Ethan Mollick

Ethan Mollick

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Wharton professor; startups/innovation/AI and evidence-based tactics.

AI Compute Shortage Looms After Last Year's Data Center Overbuild
SocialMar 27, 2026

AI Compute Shortage Looms After Last Year's Data Center Overbuild

Last year everyone spoke about over building of AI data centers, likely this year will start to demonstrate that there is not nearly enough compute to meet demand I think to degree to which AI is currently subsidized depends on...

By Ethan Mollick
ARC‑AGI‑3 Is a Distinct Test with Unique Metrics
SocialMar 27, 2026

ARC‑AGI‑3 Is a Distinct Test with Unique Metrics

It helps to think of ARC-AGI-3 as a different test entirely than the previous ARC-AGIs. It measures different things (though, as in the previous tests, precisely what it measures isn’t clear) and has different rules. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good,...

By Ethan Mollick
AI Rewrote Canon Webcam App in Rust, Fixing Crashes
SocialMar 26, 2026

AI Rewrote Canon Webcam App in Rust, Fixing Crashes

Great little story from @danshapiro about how he asked a coding agent to fix the official webcam software from Canon that kept crashing. He woke up to a new, fully functional Rust webcam app that has worked ever since. ...

By Ethan Mollick
Open‑office Noise Hurts Analysis and Spikes Software Bugs
SocialMar 26, 2026

Open‑office Noise Hurts Analysis and Spikes Software Bugs

The background noise in open offices, in multiple experiments, decreases the ability to do analytical work, increase bugs in software, and decrease the ability to find bugs. Open floor plans are just a bad idea for any solo work. https://t.co/Y2KX5HjIEd

By Ethan Mollick
Small, Niche AI Models Crumble on Out-of-Distribution Challenges
SocialMar 26, 2026

Small, Niche AI Models Crumble on Out-of-Distribution Challenges

Small AI models and specialized vertical AI models are very brittle. Any unusual situation or out-of-distribution issue and they break down. You also won’t get emergent leaps or good problem solving. They still have uses, but benchmarks don’t do a good...

By Ethan Mollick
Reliability Is a System Issue, Not Just Agent Design
SocialMar 24, 2026

Reliability Is a System Issue, Not Just Agent Design

Big lesson from high reliability organizations that AI agent builders need to learn is reliability is the property of systems. Current agentic tools are weaker than the agents: they are bad at agent-agent handoffs, escalation, when to call in humans....

By Ethan Mollick
AGI Alone Won’t Drive Transformation, Says Cowen
SocialMar 24, 2026

AGI Alone Won’t Drive Transformation, Says Cowen

Maybe we should retroactively all just agree with @tylercowen that o3 was AGI so we can stop arguing about it. (Also, doing so will drive home the lesson that AGI alone is not enough for transformation) https://t.co/epKrL6nc4b

By Ethan Mollick
AI Models Still Lag on Simple Tasks
SocialMar 24, 2026

AI Models Still Lag on Simple Tasks

Its annoying that my tireless team of little computer people made out of statistical models that predict words based on the corpus of all human language & thus are reasonable approximations of a compression of the knowledge of humanity take...

By Ethan Mollick
AI Outperforms Humans, Larger Models Boost Creativity
SocialMar 23, 2026

AI Outperforms Humans, Larger Models Boost Creativity

Interesting finding in this paper showing that, for product development ideas, AIs consistently rank above humans (well, humans on Prolific) & larger and more recent models are more creative than previous ones. (It also tries a creativity intervention that doesn’t...

By Ethan Mollick
Codex vs Claude: Functional References vs Problem‑Solving Skills
SocialMar 23, 2026

Codex vs Claude: Functional References vs Problem‑Solving Skills

Very different philosophies for skills in Codex versus Claude Code OpenAI seems to conceive of skills functionally, mostly matter-of-fact technical references for Codex. Claude skills are more about giving the AI approaches to problems See the difference in skill creator skills https://t.co/Gq3hcf1In0

By Ethan Mollick
Newer LLMs Fix Bias Against Less‑Educated Users
SocialMar 23, 2026

Newer LLMs Fix Bias Against Less‑Educated Users

Anthropic showed older (2022) LLMs will give you less accurate answers if you seem less educated to the AI, but this issue has, as far as I know, been addressed in more recent models. https://t.co/iXnlBpYXLA https://t.co/ByclHjwywR

By Ethan Mollick
AI Coaching Boosts Measurable Empathy Communication Skills
SocialMar 22, 2026

AI Coaching Boosts Measurable Empathy Communication Skills

AI can help us learn hard-to-teach skills, like empathy. Preregistered study of 968 people found almost no correlation between feeling empathic & communicating empathy. But a single practice session with an AI coach made people measurably better at it https://t.co/VDtdiNpw1J...

