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.
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?
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
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.
LLMs and performative productivity
It's worth asking whether LLMs are actually making us more productive at all—and if so, what we might be sacrificing in return.
