Mythos: Strong Yet No Breakthrough, Just Linear Progress
Mythos, while a very powerful model, appears to be a relatively linear improvement over previous models. AI progress is real, impressive, and continuing. But Mythos does not appear to be a discontinuity.
China's Magazine Production Capacity May Be Underestimated
Maybe, just maybe, our estimates of China's magazine depth are off. In any case, China can presumably crank up production of these quite rapidly.
Recursive AI Gains Hit Diminishing Returns, No Fast Takeoff
AI Recursive Self Improvement will likely face strong diminishing returns. Anthropic estimates that it takes a 40x productivity increase for its researchers to achieve a doubling of the rate of AI progress. That's roughly an exponent of 0.2 (the fifth...
GPT‑5.4's Hacking Prowess Heightens Security Urgency
GPT5.4 is apparently very effective at hacking as well. Makes proactively using these models to secure the world more urgent and important than we knew.
AI Must Remain Democratic, Plural, and Multi‑Polar
AI is fortunately democratized, plural, and multi-polar. It's important to human freedom that it remains that way. No one person, company, or nation can ever be allowed to control it.
White‑collar Work’s Nonroutine Cognition Slows AI Verification
Most white collar jobs in the US are ”nonroutine cognitive". For those jobs, it's likely that a significant part of the work is made up of tasks where perfect verification is going to be tough, and thus where AI progress...
Uncorrelated Low‑Rank Model Boosts Crowd Forecast Accuracy
This is the wisdom of crowds. Diversity of thought increases overall performance. Grok is only the 5th best forecaster, but its answers correlate least with the rest. You wouldn't choose it if you could only use one model, but added...
AI Will Outpace Humans on Fully Verifiable, Data‑rich Tasks
AI will exceed human capabilities on any task that is 100% verifiable and for which unlimited training data can be produced. That was evident with AlphaGoZero. Now it's coming for coding. At least, in cases where you can perfectly define...
Ukraine Catalyzes Europe's Leap Into Modern Military Era
Ukraine provides a chance for all of Europe to jump into the modern era of military capabilities.
Boost Clean Energy, Not Consumption Restrictions
Amen. The way to address climate or energy is not to police consumption, but rather to increase clean energy abundance.
High-Power Chargers Target Heavy Trucks Outside China
Correct take. Outside of China, anyway. We will build chargers at this power output, but they'll be used primarily for heavy trucks.
Mythos Cuts Cyber Attack Surface, Makes Exploits Scarcer
Concur. Mythos shrinks the total cyber attack surface area. There will be fewer exploits remaining, and those likely harder to find. And because model capabilities scale sub-linearly with both compute and training data, it likely takes a very large $$...
AI Cybersecurity Closes Gaps, Giving Defenders the Edge
Yes. We're closing vulnerabilities that could have been (and may have been) exploited by bad actors already. AI cyber-security may well favor defenders in the large majority of cases.
Fearful AI Under State Control; Favor Democratic, Regulated Pluralism
Strong nation-state control of AI is terrifying. Democratized, plural AI with sensible regulation is the way.
Marketplaces Choose Models That Meet Desired Behaviors
Good thought. We are - as a marketplace - selecting for models that do what we want them to do.
AI Safety Requires Ecosystem Defense Against Model Jailbreaks
We should assume that any malicious actor can use the top open weight models and can jailbreak them so they'll answer any question on bioweapons, cyber attacks, etc.. AI safety fundamentally must happen at the ecosystem level. We must...
Antarctica Mirrors Humanity’s Next Frontier in Space
This is an absolutely delightful article about Antarctica, with very deliberate insights into human exploration of space.
Fact‑checking on Facebook Is My Top AI Wish
Fact checking integrated into Facebook (like Grok on twitter) is the single thing I most want from Meta's AI efforts. If they accomplish nothing else, I'll still be delighted if they build that feature.
Orban Aligns with Iran, Russia; Vance Supports Enemy
Viktor Orban is allied with Iran and Russia. Vance is there trying to prop up our enemy.
Mythos Mirrors Trend, No ECI Acceleration Detected
Anthropic's Mythos does not appear to show any acceleration of ECI. After normalizing Anthropic's internal ECI with @EpochAIResearch 's public ECI, it's clear that the two metrics are extremely close, and that Mythos is pretty much on trend, just slightly...
Mythos Gains Not Driven by Recursive Self‑Improvement
Anthropic's Mythos achievements were not a result of AI Recursive Self Improvement. (Per the Mythos system card.) https://t.co/zYN8UMQpri
Balanced AI Governance: Regulation, Not State Control
Nat is completely correct here. It's quite fortunate that we live in a multi-polar AI world. Government should be one of those poles. Sensible regulation makes sense. But nationalization or complete government control is terrifying from the standpoint of human...
Open‑Weight LLMs Detect Same Vulnerabilities as Mythos
It's not just Mythos: Cheap, open-weight LLMs can find the vulnerabilities that Anthropic revealed Mythos found.
Prioritize Misuse Risks Over Superintelligence; Hold Models Back
I think this hangs on whether you see AI risks more from bad actors mis-using AI vs an AI becoming a super-intelligent adversary. Since I'm 99% in the former camp, I see responsible AI companies holding models back until mitigation...
Superhuman Cybersecurity Tool, Not True AGI Yet
Not at all sure this is AGI, and in fact doubt that it meets my criteria of parity with human cognitive capabilities in general. But it's a superhuman cyber security tool. ASI is narrow. AlphaGoZero is a narrow ASI. Mythos...
AI Front‑Runners Act Responsibly, Defying Sci‑Fi Corporate Villains
In science fiction, the corporations are often evil doers. In the AI world right now, we're pretty fortunate that the three companies at the frontier are fairly responsible actors, making proactive choices in the interest of the public good.