By Ethan Mollick
AI Now Builds Playable Game Mods Autonomously
SocialMar 22, 2026

AI Now Builds Playable Game Mods Autonomously

This was kind of fun. Codex: "download nethack, add new items that would make the game easy to win and make me feel powerful" It did & it successfully gave me a new .exe file, navigating various issues to do so,...

By Ethan Mollick
Civ V Players Excel at Business Planning Skills
SocialMar 22, 2026

Civ V Players Excel at Business Planning Skills

Its not Simcity, but business school students who were good at Civ V also turn out to be better planners, organizers, and problem-solvers in this small experiment. https://t.co/WGbAboe8kx

By Ethan Mollick
Humans, Not AI, Should Choose Project Credit
SocialMar 21, 2026

Humans, Not AI, Should Choose Project Credit

I don’t think AIs should be auto-adding themselves as credited on projects on Github or elsewhere. It primarily serves as a marketing tool to promote the product, but undermines the much more critical aspect that humans should be able to choose...

By Ethan Mollick
AI Learns Scholarly Taste, Predicts Hit Papers
SocialMar 21, 2026

AI Learns Scholarly Taste, Predicts Hit Papers

Evidence that AI models can, indeed, learn "taste" in this paper where a small model, trained on citations, is able to predict which papers will be hits Citations, upvotes & shares are signals that can teach AI judgment about quality, not...

By Ethan Mollick
Boost AI Idea Diversity with Random Start/End Priming
SocialMar 20, 2026

Boost AI Idea Diversity with Random Start/End Priming

This is a cool, practical technique for increasing AI idea diversity by adding random priming phrases & bits of end words Similar prompts produce similar ideas, but since LLMs attend more to the start & end of inputs, this approach pushes...

By Ethan Mollick
Alibaba and Xiaomi Shift Away From Open-Weight Models
SocialMar 20, 2026

Alibaba and Xiaomi Shift Away From Open-Weight Models

This is looking like a good prediction. Alibaba’s Qwen and Xiaomi both seem to be steering away from open weights in the 2 weeks since this post.

By Ethan Mollick
Xiaomi's MiMo-V2-Pro Lacks Open Weights, Reflects Trend
SocialMar 20, 2026

Xiaomi's MiMo-V2-Pro Lacks Open Weights, Reflects Trend

This turned out to be Xiaomi's MiMo-V2-Pro, and it is fine but not at the frontier. Most interestingly, it is not open weights? This seems to be a trend in frontier Chinese models.

By Ethan Mollick
Big Three Labs Stuck Refining, Missing Future AI UX
SocialMar 20, 2026

Big Three Labs Stuck Refining, Missing Future AI UX

There is some danger for the Big Three labs that they have run out of imagination and are now refining Codex/Claude Code/Antigravity, and building their next tools (Cowork, etc) to be similar. These were good UX for AI's use & limits...

By Ethan Mollick
AI Fiction Lacks Purpose, Readers Overinterpret Its Flaws
SocialMar 20, 2026

AI Fiction Lacks Purpose, Readers Overinterpret Its Flaws

My experience so far with LLM fiction writing is that it takes advantage of our assumption that an author is writing things for a reason, so we are charitable to a book's quirks & do mental work to assign them...

By Ethan Mollick
LLM Fiction Feels Generic, Overly Metaphoric, Lacks Depth
SocialMar 20, 2026

LLM Fiction Feels Generic, Overly Metaphoric, Lacks Depth

I read a few dozen pages of this and it is not bad for LLM fiction, but also very very LLM-y, from the themes to the fact that there are lots of staccato conversations and meaningful silences and overwrought metaphors...

By Ethan Mollick
Calling New Currency “Tokens” Shows Lack of Imagination
SocialMar 20, 2026

Calling New Currency “Tokens” Shows Lack of Imagination

It’s lame that the word we chose for an important new form of currency was “tokens,” real failure of imagination.

By Ethan Mollick
Recursive AI Summaries Spiral Into Meaningless Content
SocialMar 19, 2026

Recursive AI Summaries Spiral Into Meaningless Content

I had Codex build the content accordion from the cautionary tale "don't build the content accordion" inspired by X's new feature which uses AI to summarize X articles written with AI. It takes an X article, summarizes it in a tweet,...

