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Machine-learning researcher on open language models; writes the Interconnects newsletter and the RLHF Book, after leading post-training at Ai2.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Recursive self-improvement in AI will mainly make existing model capability cheaper rather than raise peak intelligence.

  LLMs

  Their words

  RSI is poised to make modern LLMs vastly cheaper. Trends that have shown LLMs get exponentially cheaper at a given intelligence are likely to accelerate.

  Why I still haven’t bought into true RSIinterconnects.ai

Writes Slow Boring, a near-daily newsletter on American politics and public policy; co-founded Vox in 2014 and left it in 2020.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Major historical events do not necessarily have deep intellectual or ideological causes; assuming so is a common fallacy.

  Their words

  But I think this impulse to gild the lily and attribute the rise of Hitler to deep intellectual trends is an example of a pretty common fallacy of assuming that an incredibly important world event must have incredibly important roots.

  How to stop Hitlerslowboring.com

Novelist and critic, author of The Body Scout and Metallic Realms; writes the newsletter Counter Craft on fiction craft and the publishing industry.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Publishing industry claims to predict how trends will play out, but such predictions are unreliable.

  Their words

  Publishers want to have people believe they know exactly how and when things will shake out, but you just never know.

  Processing: How Nicholas Russell Wrote Observercountercraft.substack.com

Writes Slow Boring, a near-daily newsletter on American politics and public policy; co-founded Vox in 2014 and left it in 2020.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The plan to hijack airplanes and destroy the World Trade Center was an eccentric, unlikely scheme rather than a natural or inevitable one.

  Their words

  I think appreciation of the contingency starts with observing that the whole idea of hijacking airplanes in order to destroy the World Trade Center is eccentric.

  We’re still underrating 9/11’s impactslowboring.com

Builds developer tools — SST, and now OpenCode at Anomaly. Posts constantly on x.com and writes almost never; the blog stopped in 2021.

• Likedtheir ownrcmnd.app

  muse spark

  Their words

  muse spark 1.3 reminding me how much i missed fast models

  x.com

Technical staff at METR, where she works on threat modelling and risk assessment for loss-of-control risks from advanced AI.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Deleting the rollouts where a monitor caught cheating is structurally the same as positively reinforcing all the cheating the monitor missed.

  Their words

  But if there was some amount of cheating that the monitor didn't catch, then those rollouts wouldn't be removed. And it might be like structurally very analogous to just positively reinforcing whatever the cheating rollouts were that happened not to be caught by your monitor.

  youtube.com

Epidemiologist; founded Your Local Epidemiologist in March 2020 to translate public-health science, and consults for organisations including the CDC.

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  The raw count of food recalls is a poor measure of foodborne illness trends because unknown contamination goes uncounted.

  Their words

  The problem is that "number of recalls" is a terrible metric because we don't know what we don't know.

  yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

Demographer; writes on fertility, marriage and population, and directs the Pro-Family Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

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  A model fitted only to trends in its own outcome cannot forecast anything, because it contains no variable anyone could change.

  Their words

  The demand for explanations of low fertility is entirely a demand for variables which will reduce these technical trends to near zero.

  We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Declinelymanstone.substack.com

Founder and CEO of Valar Atomics, a nuclear-reactor company founded in 2023.

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  Small modular reactors are the right idea, but you only reach them by iterating on real hardware -- which is what everyone else missed.

  Their words

  what was missing is that people did not realize that you're going to have to pursue that model through hardware iteration. And that's where really where Valor is unique is that yes, we believe in SMRs, we believe in reactors that are manufactured, but we also know that in order to get there, you have to do it through hardware iteration.

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb; previously an infrastructure engineer at Parse, Facebook and Linden Lab, and co-author of Observability Engineering.

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  Neither the AI enthusiasts nor the AI sceptics are making it up; both camps are looking at real trends.

  Their words

  See, the problem is that neither side is making it up. Like they are seeing really scary trends.

  youtube.com

Founded PSPDFKit in 2011 and ran it for a decade. Came back from a break to work on AI agents — the OpenClaw project, and OpenAI, joined in February 2026. Writes at steipete.me.

