Explainable AI
Matt Shumer vs. Citrini Research | February 2026
Hi friends,
Happy Friday! Time to close out another month and AI is everywhere. If you’re Sam Altman or Dario Amodei, you probably wish this wasn’t how you spent your week last week. The two biggest companies in AI awkwardly playing nice is now etched in history.
Many have reached out to me to explain what the situation at the Pentagon is between Anthropic and the military. As this is being played out in real-time, the situation isn’t concluded and negotiations are still ongoing with a deadline of today at 5:01pm EST. Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, stated last night that, “the company cannot in good conscience allow the Department of War to use its models in all lawful use cases without limitation”. The Claude tool is currently being used by government employees and cutting them off from the use of it could impact current operations. Again, will be keen to see the outcome later today.
Did you catch investor Vinod Khosla suggestion that 125 million people should be exempt from paying income taxes in the future if AI ends up eliminating a mass number of jobs? Do we need to think about Universal Basic Income like some have suggested if AI and robots are doing all the jobs? Is Congress going to weigh in on these debates? Again, these questions are above my paygrade but serious discussions about AI need to be started now.
Matt Shumer vs. Citrini Research Posts
Two writings this month created quite a stir. First, a blog post by Matt Shumer provided a viral warning of how AI will replace workers and automate work across a number of white-collar jobs and industries within the next two years. His blog post, ‘Something Big is Happening’ outlined how AI could perform many of his current duties today.
It seems like he was warning individuals to start to use AI and understand the world that is about to come.
From a couple of interviews I saw from him explaining his blog post, it sounds like he didn’t expect his post to be so widely read and would have provided more data points to back up his arguments. Still, some of what he’s written should be taken to heart and a call to action.
On February 22nd, another post panicked markets the following day with another looming look at the future impacted by AI. The Citrini Research piece tells of another demise of white-collar jobs but an even scarier future of the S&P 500 collapsing and capital markets turned upside down by AI.
If AI performs the work of many professionals, including lawyers, accountants and consultants then what do those individuals do? A very small elite will see the gains from this massive disruption and chaos could ensue.
If all this sounds like the plot of a dystopian movie, I’d agree with you. Again, whether you believe these posts to scare markets or cause investors to rethink their strategies in a number of SaaS companies, it is time we started having real debates on Capitol Hill about the impact of AI.
AI News (Some of our favorite AI articles from February)
The Guardian: What is Moltbook? The Strange New Social Media Site for AI Bots
WebProNews: Inside Microsoft’s Copilot Crisis – How the Tech Giant’s AI Flagship Lost its Way
WSJ: Google to Double Spending as Earnings Beat Wall Street Expectations
WP: The AI Boom is so Huge it’s Causing Shortages Everywhere Else
The Hill: Democrats in New York Propose Moratorium on New Data Centers
Matt Shumer (Blog): Something Big is Happening
FT: Mustafa Suleyman Plots AI ‘Self-Sufficiency’ as Microsoft Loosens OpenAI Ties
Isomorphic Labs (Blog): The Isomorphic Labs Drug Design Engine Unlocks a New Frontier Beyond AlphaFold
Marcus on AI (Blog): About that Matt Shumer Post that has Nearly 50M Views
Fortune: The CEO of Capgemini has a Warning – You Might be Thinking About AII Wrong
The Atlantic: America Isn’t Ready for What AI Will do to Jobs
YouGov (Poll): Most Americans say AI will Reduce the Number of Jobs in the US
Bloomberg: How a Social Media Addiction Trial Threatens Big Tech
Palo Alto Networks (Blog): AI-Accelerated Attacks, Identity-Enabled Breaches and Expanding Software Supply Chain Exposure Define 2026 Cyberthreat Landscape
Bloomberg: AI Pioneer Fei-Fei Li’s Startup World Labs Raises $1B
Forbes: If 125M are Unemployed by AI They Shouldn’t Pay Taxes
Bloomberg: Black Swan’s Taleb Warns on Software Bankruptcies, More Volatility
OpenAI
The Verge: OpenClaw Founder Peter Steinberger is Joining OpenAI
Bloomberg: OpenAI Hires OpenClaw AI Agent Developer Peter Steinberg
Bloomberg: Workday CEO Says Anthropic and OpenAI Use His Company’s Software
Anthropic
WSJ: Anthropic Enters Midterm-Election Showdown Over AI Regulation
Anthropic (Blog): Covering Electricity Price Increases From our Data Centers
TechCrunch: Defense Secretary Summons Anthropic’s Amodei Over Military Use of Claude
CNBC: Anthropic CEO Amodei says Pentagon’s Threats ‘Do Not Change our Position’ on AI
And must end this newsletter on a high note and what better image to do that than…
Again, I want to thank you for reading.
Sergio Rodriguera Jr
Co-Founder | Straylight Systems
Straylight Systems is a Multimodal Artificial Intelligence (AI) company powering Sensor Fusion and delivering Automation solutions utilizing its advanced, proprietary neural networks to optimize and drive results for its commercial and government customers. Straylight synchronizes text files (JSON, XML, Excel, PDFs), acoustic, video, imagery, radar, lidar, and spatial data from disparate sensors and systems to process and analyze in real time in an explainable and auditable way.