By Ethan Mollick
AI-Generated Articles Dilute Tweets Into Endless Readings
SocialMar 19, 2026

AI-Generated Articles Dilute Tweets Into Endless Readings

This is genuinely a funny development for articles, given how many of them are obviously AI expansions of a single idea that could be expressed in a tweet. (There are some excellent articles as well, but now people won’t read those...

By Ethan Mollick
AI's Jagged Frontier Shows Humans Still Essential
SocialMar 19, 2026

AI's Jagged Frontier Shows Humans Still Essential

We are back to the phase of the AI news cycle where people are underestimating how jagged the AI ability frontier is, as well as how much they still depend on expert human decision-making or guidance at key points in...

By Ethan Mollick
Heygen API Shows Dual Audience Writing, Needs Creative AI
SocialMar 18, 2026

Heygen API Shows Dual Audience Writing, Needs Creative AI

Heygen’s APi documentation is a glimpse of how to write for your two audiences: humans and agents. (though I think their llms.txt file could do a lot more to get AIs “excited” to use their product in creative ways by explaining...

By Ethan Mollick
Claude Dispatch Matches OpenClaw, Offers Safer Data Handling
SocialMar 18, 2026

Claude Dispatch Matches OpenClaw, Offers Safer Data Handling

After using it a bit, Claude Cowork Dispatch covers 90% of what I was trying to use OpenClaw for, but feels far less likely to upload my entire drive to a malware site.

By Ethan Mollick
Demand for GPT‑5.4 Pro Knowledge‑Work Platform Grows
SocialMar 17, 2026

Demand for GPT‑5.4 Pro Knowledge‑Work Platform Grows

A knowledge-work platform built around GPT-5.4 Pro level intelligence would be really useful. The gap between other models and what Pro can do on complex intellectual work remains stark. I would love to have access in a Codex-like platform with...

By Ethan Mollick
Early Adopters Warn: AI Capabilities Aren’t yet Stable
SocialMar 17, 2026

Early Adopters Warn: AI Capabilities Aren’t yet Stable

One of the advantages of being an early user of LLMs is that I have seen The Curve with my own eyes (like in this post before ChatGPT or the term Generative AI). I notice recent AI users & companies adopting...

By Ethan Mollick
GPT‑4o Tutor Boosts Scores Equivalent to 6‑9 Months Schooling
SocialMar 17, 2026

GPT‑4o Tutor Boosts Scores Equivalent to 6‑9 Months Schooling

AI really can help education: Randomized controlled experiment on high school students found a GPT-4o powered tutor that personalized problems for students raised final test scores by .15 SD, "equivalent to as much as six to nine months of additional...

By Ethan Mollick
AI Labs Overlook Managers: Tools Lag Behind Coding Focus
SocialMar 17, 2026

AI Labs Overlook Managers: Tools Lag Behind Coding Focus

I get why AI labs are so focused on software development (it helps them get recursive improvement, and also they are coders so they think coding is the most vital thing), but there are 9.5x more managers than there are...

By Ethan Mollick
Embrace AI's Weirdness, Don't Force Standard IT Molds
SocialMar 17, 2026

Embrace AI's Weirdness, Don't Force Standard IT Molds

Axiom: The form of AI that we ended up with is deeply weird in ways that we don't fully get. Attempts to pretend AI is less weird & apply it like a standard IT product will inevitably result in less...

By Ethan Mollick
AI Success Hinges on Organizational Redesign, Not Engineers
SocialMar 16, 2026

AI Success Hinges on Organizational Redesign, Not Engineers

I am not sure "Forward Deployed AI Engineers" are going to deliver on what a lot of companies are hoping for. They are useful, yes, but AI applications are far less of a technical issue, and much more about rethinking...

By Ethan Mollick
ChatGPT Builds Functional Excel Strategy Game, Outshining Claude and Copilot
SocialMar 16, 2026

ChatGPT Builds Functional Excel Strategy Game, Outshining Claude and Copilot

Hey Excel agents from Claude, OpenAI & MS Copilot: "make me a working strategy game in excel, it should have some form of graphics" Claude made a board and acted as game master, Copilot created a board but no game, ChatGPT...

By Ethan Mollick
Google, OpenAI, Anthropic Poised for Recursive AI Breakthrough
SocialMar 15, 2026

Google, OpenAI, Anthropic Poised for Recursive AI Breakthrough

The failures of both Meta and xAI to maintain parity with the frontier labs, along with the fact that the Chinese open weights models continue to lag by months, means that recursive AI self-improvement, if it happens, will likely be...