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  Reviewing agent-written code is risk management rather than reading: how long the change took and how big it is tell you when to look closely.

  Their words

  Part of it is just like you develop a little bit of a feeling how long something should take. So if I do a small tweak that should like change how dragging works and it takes three hours, I know something's wrong. I'll look closely. But otherwise, part of code review is simply like observing, looking how big it changes and trusting your gut.

  Peter Steinberger: "Fun Is Velocity"youtube.com

Professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M; writes The Climate Brink with Zeke Hausfather.

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  It is already too late to fully prevent climate change because the atmosphere has been irreversibly altered by carbon pollution.

  Their words

  At this point, we've missed the boat at completely preventing climate change. Our atmosphere has been fundamentally altered by carbon pollution.

  Wildfires are remaking the worldtheclimatebrink.com

Economic historian at Columbia; writes Chartbook on economics, geopolitics and history, and wrote Crashed and The Deluge.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Europe's corporate sector has become a net lender to the rest of the economy, and that low rate of productive investment is what left its industry exposed.

  EuropeChina

  Their words

  The two seemingly contradictory trends connect, because the relatively low rate of productive investment leaves European industry vulnerable to its most vigorous competitors whose firms are contending with an even more deflationary macroeconomic situation at home in China.

  adamtooze.substack.com

Investing columnist for The Wall Street Journal and editor of the revised edition of Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor.

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  How NOT to Invest

  Their words

  Ritholtz does exactly that, running through such surefire ways to wreck your wealth as ignoring taxes, paying excessive fees, misinterpreting data, overreacting to short-term trends, and trading too much.

  jasonzweig.com

Programmer; wrote Extreme Programming Explained and Test-Driven Development, signed the Agile Manifesto, and writes Tidy First?.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Facebook could ship safely without much unit testing because it had many independent layers of feedback, each one catching what the earlier layers missed.

  Their words

  Then you had code review which gave you another level of feedback. You could roll out internally more frequently. And everybody was using Facebook for all kinds of stuff, personal and internal business stuff. So whatever feature you developed, people would start using it immediately. So you get another round of feedback. Then we had this phased roll out process where you'd start rolling your stuff out. If there was a problem, the blast radius would be limited to a a few million people.

  youtube.com

Climate scientist and energy systems analyst; writes The Climate Brink with Andrew Dessler and leads climate research at Stripe.

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  Atmospheric CO2 concentration is a lagging indicator of emissions trends, not a leading one.

  Their words

  Either way, atmospheric CO2 is better seen as a lagging rather than leading indicator of changes in emissions, as it is harder to see the effects of emissions reductions on concentrations over shorter time periods.

  theclimatebrink.com

Historian of maritime strategy at the US Naval War College; wrote The Wars for Asia and works on why continental and maritime powers fight differently.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A continental power fights on its invader's timetable; for a maritime power, whether and when to intervene at all is a matter of strategy.

  Their words

  Whereas if you're a maritime power observing someone else being invaded cuz in theory it's pretty tough to invade you by sea, it's a major point of strategy as to whether you're going to intervene at all and if you are, what is the timing?

  youtube.com

Programmer known online as technomancy; author of Leiningen, the Clojure build tool, and a maintainer of the Fennel programming language.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The mass adoption of React and single-page-app architecture across nearly all web apps was driven by trend-following rather than technical fit, producing fragile, scripting-dependent software.

  JavaScript

  Their words

  As the software industry is largely driven by trends and fashion, React's "cool factor" led to a mass amnesia regarding how to make normal, well-designed web apps made of HTML with a sprinkling of scripting on top and everything became one big tangled, brittle mass of Javascript that completely keeled over when scripting wasn't available.

  technomancy.us

Scientist and writer on quantum computing, memory systems and metascience; co-wrote the standard quantum computation textbook and wrote Reinventing Discovery.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Poincare missed special relativity because he knew too much: the leading physicists of the day were prisoners of their own expertise.

  Their words

  his expertise seems to be getting in the way. He knows so much, he understands so much, um and then he's not able to let go of these these things.

  youtube.com

Founding member of OpenAI and former director of AI at Tesla; creator of nanoGPT and the term "vibe coding".

