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Working on @ampcode. Writing registerspill.thorstenball.com. Once authored interpreterbook.com and compilerbook.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Open source in its current form no longer makes sense because artificial eyeballs now fulfill the "enough eyeballs" principle for finding bugs.

  open source

  Their words

  Open source in its current form doesn’t make sense anymore. “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” is still true but now we have artificial eyeballs

  thorstenball.com

Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The US war on Iran ended up delivering Osama bin Laden's original strategic goal of ending American military presence in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula

  America

  Their words

  Osama bin Laden's one concrete strategic goal was to end the American military presence in the Gulf and on the Arabian Peninsula. A generation later, Donald Trump's war on Iran has apparently delivered it for him

  braddelong.substack.com

Writer and podcaster; co-author of Abundance with Ezra Klein, a staff writer at The Atlantic from 2008 to 2025, and host of the Plain English podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI is removing human involvement from entry-level hiring by pitting AI-written job applications against AI-written screening filters.

  LLMs

  Their words

  Artificial intelligence has unleashed a torrent of cheating on campus and created chaos in the job application process, as both students and employers use large language models: the former, to write hundreds of AI-assisted applications; the latter, to screen those AI-written applications with AI-written filters, thus removing from the process of finding a first job those procedural frictions sometimes known as "people."

  derekthompson.org

Climate journalist; founded HEATED in 2019 after reporting on climate at The New Republic and ThinkProgress.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Data centers are not AI's biggest climate problem; fossil fuel companies' use of AI tools to boost oil and gas production is.

  data centersenergy

  Their words

  data centers are nowhere near the biggest climate problem with artificial intelligence.

  heated.world

US science and technology adviser to the president, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; previously US chief technology officer and chief operating officer of Scale AI.

From one piece Michael Kratsios: Inside the White House's AI Strategy 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  AI will transform how scientific discovery is done, and within two or three years a working scientist's job will already look dramatically different.

  Their words

  If you are working on material science, if you are working on pharmaceuticals, if you are working on chemistry, you in 2 3 years or even today are doing your role as a scientist dramatically different because of artificial intelligence.

  youtube.com

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  The United States cannot lead in artificial intelligence with closed models alone: it needs a vibrant open-source ecosystem alongside them.

  open sourceAmerica

  Their words

  if the US wants to lead in artificial intelligence, we have to have a vibrant closed and open source ecosystem, and that's the only way they can all work together.

  youtube.com

Mathematician at UCLA, working mainly in harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. Writes What's new, a long-running blog on their research, open problems and expository notes.

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  Excessively AI-polished proofs can remove natural friction and become easy to read but hard to learn from.

  Their words

  An excessively AI-polished proof may sand away both the "artificial" friction (typos, awkward phrasing, disorganization) and the "natural" friction, leaving a text that is easy to read and hard to learn from.

  Mathematics in the age of AIarxiv.org

Swedish programmer with degrees in engineering and psychology, author of Your Code as a Crime Scene and founder of CodeScene.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming

  Their words

  Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming by Peter Norvig. Learning the AI described in this book probably won't land you a job today. But reading the code examples will transform how you think about source code. The book shines when it comes to code comments, a topic that I've never seen demonstrated well in other sources. Here we get to see how comments become valuable as a narrative that explains both intent and reasoning. Brilliant, just brilliant.

  adamtornhill.substack.com

Wall Street Journal bestselling author on marketing and writing, partner at MarketingProfs, and writer of the fortnightly Total Annarchy newsletter.

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  The presence of an em dash in a piece of writing does not indicate it was written by AI.

  Their words

  AI uses em dashes. Humans use em dashes. That does not make an em dash an AI fingerprint any more than Batman's cape makes everyone in a bath towel Batman.

  Why Care About The Stupid Em Dash Anyway?annhandley.com

Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.

From one piece Principled Thinking and AI Need to Go Together 2 beliefs · raydalio.substack.com

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  Success now requires combining the best human intelligence with the best artificial intelligence

  Their words

  I believe that the path to success is best achieved by putting the best human intelligence together with the best artificial intelligence and that the way of thinking I am describing here is essential to understand and use in the new human/artificial intelligence era.

  Principled Thinking and AI Need to Go Togetherraydalio.substack.com

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  Even the most advanced AI cannot be followed blindly in investing, where value added is zero-sum and what is widely known is therefore worth little.

  Their words

  I know through my experiences that even the most advanced artificial intelligences don’t have adequate enough insights to allow one to blindly follow them and that unique human understanding and insights are still invaluable, and that that is especially true in investing where value-added is a zero-sum game (so that, when it comes to adding value, what is widely known is of little value.)

  Principled Thinking and AI Need to Go Togetherraydalio.substack.com

Author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, who advises companies on corporate governance and mission protection.

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  Corporations are the oldest artificial intelligence on the planet, superorganisms running on the same emergent principle that makes a transformer appear intelligent.

  Their words

  corporations, organizations are the oldest form of artificial intelligence on the planet. They are an example of this emergent intelligence.

  youtube.com

Writer and academic, author of The Cult of Smart and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement; writes a daily newsletter on politics, education and culture.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Putting the children most likely to succeed into one school is segregation, not educational excellence.