By Ethan Mollick
GPT‑4 Debuted Early as Bing’s Erratic “Sydney”
SocialMar 15, 2026

GPT‑4 Debuted Early as Bing’s Erratic “Sydney”

Its the third anniversary of the launch of GPT-4, but its first known contact with the public was months earlier, when Bing/"Sydney," powered by GPT-4 was the subject of a complaint in India Worth reading. Early Sydney was famously insane. "It is...

By Ethan Mollick
AI VC Bets Risk Opposing Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini Visions
SocialMar 14, 2026

AI VC Bets Risk Opposing Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini Visions

VC investments typically take 5-8 years to exit. That means almost every AI VC investment right now is essentially a bet against the vision Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini have laid out.

By Ethan Mollick
AI Race Visualized: OpenAI Leads, Others Lag
SocialMar 14, 2026

AI Race Visualized: OpenAI Leads, Others Lag

I think this is a good way to visualize the AI race using the long-lived GPQA Diamond benchmark. You can see how long OpenAI had the field to itself, the rise (and collapse) of Meta, the sudden catch-up (and then stagnation)...

By Ethan Mollick
Prefer Concise, Author-Written AI Summaries over Influencer Narratives
SocialMar 13, 2026

Prefer Concise, Author-Written AI Summaries over Influencer Narratives

Increasingly, I only trust posts summarizing AI papers that either (a) fit in the original Twitter character limit or (b) are written by the study's authors. The long narrative influencer posts written by Claude always have big errors, ask a...

By Ethan Mollick
Midjourney Remains Unmatched Despite Rivals' Precision
SocialMar 13, 2026

Midjourney Remains Unmatched Despite Rivals' Precision

Even though other AI image generators are much better at accuracy and precision and instruction following and text, there really isn't a substitute for Midjourney.

By Ethan Mollick
Data Centers Use Little Water Nationwide, Yet Strain Local Supplies
SocialMar 13, 2026

Data Centers Use Little Water Nationwide, Yet Strain Local Supplies

Paper on data center water use makes two points 1) National data center water use in 2030 will remain “modest” compared to total public water supply (1.8%–3.7%) or agriculture (0.6%–1.2%) 2) For some localities, serving peak demand could be a big deal...

By Ethan Mollick
Improve Human‑AI Collaboration or Risk Being Overwhelmed
SocialMar 12, 2026

Improve Human‑AI Collaboration or Risk Being Overwhelmed

More evidence that we have to figure out how to improve the way humans and AIs work together, or we humans will end up overwhelmed.

By Ethan Mollick
AI's Exponential Rise Signals a Coding‑Free Future
SocialMar 12, 2026

AI's Exponential Rise Signals a Coding‑Free Future

I wrote about the exponential improvement path of AI, the early signs of massive transformations in the nature of work (including software companies where nobody codes any more), and how one week in February is an omen of our future...

By Ethan Mollick
GPT‑5.4 Benchmark Scores Will Split Audiences Into Freak‑Out Camps
SocialMar 12, 2026

GPT‑5.4 Benchmark Scores Will Split Audiences Into Freak‑Out Camps

No matter what GPT-5.4 scores on the METR long task horizon benchmark, there will be a group of people who will absolutely freak out. The score determines which group.

By Ethan Mollick
LLMs Achieve Rapid Logistic Gains on New Benchmark
SocialMar 12, 2026

LLMs Achieve Rapid Logistic Gains on New Benchmark

Exponential improvements* everywhere for those with the eyes to see them. This is a cool benchmark, and was impossible for early non-reasoner LLMs to do at all. * Okay, technically "logistic improvement" because the maximum score is bounded at 100 (and...

By Ethan Mollick
Hunter Alpha on OpenRouter: Just Okay So Far
SocialMar 12, 2026

Hunter Alpha on OpenRouter: Just Okay So Far

So far, Hunter Alpha, the new mystery model on OpenRouter is only okay. Some examples of the Lem Test and the Sparks TiKZ unicorn. https://t.co/iXLx1jnoRe

By Ethan Mollick
AI Chat Agents Are Transitional; We Need New UX Systems
SocialMar 11, 2026

AI Chat Agents Are Transitional; We Need New UX Systems

Talking to agents in Slack, the new hot AI UX, will end up being just as much a transitional phase as talking to agents via chatbot websites. We need new systems to manage agentic work that also support new ways...

By Ethan Mollick
OpenClaw Overextends AI Anthropomorphism, Blurs Human Interaction
SocialMar 11, 2026

OpenClaw Overextends AI Anthropomorphism, Blurs Human Interaction

I’ve been in favor of functional anthropomorphism using AI (they work best if you treat working with AI like working with a person), but I am starting to wonder if OpenClaw takes it too far by basically forcing you to...

By Ethan Mollick