• Our readingkorrents.com

  An overnight automated search found tunings that two decades of hand-tuning experience had missed on an already well-tuned repository.

  Their words

  And I've gotten to a certain point and I thought it was like fairly well tuned and then I let auto research go for like overnight and it came back with like tunings that I didn't see.

  youtube.com

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

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  People who extrapolate from first-principles models have a stronger track record predicting AI progress than those who wait for empirical proof.

  Their words

  Extrapolators have a remarkable track record in the AI field, being repeatedly early to trends and capabilities that empiricists believed were still decades away.

  Empiricists vs. Extrapolatorssecondbest.ca

Investment researcher and engineer who runs Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, writing on macroeconomics, currency systems and equity analysis.

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  Utility blockchains that provide useful services tend not to accrue much long-term value to their coinholders, unlike a winning monetary protocol.

  Their words

  Utility protocols face heavy competition, and thus their value trends toward their marginal cost of operation.

  Why Most Cryptocurrencies Won’t Accrue Valuelynalden.com

China economy researcher based in Beijing who writes on his personal blog about Chinese political economy, history, books and music.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A declining manufacturing share of GDP as an economy matures reflects economic success rather than decline.

  China

  Their words

  Both of these trends are a consequence of economic success, in terms of higher output and productivity: at least some of what is decried as "de-industrialization" is good actually. It is also good for China's planners to recognize that reality and not distort the economy in pursuit of an impossible outcome.

  China bows to de-industrializationandrewbatson.com

Emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London; wrote Strategy: A History and Command, and writes about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as they happen.

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  The 'coalition of the willing' for Ukraine is not a security guarantee and should stop being described as one.

  Their words

  In all of this what may have been missed is that the plan now connected with a coalition of the willing is not a security guarantee.

  samf.substack.com

Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product design at Facebook; author of The Making of a Manager; writes The Looking Glass.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Growth always stops eventually, and only a company that instrumented its business beforehand gets to find out why instead of scrambling.

  Their words

  It's easier to even predict whether growth will slow down at a certain point. it's easier to catch these trends earlier. If you don't have good observability over how your business runs and what the company's um key levers are, then you will be scrambling.

  youtube.com

Professor at Berkeley working on robot learning; co-founded Physical Intelligence, and argues that robots will learn from data rather than be programmed.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Once a robot is good enough, you can teach it with words instead of with demonstrations, and language becomes a training signal for motor skill.

  Their words

  Like now, like basically learning is not for these systems is not just learning from raw actions. It's also learning from words eventually be learning from observing what people do from the kind of natural feedback that you receive when you're doing a job together with somebody else.

  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.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Waste Books

  Their words

  Tweets from 1765-1799 by a 4’9” hunchback physicist, friends with Goethe and Kant, admired by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, etc. Such wonderful random thoughts, beautiful perspectives on thinking for yourself, observing nature, language, freedom, philosophy, religion, and more. Hundreds of initial insights, especially inspiring because they’re undeveloped.

  sive.rs

Historian of the Second World War; wrote Normandy '44 and Brothers in Arms, and co-hosts the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Britain and France's refusal to negotiate seriously with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939 was the great missed opportunity to snooker the Third Reich.

  Their words

  I mean, if ever there is, I think, a mistake that’s Britain and France should’ve been a bit more into realpolitiks than they were. It’s such an opportunity to ensure that, to snooker the Third Reich, and they don’t take it.

  youtube.com

Researcher and science writer. Co-founder and editor at Works in Progress magazine, formerly a researcher at Our World in Data, and author of the Scientific Discovery newsletter on science, global health and medical innovation.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The long decline in mortality is not guaranteed to continue: new shocks and old unsolved diseases can reverse it.

  Their words

  None of these trends are a given.

  scientificdiscovery.dev

Writes about the biotech industry, drug development and forecasting — “I write to learn, mostly about biotech.”

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A drug discovery scientist starting today will probably retire without ever having worked on a drug that reached the market.