US Withdrawal Fuels Iran's Stronger, Angrier Toll Regime
Very plausible scenario. The US bombs for a few more weeks, then leaves. Iran starts charging a toll for ships leaving the Strait of Hormuz. After some period of rebuilding, it leads to an Iran that's stronger and angrier than...
Oil Shock Dampened: Prices Below Peaks, Economy Decouples
So far this oil shock is not quite at the level of previous shocks. 1. Inflation adjusted, prices still aren't at their highest 2. The world's economy is less coupled to oil than in years past.
Anthropic's ARR May Be 25% Overstated Compared to OpenAI
Context on Anthropic's recent revenue announcement. Still incredible, but probably slightly overstated relative to OpenAI, due to differences in how they report.
Threats of Strikes Spark Iranian Unity, Boosting Regime Support
A danger of attacking Iran was always that it might increase support for the regime through a rally-round-the-flag effect. I don't know how widespread the below is, or how astroturfed, but it's consistent with that kind of effect.
AI Future Will Be Plural; Google Holds Key Advantages
I continue to believe that the AI future is plural, with multiple leading companies. And that Google has some important advantages, if they use them.
Only Congress Can Rename the Department of Defense
Your reminder that it's the Department of Defense, by law. Only Congress can change that. Trump has merely told people that they may use a secondary title of Department of War. Doing so is a choice, and sends a signal....
Optimistic About AI, Yet Skeptical of Near‑Term AGI
"Two Hours of AI Optimism - Grounded in Reality". My opening talk at @Abundance360, with demos of Google tools by @DynamicWebPaige. I explain why I'm bullish on AI and yet skeptical of near-term AGI or fast take-off to super-intelligence. https://t.co/flutju2hNj
AI Self‑Improvement Peaks: Early Gains, Later Diminishing Returns
This is the best essay and modeling of AI recursive self-improvement that I've seen. It reaches the same conclusions I do (that in the foreseeable future we'll see notable improvements but then diminishing returns). And it does so via a...
OpenAI Outlines New AI Policies with Concise AI Summaries
OpenAI proposed a number of AI policies to strengthen society today. Here are three AI-generated summaries for the tl;dr set. https://t.co/qv5rKvtIPF
AI Safety Debates Overlook Other Direct Threats Beyond Cyber, Bio
It seems that AI risk conversations have really honed in on two risk of direct and rapid harm: Cyberattacks and bio-weapons. Are there other direct harms that safety people are as concerned about as those two?
AI Provides Context News Media Often Misses
News outlets are very single-sensational-event focused. Most news (especially TV) does a terrible job of providing context, explaining the big picture, providing perspective, showing long term trends, etc.. AI excels at this.
Risk Talk Doesn't Slow AI Adoption, Says Business Reality
If the heads of the AI labs believe this, it's responsible and ethical of them to talk about it, right? From a pure business standpoint, talking about risks hasn't seemed to slow AI usage growth.
Bureaucratic Procurement Fails in Rapid Tech Era
In an age of cheap, disruptive, rapidly improving technology, the old top down, bureaucracy-heavy ways of doing military procurement just don't cut it.
Future Drones Prove Unprecedented Agility in Warfare
This is a military years further into the future than any other. It's not just the drones themselves. It's how agile they've proven themselves to be.
Every Story Needs a Long‑term Trend Graph
News outlets should publish long term graphs as a matter of course. Every crime story should come with a 60 year graph showing per capita trends in that crime. Every micro story on any topic should have a graph on...
Research Finds Twitter's Rightward Bias Has Limited Societal Impact
Question: There's clear evidence that twitter tilts right. Is there evidence showing how it does or doesn't affect broader political views and outcomes in the US? Does this rightward slant matter, beyond the experience on this site?
US Oil Prices Now Fully Tied to Global Market
In the early days of the invasion of Iran, US oil prices were slightly insulated from the global price shock, by perhaps $10 a barrel or 25% of the spike. That has now ended. Oil is a globally traded commodity....
Seattle Asian Art Museum Showcases Stunning Geometry of Light
Seeing 'Geometry of Light' at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Gorgeous. Still on for another week or so.
GLP‑1s Linked to Lower Risk of Mental Illness Worsening
GLP-1s appear to reduce the odds of mental illness getting worse. Another unlooked-for benefit. Caveats: 1. This is observational, not an RCT. 2. This is reduction of odds getting worse on each of these measures. Not reduction of existing mental illness....
Software Hurdles Keep Mass Humanoid Robots Years Away
One of many reasons I think we're still years and years away from mass humanoid robot adoption. (The software is actually my top reason.)
GLP‑1s Massively Marked up; LLMs Priced Near Cost
One observation here: GLP-1s are priced at maybe 25-50x production cost (not counting R&D). LLM usage is priced at perhaps 1x inference cost (not counting training). In any case, two great innovations that are rapidly catching on.
China Competition Will Accelerate US Pharma, Cut Red Tape
This is great to see. Biotech and pharma competition with China is going to force us to sharpen and accelerate processes in the US, and cut red tape. And we'll get the benefit of Chinese drugs as well. Win/win.
Chinese EVs Could Cut US Oil Dependence, Need Security Fixes
Chinese EVs would benefit American consumers, reduce our vulnerability to oil price shocks, and accelerate the end of oil. There are issues, especially around software and security. We should work to solve those with the goal of having Chinese EVs...
AI Can Transform Education—We Must Rethink Institutions
AI has the potential to dramatically improve education. But we'll have to be intentional about experimenting, discovering what works, and changing how education operates to take advantage of it. I'm more bullish on the tech than the institutions.
