Hi from buttondown! At the bottom of this newsletter is a bit of administrivia about the new platform How LLMs are and are not like the brain Beneath all the...
Why do LLMs make stuff up? New research peers under the hood.
Claude's faulty "known entity" neurons sometimes override its "don't answer" circuitry.
There's Something Fundamentally Wrong With LLMs
LLMs aren't trained on the "vast majority of speech," experts warn, a major blind spot that could have sweeping consequences.
LLMs are not like manufacturing machines - Ross Wintle
LLMs are not just machines. They are machine-building machines! This comes with way more responsibility. And understanding it may change how you use them.
Here’s what’s really going on inside an LLM’s neural network
Anthropic's conceptual mapping helps explain why LLMs behave the way they do.
Cognitive exponents and LLM leverage
I know a few people for whom LLMs have been a near-immediate multiplier of attention and effort. I know a lot for whom LLMs clearly make them worse at thinking and doing things. So: why?
Scientists Say LLMs Appear to Be Acting as a Cognitive Virus Among Humans
AI's wide proliferation shares some striking similarities with the ways viruses spread, as an international team of researchers argue.
Pluralistic: LLMs are real, AI is fake (12 Sep 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Once you understand the corporate culture of AI "hyperscalers" consists primarily of everyone cooking their brains by locking themselves in the bathroom, holding flashlights under their chins, and saying "Aaaaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeee" until they wet themselves in terror, a lot of things snap into focus:
The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway.
I almost agree with all of the LLM critics, yet I still use LLMs a lot. I know this sounds like I am delusional, but I don't think I am alone with it.
The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway.
I almost agree with all of the LLM critics, yet I still use LLMs a lot. I know this sounds like I am delusional, but I don't think I am alone with it.
The Ultimate Guide to Fine-Tuning LLMs from Basics to Breakthroughs: An Exhaustive Review of Technologies, Research, Best Practices, Applied Research Challenges and Opportunities (Version 1.0)
Dan Shipper 📧 on Twitter / X
this is true and is a big reason why you don’t need to be a highly technical researcher to use LLMs in surprising and novel ways https://t.co/TuxNzXzToU— Dan Shipper 📧 (@danshipper) July 27, 2025
LLMs are bullshitters. But that doesn't mean they're not useful.
Note: This is a personal essay by Matt Ranger, Kagi's head of ML In 1986, Harry Frankfurt wrote On Bullshit. He differentiates a lying from bullshitting: Lying means you have a concept of what is true,...
Why Are LLMs Smart?
A popular way to explain how current LLMs work is to say that “all” they do is predict the next most likely word in a sentence.
How Do We Talk about LLMs?
By Jim Clifford It is never fun to watch friends argue. Generative AI has created multiple fractures across our universities and the community of historians. The stakes are high and we are all deal…
