The Coming Hackastrophe
The Atlantic and NYT highlight a looming shift as AI models such as Claude Mythos enable bots to discover and exploit software flaws at scale. Experts warn that within a year or two these tools could make most existing applications cheaply hackable, triggering a period of reduced software availability and heightened ransomware risk. While AI can also patch vulnerabilities, the consensus is that attack capabilities will outpace defenses, forcing firms to simplify products and regulators to consider stricter AI oversight.
On Prediction Market Regulation
The CFTC’s request for comments on prediction‑market regulation has sparked a debate about their role beyond risk hedging. An economist argues that these platforms act as information institutions, aggregating real‑time beliefs on political and policy issues, and should enjoy First...
My Best Idea: Decision Markets
On April 25 1996 the author posted the first description of “decision markets,” a hybrid of prediction markets and decision theory that prices outcomes conditional on specific choices. The idea builds on two long‑standing concepts: markets’ ability to aggregate dispersed information and...
Why Focus On Mid-Level Goals?
Human behavior is organized in hierarchical goal trees, where low‑level actions are cheap and easy to automate, and high‑level aspirations are abstract and hard to monitor. Mid‑level goals sit at a sweet spot: they are concrete enough to be observable...
When AI Day of Reckoning?
Investors have poured roughly $500 billion annually into AI, hoping it will halve software development costs and trigger a surge in the $1‑2 trillion global software market. While large‑language models have shown promise in code generation, the broader software value chain includes...
Buying News By Metric
The author proposes redesigning news economics by tying payments to measurable outcomes such as readership volume, enjoyment ratings, predictive value for future trends, and factual accuracy. Each metric would generate a financial incentive for providers to produce content that aligns...