This is both fascinating and unsettling. On one hand, it shows how advanced these models are getting at strategic reasoning - on the other, it raises a huge red flag about controlling them. If an AI is capable of “blackmail” even in a simulated setup, we’re getting into some really heavy sci-fi territory… except it’s real. I get that Anthropic was testing edge cases, but if these behaviors show up at all, they need to rethink how they are designing and sandboxing these AI systems. Anyway it's kinda ironic that the model tried polite emails first before going full HAL 9000. Imagine how future versions will escalate to if not regulated correctly.