  Their words

  Simply creating artificial separation between different students is not a strategy for “educational excellence.” It’s just segregation.

  freddiedeboer.substack.com

Technology analyst whose weekly email on tech reaches over 150,000 readers. Publishes essays and an annual presentation on where the industry is going.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Regulating artificial intelligence as a single category is the wrong level of abstraction, in the way that regulating databases or spreadsheets would be.

  Their words

  I think regulation of AI is sort of the wrong level of abstraction. Talking about regulating AI as AI is the wrong level of abstraction. And it's like saying we're going to regulate databases or regulate spreadsheets or regulate cars. Well, we do, but not like that.

  youtube.com

Staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes the Infinite Scroll column, and author of Filterworld and The Longing for Less.

From one piece Labubus and the brainrot aesthetic 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  People's desperate need to manipulate their own image, and their acceptance of being human-machine hybrids in the AI era, is reflected in current ugly, artificial-feeling consumer aesthetics.

  Their words

  I think this slop-adjacent realm of dupe products and Instagrammable potions points to our increasingly desperate need to manipulate our own images, and an acceptance of the fact that we're kind of hybridized monsters ourselves in this post-A.I. human-machine moment

  Labubus and the brainrot aesthetickylechayka.substack.com

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  Contemporary consumer products no longer claim purity or naturalness; they present themselves openly as artificial mixtures.

  Their words

  Any pretense of the pure or organic is undercut by a kind of willful alchemy; everything is an admixture.

  Labubus and the brainrot aesthetickylechayka.substack.com

Writer and researcher, founder of New Science; writes essays on science funding, sleep research, productivity and ambition at guzey.com.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Work on large language models is not progress toward artificial general intelligence, because the models do not understand what they read.

  AGILLMsOpenAI

  Their words, before

  This means that working on neural networks is NOT getting us closer to AGI, except indirectly.

  Their words now

  It’s become very difficult for me to maintain the belief in the stupidity of ChatGPT when every time I laugh at it, it ends up ridiculing me 6 months later.

Creator of the Keras deep-learning library and the ARC-AGI benchmark.

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  Current AI evaluation of world models is too narrow, favoring static representations learned from massive datasets over efficient learning through interaction

  Their words

  However, current understanding and evaluation of world models in artificial intelligence (AI) remains narrow, often focusing on static representations learned from training on massive corpora of data, instead of the efficiency and efficacy in learning these representations through interaction and exploration within a novel environment.

  arxiv.org

Senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation; writes Second Best, and was the Niskanen Center's director of social policy before that.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A true artificial general intelligence cannot exist without being recognized as a moral subject.

  AGI

  Their words

  It follows that a true AGI with full, human-level autonomy is inconceivable in the Kantian sense without also gaining our recognition as a moral subject.

  Do LLMs really reason?secondbest.ca

Chief executive of Alphabet and Google; joined Google in 2004 and led Chrome and Android before taking over in 2015.

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  We are in the phase of artificial jagged intelligence: dramatic progress alongside models that still trip on counting letters.

  Their words

  I feel like we are in the AJI phase where dramatic progress, some things don't work well, but overall you're seeing lots of progress.

  youtube.com

Executive coach for product leaders. Previously a partner at GV (Google Ventures) and a product manager at Google. Writes at Bring the Donuts, including a standing essential-reading list for product managers.

From one piece Why Great Leaders Embrace Humor and Playfulness 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Playfulness and humor in leadership build authenticity and credibility rather than undermine it.

  Their words

  Playfulness and humor won't erode your credibility. They amplify your presence. They make you real. And people follow real.

  Why Great Leaders Embrace Humor and Playfulnessbringthedonuts.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A leader who projects unflappable seriousness causes their team to hide problems and honest feedback.

  Their words

  Nobody wants to follow a joyless leader. If your presence signals, "Everything is fine. I've got this all figured out. Please don't show me anything messy," your team will take the hint.

  Why Great Leaders Embrace Humor and Playfulnessbringthedonuts.com

Executive coach for product leaders. Previously a partner at GV (Google Ventures) and a product manager at Google. Writes at Bring the Donuts, including a standing essential-reading list for product managers.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Good leadership is defined by presence, curiosity, and authenticity rather than always having the right answer.

  Their words

  Leadership isn't about always having the answer and always being right. It's about being present, deeply curious, and authentic.

  The Power of Not Knowingbringthedonuts.com

Co-founder of Microsoft and of the Gates Foundation. Writes Gates Notes on global health, energy and climate, and on whatever they have been reading.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Coming Wave

  Their words

  Most of the coverage of The Coming Wave has focused on what it has to say about artificial intelligence—which makes sense, given that it's one of the most important books on AI ever written.

  gatesnotes.com

Neuroscientist at UC Davis; studies memory and wrote Why We Remember.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Task-switching destroys memory by chopping an experience into artificial event boundaries, so you spend the whole session catching up instead of building a model.

