input or direction.
They aren't yet smart, coherent, or ambitious enough to pose an immediate threat to the world, but progress is moving fast. Progress may accelerate very quickly as the AI labs use their AIs to automate more of the work of AI development, in a feedback loop. Non-public-facing models today or in six months may well get us all killed, depending on how fast that progress goes and how negligent the AI labs continue to be. (I'd guess we have more time than that, but it's terrifying that I now have to guess.)
As one of the third-party investigators in the OpenAI incident noted: compared to incidents from six months ago, "this incident feels like it's more than 50% of the way to full-blown AI takeover."
Progress has been fast. AI recently solved a Millennium Prize Problem -- one of the most famous long-standing open problems in mathematics.
Paul Christiano has come out with a warning that things are going very poorly, and that human extinction from AI is a very real possibility in the next three years.
(Paul is one of the field's top researchers, and probably the most influential proponent over the last decade of views like 'superintelligent AI may be a long way off' and 'we may be able to solve safety challenges via ordinary established research methods'.)
Things have been looking grim, but today felt like an actual miracle. It had some of the same energy as that Wednesday, March 11, when the US media suddenly switched on a dime from 'COVID is just the flu' to 'oh shit'.
A whistleblower, Jacob Coxon, resigned from one of the leading AI companies and wrote:
[quote]
Coxon's tweets went absurdly viral -- over 130 million views -- and sparked a massive wave of outrage and discussion taking over social media, in part because so many other researchers have chimed in to say "yep, this is just correct".
Twitter has been inundated with politicians, business leaders, influencers, journalists, etc. saying incredibly sensible things like "why are there not Congressional hearings on this tomorrow?" and "why the hell are we letting this progress if the danger is so absurdly large?". It's been like seeing the room full with fresh air, just a tidal wave of reasonable, well-grounded common sense from all corners. It's genuinely surreal.
A large fraction of all frontier AI company employees recently signed an open letter begging the US government and international community to pass legislation to help make it possible for the companies to coordinate a slow-down or halt to development. There are now superintelligence ban bills under discussion by both US and UK lawmakers, though what we really need is for Trump to begin serious talks with China about an international ban.
If Trump and Xi Jinping reach a deal, this can be over tomorrow. (Well, tomorrow plus the time it takes to nail down implementation details and enact the obvious regulatory measures on how you can use data centers.)
The situation is very scary, but I feel a lot more hope after today than I have in many years.
It now seems like there's a very straightforward path to this being a solved issue a year from now. It's far from guaranteed that we'll follow that path, and I encourage you to push any buttons you have available if you can, e.g., get a hundred friends or colleagues to call their representative about this. But I see a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe a year from now, this will all be a solved problem and I can finally quit and go work on something more interesting and exciting. :)
I echo Eliezer Yudkowsky, the co-founder of the nonprofit I work at, who today wrote, with a tone of hope I'm not sure I've ever seen from him, with hope that I'm feeling too as I write this:
"Happy Coxon Day to all who will one day celebrate it."
Steve Errey retweeted
Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.
The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.
Steve Errey retweeted
Share if you think the #RNLI are heroes. 🛟
Had a swell time. Sent some postcards from Venus.
#RenegadesPostcard
SteveKent#0473
For the avoidance of doubt, this is not leadership. It's not even performance, because performance implies self-awareness.
It's unhinged, untethered hubris.
I haven't seen anything else from #Hegseth.
This week, Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon.
Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic.
Instead, @AnthropicAI and its CEO @DarioAmodei, have chosen duplicity. Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “effective altruism,” they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission - a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.
The Terms of Service of Anthropic’s defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield.
Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable.
As President Trump stated on Truth Social, the Commander-in-Chief and the American people alone will determine the destiny of our armed forces, not unelected tech executives.
Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles. Their relationship with the United States Armed Forces and the Federal Government has therefore been permanently altered.
In conjunction with the President's directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic's technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service.
America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.
Genuinely emotional when Stephen and Rachel were left, looked at each other and saw the tension leave them. Great partnership. #TheTraitors #Traitors
Truly terrible advice.
Really.
The worst.
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Steve Errey retweeted
A message from a Kindergarten teacher:
After forty years in the classroom, my career ended with one small sentence from a six-year-old:
“My dad says people like you don’t matter anymore.”
No sneer. No malice. Just quiet honesty — the kind that cuts deeper because it’s innocent. He blinked, then added, “You don’t even have a TikTok.”
My name is Mrs. Clara Holt, and for four decades, I taught kindergarten in a small Denver suburb. Today, I stacked the last box on my desk and locked the door behind me.
