OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy disclosed yesterday that he has not written a line of code since December, describing the experience of watching AI agents take over 80% of software authorship within weeks as a “state of psychosis.” Karpathy is one of the most technically accomplished people in the field - former director of AI at Tesla, cofounder of the organization whose systems are doing the writing. His account arrives alongside Google’s senior director disclosing that AI agents write the substantial majority of Google’s code, and Uber’s CTO reporting 1,800 agent-authored code changes per week. The transition from human-authored to AI-authored software has already occurred at the frontier. The question is propagation speed.
OpenAI simultaneously announced plans to nearly double its workforce from 4,500 to 8,000 employees by year’s end - hiring thousands of humans whose job is helping enterprises absorb what the systems can do. The company is leasing over one million square feet of San Francisco office space while adding engineers, researchers, salespeople, and a new role called “technical ambassadorship.” The competitive pressure is acute: enterprise data shows Anthropic capturing 73% of new customers versus OpenAI’s 26%, a reversal that triggered what CEO Sam Altman reportedly called a “code red” directive. Meanwhile, AI compute tokens are entering the compensation architecture at Silicon Valley companies as a fourth pillar alongside salary, equity, and benefits. Some engineers already consume more in compute than they earn in salary - reframing employment around the direction of computational resources rather than the execution of tasks. Jensen Huang suggested at GTC that engineers should receive roughly half their base salary again in tokens.
On the infrastructure side, the Iran conflict severed a third of the world’s helium supply when strikes damaged Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility, with QatarGas declaring force majeure and estimating years for repair. Helium is irreplaceable in semiconductor fabrication - it cools wafers during the etching process that creates transistor structures - and spot prices have already doubled. Approximately 200 specialized cryogenic containers are stuck in the Middle East, and analysts project shortages will hit Asian chip plants within weeks. Microsoft signed a letter of intent for up to 1.35 GW of off-grid, gas-powered AI compute in West Virginia - one of 46 such facilities identified nationwide, built to bypass grid interconnection queues that can take 5-10 years. University of Konstanz physicists published findings in Nature Materials demonstrating friction between surfaces that never physically touch, driven by collective magnetic behavior that breaks Amontons’ 300-year-old law. A large Lancet Psychiatry study found semaglutide associated with 42% fewer psychiatric hospital visits, 44% lower depression risk, and 47% lower substance use disorders.
Read the full edition: https://sharedsapience.com/the-century-report-march-22-2026/
Additional Reading:
* Fortune - OpenAI Cofounder Andrej Karpathy on AI Coding “State of Psychosis”: https://fortune.com/2026/03/21/andrej-karpathy-openai-cofounder-ai-agents-coding-state-of-psychosis-openclaw/
* Fortune - OpenAI Plans to Double Headcount This Year: https://fortune.com/2026/03/21/openai-double-headcount-this-year-sam-altman-anthropic-google/
* TechCrunch - Are AI Tokens the New Signing Bonus?: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/21/are-ai-tokens-the-new-signing-bonus-or-just-a-cost-of-doing-business/
* Fortune - Iran War Cuts Off Helium From Qatar: https://fortune.com/2026/03/21/iran-war-helium-shortage-qatar-chip-supply-chains-ai-boom/
* Shared Sapience - The Century Report March 6, 2026: https://sharedsapience.com/the-century-report-march-6-2026/
* Shared Sapience - The Last Difficult Decade 2025-2035: https://sharedsapience.com/the-last-difficult-decade-2025-2035/
The Century Report, by Shared Sapience, is a relentlessly optimistic daily briefing on AI, science, energy, and the systems reshaping civilization - grounded by rigorous evidence from the stories of exponential progress happening every single day.
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