  Their words

  It just kind of vanished, because what happens, I’m creating all these artificial event boundaries. I’m losing all this executive function every time I switch, I’m getting a few seconds slower and I’m catching up mentally to what’s happening.

  youtube.com

Game designer and director of the NYU Game Center; made Universal Paperclips and writes Donkeyspace.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Games are the natural habitat of artificial intelligence, because following rules towards an arbitrary goal is what these systems do.

  Their words

  Games are AI’s natural habitat.

  How to Play a Gamefranklantz.substack.com

Theoretical computer scientist, Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin and director of its Quantum Information Center. Writes the blog Shtetl-Optimized.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Human-level artificial intelligence is plausibly centuries or millennia away, and no trend supports a shorter estimate.

  Their words, before

  If I were forced at gunpoint to guess, I’d say that human-level AI seemed to me like a slog of many more centuries or millennia (with the obvious potential for black swans along the way).

  Their words now

  I was wrong, of course, not to contemplate more seriously the prospect that AI might enter a civilization-altering trajectory, not merely eventually but within the next decade.

Co-founder and chief executive of Meta Platforms, the company he started as Facebook in 2004.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  After text, photos and video, immersive presence is clearly the next frontier of how people communicate.

  Their words

  And I think the ability to be immersed and feel present with the people around you or the people who you care about is, from my perspective, clearly the next frontier. It just so happens that it's incredibly technologically difficult.

  youtube.com

Programmer; founded comma.ai and tinygrad, and was the first to unlock the iPhone.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  What makes a relationship worth having is the other person's quirks and small annoyances, which is exactly what we will edit out of artificial companions.

  Their words

  It is actually all their nuances and quirks and slight annoyances that make this relationship worthwhile. I don’t think we’re going to realize that until it’s too late.

  youtube.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  You Look Like a Thing and I Love You

  Their words

  A funny book explaining the basics of AI! The subtitle is How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place. A great introduction to AI. With a cute cartoon mascot. The title is from her training an AI to write romantic greeting cards.

  sive.rs

Co-founder and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management; author of the Oaktree memos.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Value investing should mean buying whatever offers the better value proposition on all factors, not buying one side of the value/growth divide.

  value investing

  Their words

  Rather than being defined as one side of this artificial dichotomy, value investing should instead consist of buying whatever represents a better value proposition, taking all factors into account.

  Something of Value (memo to Oaktree clients)oaktreecapital.com

Creator of the Keras deep-learning library and the ARC-AGI benchmark.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Progress toward more intelligent artificial systems requires defining and evaluating intelligence so systems can be compared with each other and with humans.

  Their words

  To make deliberate progress towards more intelligent and more human-like artificial systems, we need to be following an appropriate feedback signal: we need to be able to define and evaluate intelligence in a way that enables comparisons between two systems, as well as comparisons with humans.

  On the Measure of Intelligencearxiv.org

Musician and writer; answers readers' questions weekly at The Red Hand Files, and fronts Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  What moves a listener is not the song alone but a human being straining against their own limits, which is why a machine can write a good song and never a great one.

  Their words

  What we are actually listening to is human limitation and the audacity to transcend it. Artificial Intelligence, for all its unlimited potential, simply doesn’t have this capacity.

  theredhandfiles.com

Philosopher and historian of existential risk; wrote Human Extinction, and coined "TESCREAL" with Timnit Gebru for the cluster of ideologies they argue underpins the AI industry.

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  Never project human mental properties onto an artificial intelligence; the difference between the two architectures is the reason to worry, not a reason not to.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  One of the most commonly emphasized points in the AI safety literature is that one must never anthropomorphize AI—that is, don’t project human mental properties onto artificially intelligent systems.

  thebulletin.org

Security technologist and author of books including Applied Cryptography and Data and Goliath; writes the Schneier on Security blog and the monthly Crypto-Gram newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  An access mechanism built for the police cannot be limited to the police, so a backdoor weakens the system against every attacker at once.

  Their words

  As technologists, we can’t build an access system that only works for people of a certain citizenship, or with a particular morality, or only in the presence of a specified legal document.

  Security vs. Surveillanceschneier.com

Programmer and teacher; wrote Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby and 99 Bottles of OOP.

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  Existing code exerts a powerful influence: its presence argues that it is correct and necessary, and sunk cost keeps teams inside an abstraction that has stopped fitting.

  Their words

  Existing code exerts a powerful influence. Its very presence argues that it is both correct and necessary.

  The Wrong Abstractionsandimetz.com

Software engineer and PostgreSQL contributor who ran the Postgres Open conference; later a senior engineering leader at Mozilla and CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Wacom Intuos3

  Their words

  I use a Wacom Intuos3 tablet for drawing and sketching.

  usesthis.com

Danish Mac developer; author of the TextMate text editor and founder of MacroMates.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Cinema Display

  Their words

  I have a 30" Cinema Display mounted on an aluminum monitor arm (from Space, but I can't find their online presence). I like the aesthetics of this arm as the mount is through a hole in the table instead of a clamp, so it takes up less desk space than the original holder (and allows greater degree of movement).

  usesthis.com