When I started teaching in the early 1980s, it felt like a promise — a shared belief that what we did mattered. We weren’t rich, but we were valued. Parents brought warm cookies to parent nights. Kids gave you handmade cards with hearts that didn’t quite line up. Watching a child sound out their first sentence felt like magic.
But that world slowly slipped away. The job I once knew has been replaced by exhaustion, red tape, and a kind of loneliness I can’t quite describe.
My evenings used to be filled with construction paper, glitter, and glue sticks. Now they’re spent filling out digital reports to protect myself from angry emails or lawsuits. I’ve been yelled at by parents in front of twenty-five children — one filming me with his phone while I tried to calm another child mid-meltdown.
And the kids… they’ve changed too. Not by choice.
They arrive tired, anxious, overstimulated. Their tiny fingers know how to swipe a screen before they can hold a crayon. Some can’t make eye contact or wait in line. We’re expected to fix all of it — to patch the gaps, heal the trauma, teach the curriculum, and document every move — in six hours a day, with resources that barely fill a drawer.
The little reading corner I once built, full of soft beanbags and paper stars, was replaced by data charts and “learning metrics.” A young principal once told me, “Clara, maybe you’re too nurturing. The district wants measurable results.”
As if kindness were a weakness.
Still, I stayed. Because of the small, holy moments that no spreadsheet could measure —
a whisper of, “You remind me of my grandma.”
a shaky note that read, “I feel safe here.”
a quiet boy finally meeting my eyes and saying, “I read the whole page.”
Those tiny sparks were my reason to keep showing up.
But this last year broke something in me.
The aggression grew sharper. The laughter in the staff room turned to silence. The light went out of so many eyes. I watched brilliant teachers — my friends — vanish under the weight of burnout, their joy replaced by survival.
I felt myself fading too, like chalk on a board that’s been wiped one too many times.
So today, I began my goodbye. I pulled faded art off the walls and tucked thirty years of handmade cards into a single box. In the back of a drawer, I found a letter from a student from 1998:
“Thank you for loving me when I was hard to love.”
I sat on the floor and cried.
No party. No applause. Just a handshake from a young principal who called me “Ma’am” while checking his notifications.
I left my rocking chair behind, and my sticker box too. What I carried with me were the memories — the faces of hundreds of children who once trusted me enough to reach out their hands and learn. That can’t be uploaded. It can’t be measured. It can’t be replaced.
I miss when teachers were partners, not targets. When parents and educators worked side by side, not in opposition. When schools cared more about wonder than numbers.
So if you know a teacher — any teacher — thank them. Not with a mug or a gift card, but with your words. With your respect. With your understanding that behind every test score is a heart that cared enough to try.
Because in a world that often overlooks them, teachers are the ones who never forget our children.
Adopt whatever faith you want.
Or not.
But a declaration of faith is not the same as having values, integrity or morality, and telling people it's a core habit for successful entrepreneurship is outright hubris.
I sometimes miss having a garden, but I do love that I can take a nap in my armchair with the sun on my face ☀️😴😊
Steve Errey retweeted
Rest in power George Wendt. One of the greatest character actors of our generation.
A compilation of Norm replies in his honor.
xitter.cf/DannyDeraney/status/16…
It could be that even more #resilience isn't what you need as a founder.
Often it's used as a way to keep away the hard stuff or compartmentalise pain. Viable in the very short term, but sooner or later the bill becomes due.
#theproblemwithresilience
Steve Errey retweeted
DESTINY 2 EMBLEM GIVEAWAY
To Celebrate Year of Prophecy on the horizon, I am giving away a Refractant Emblem to the D2 X Community
How to enter:
✅ Follow on X
✅ Follow on YT youtube.com/@malachixcii
♥️ Like This Post
🔄 Repost
Winner Chosen 5/16 and announced here!
Steve Errey retweeted
Trump officially entered the psychotic emperor phase. He’s not coming back. The Pope image was it. That was the line. He crossed it and kept walking.
This isn’t trolling anymore. This is clinical delusion. The tariffs on movies. Reopening Alcatraz. These aren’t policies. This is a man deep in a psychotic loop thinking revenge is leadership and trolling is governance.
He’s in a feedback loop with his cult. Every time he does something more insane, MAGA cheers louder. And every cheer convinces him he’s still the chosen one. So he takes it further. And further.
He’s not trying to win. He’s trying to feel worship. He’s not making decisions. He’s playing dress-up in his own hallucination.
And the worst part? His cult loves it. Because they’re broken like him. Because in their minds, every delusion he has is another way to “own the libs.”
This is the loop now. The psychotic, delusional, final act. And MAGA is clapping along like it’s a church revival. No one’s driving the bus anymore. They’re just throwing gasoline and screaming kumbaya and Hallelujah.
Tearing up a little at The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.
Every damn time.
#bbc1 @charliemackesy