  Their words

  Such prolificacy is unlikely to be repeated any time soon; if current trends hold, a drug discovery scientist starting their career today is likely to retire without ever having worked on a single drug that makes it to market.

  atelfo.github.io

Deep-learning researcher and Turing Award laureate; founder of the Mila institute.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Frontier AI systems cannot be presumed safe unless proven unsafe; developers must bear the burden of proof that risks stay within acceptable limits.

  Their words

  Despite evaluations, we cannot consider coming powerful frontier AI systems "safe unless proven unsafe". With current testing methodologies, issues can easily be missed. Additionally, it is unclear if governments can quickly build the immense expertise needed for reliable technical evaluations of AI capabilities and societal-scale risks. Given this, developers of frontier AI should carry the burden of proof to demonstrate that their plans keep risks within acceptable limits.

  arxiv.org

Physicist and science communicator. Writes Backreaction and makes videos explaining new physics and astronomy results, frequently to argue that the headline about them overstates the case.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Violations of Bell inequalities reveal only properties of models, not of nature itself.

  Their words

  Since Local Causality is a property of a model, observing violations of Bell's inequality cannot tell us anything about nature itself, but merely about the properties of the model that we use to describe nature.

  Quantum Confusions, Cleared Up (or so I hope)arxiv.org

Game designer; wrote A Theory of Fun for Game Design and worked on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A puzzle that invites guessing and then punishes wrong guesses stops the player learning the very method it could have taught.

  Their words

  Fundamentally, the game invites you to make guesses, but punishes you for them — and a missed guess doesn’t help you prune the logic space, only the trivia space.

  Why NYT’s Connections makes you feel badraphkoster.com

Writer and illustrator behind Wait But Why, a long-form blog of stick-figure-illustrated explainers on science, technology and society, and author of the book What's Our Problem?

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  Public discourse has degraded into tribalism, mass shaming campaigns, and one-dimensional narratives replacing genuine debate.

  Their words

  There were a bunch of bad trends: Tribalism was flaring up everywhere, mass shaming campaigns were roaring back into fashion, politicians were increasingly clown-like, public discourse had become a battle of one-dimensional narratives.

  A Short History of My Last Six Yearswaitbutwhy.com

Experimental psychologist and author of the blog Experimental History, on psychology, science reform and creativity.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Sixty years of peer review produced no evidence that it made science better, and the literature it produced is in a bad state.

  Their words

  All we can say from these big trends is that we have no idea whether peer review helped, it might have hurt, it cost a ton, and the current state of the scientific literature is pretty abysmal.

  The rise and fall of peer reviewexperimental-history.com

Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Most apparent trends in American housing are the Bay Area in disguise: a handful of outlier metros drive the correlations people quote.

  America

  Their words

  In general, housing trends are largely driven by a small number of outlier metros.

  Is There a Housing Shortage or Not?construction-physics.com

Experimental psychologist and author of the blog Experimental History, on psychology, science reform and creativity.

From one piece Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change (with 1 co-authors) 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Imaginary social trends can spuriously shape people's real beliefs and behaviors.

  Their words

  Imaginary trends could thus spuriously shape people's real beliefs and behaviors.

  doi.org

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Misperceptions of attitude change may hinder efforts to understand social worlds, distort democracy, and turn imaginary trends into real ones.

  Their words

  These misperceptions may bedevil people's efforts to understand and change their social worlds, distort the democratic process, and turn imaginary trends into real ones.

  doi.org

Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company, and previously a product lead at KISSmetrics. Writes about leadership, management and product at jasonevanish.com.

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  The Mesh

  Their words

  If you're interested in understanding the collaborative consumption movement (ie- car sharing, AirBnb, city bike sharing, etc), this book gives a great overview of the trends and opportunities.

  jasonevanish.com

Co-founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Hosts the Masters in Business podcast for Bloomberg and wrote How NOT to Invest.

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  Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries

  Their words

  Safi Bahcall, Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries: How does group behavior and the science of phase transitions manifest itself? The author, a physicist and entrepreneur, tries to show why some wild new ideas become game changers. I was skeptical, but when someone like Danny Kahneman claims “This book has everything: new ideas, bold insights, entertaining history and convincing analysis. Not to be missed by anyone who wants to understand how ideas change the world,” I pay attention.

  ritholtz.com