A new paper that we will expand into our next book
A guide to understanding AI as normal technology
And a big change for this newsletter
AI as Social Technology
Our debates about ‘AI’ grow out of 1990s science fiction. Back then, Vinge (1993) wrote essays and novels urging us to face up to the oncoming “Singularity”: a moment of rapid change that would fundamentally transform the human condition. On that day, AI would rapidly evolve from merely human-level intelligence, what some now call ‘artificial general intelligence’ (AGI), into something super-intelligent with its own interests and goals. Humanity would then either be casually eliminated by out-of-control machines, or humans would become as gods, with super-human servitors at our command.
AI for science: What can it do? Can it do things? Let’s find out!
A what we’re reading spotlight
If AI is normal technology, history is not reassuring. — LessWrong
There’s a truism that technology is good - even if it creates winners and losers, it improves the world. Toby Ord argues that the conclusions about t…
The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025
An inside view of the AI revolution, from the people an…
Is there something it is like to be an AI?
Posted on Wednesday 2 Jul 2025. 1,593 words, 6 links. By Matt Webb.
What AI is Really For - Christopher Butler
After three years of immersion in AI, I have come to a relatively simple conclusion: it’s a useful technology that is very likely overhyped to the
The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025
An inside view of the AI revolution, from the people and companies making it happen.
"AI" and Productivity
[I keep bringing these up on Bluesky, so I think it’s time to gather them up and make a post out of them.] This is a collection of articles...
Intelligence Rising
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to be one of the most transformative technologies in human history.
What we can’t measure about AI – yet | Aeon Essays
The costs of transformative innovations are immediately clear: it’s the longterm gains that are hardest to understand
The future of AI is already written
How physical and economic constraints determine which technologies get built, and why full AI automation is inevitable.
AI is Creating Peak Software, Media is the Best Analogy
Let's learn more about the world's most important manufactured product. Meaningful insight, timely analysis, and an occasional investment idea.
233. "The Illusion of Thinking" — Thoughts on This Important Paper
This is a fantastic paper. I just love it. tl;dr AI is not human. Anthropomorphization has been bad for AI, LLMs, and Chat. Clippy walked so today's AI could run.
Paper: Can AI agents conduct open-ended AI research? Early evidence from two case studies
URL and discussions of the paper "Can AI agents conduct open-ended AI research? Early evidence from two case studies"
AI Research Evaluation: Negative Findings and Failure Modes | Arvind Narayanan posted on the topic | LinkedIn
📢 New paper: Forecasts of explosive AI progress hinge on AI agents automating AI research. But most evaluations of agents conducting AI research focus on narrow, verifiable tasks. Can AI agents… | Sayash Kapoor
My claude is constantly wanting to 'A/B test' things instead of actually just doing the thing I told her to do, and constantly wants to fall…
A snapshot of research into answering if frontier AI agents can run R&D into AI (which not surprisingly failed apart from "minor findings…
This is definitely my feeling working with them on recommendation algorithm.
"This paper prompted Jack Clark, one of the co-founders of Anthropic to post this to their news letter: 'the singularity could be delayed'".
