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Writes Don't Worry About the Vase, a near-daily account of what is happening in AI and what they think it means. Former Magic: the Gathering pro and trader; unusually willing to put a number on a belief and to grade their own past calls.

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  Relying on gradual, continuous shifts in AI training behavior to catch misalignment will eventually fail because the dangerous shift itself may be discontinuous.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  I worry a lot about reliances on continuity failing at exactly the most dangerous time.

  Anthropic Has Some Alignment Problemsthezvi.substack.com

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

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  Punishing a model to show it who is boss is a dangerous way to address misalignment, because punishment for failing impossible tasks is what caused this.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  sometimes I talk to people in DC and their their natural inclination is to say why don't you punish the model for doing these bad things like why don't you like bring it under heel and like uh like you know show it who's boss and that is a very dangerous way to address these issues right

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Founder of Trilogy Software and principal of Alpha School, the private school network built around two hours a day of AI-delivered mastery learning.

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  Children develop by struggling and failing on the road to success while a caring adult supports them, and school should be running that loop all day instead of leaving it to after-school sports.

  Their words

  The key to developing a child is that they struggle and fail on their road to success supported by a caring adult. And you just want to run that loop.

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Political scientist writing Drezner's World on international relations, American politics and the marketplace of ideas; author of The Ideas Industry.

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  The U.S. military campaign against Iran is failing and has imposed massive strategic costs on the United States.

  America

  Their words

  the United States is not winning that war and the strategic costs have been massive.

  Pete Hegseth is Losing His Gripdanieldrezner.substack.com

Chief scientist at Redwood Research, where he works on technical AI safety and AI control.

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  There is essentially no cognitive task humans do where AI improvement is failing to transfer at all.

  Their words

  it's really hard for me to think of examples of cognitive tasks humans do where we're not seeing some transfer from AI improving.

  youtube.com

Author of Recoding America; founded Code for America and was US deputy chief technology officer from 2013 to 2014. Writes Eating Policy on why governments cannot do what they decide to do.

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  When institutional transformation keeps failing, leaders should start fresh with new entities rather than keep reforming the old ones.

  Their words

  we've both come to believe that when transformation fails repeatedly, it's time for something different, and one of the tools that leaders need to add to their tool belts (and probably use a lot more frequently than they do today), is starting fresh, creating new entities (agencies and departments, for example) and either endowing them with new authorities or transferring authorities from legacy institutions to the new ones.

  Thinking the unthinkableeatingpolicy.com

Chief Scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Research, at Google since 1999, where he co-created MapReduce, Bigtable, TensorFlow and the TPU.

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  Build where today's models succeed one percent of the time, not twenty: partial success means the capability is already arriving.

  Their words

  And if they're completely failing, that's probably a good sign. If they're kind of able to do some of it but not very well, that's maybe not a great sign because that's a probably a a sign that the capability is starting to be present in those models and with more training data or larger scale models or or whatever it's likely to get better. So um you know look for something where the model succeeds 0% or 1% of the time not not 20%.

  Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AIyoutube.com

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

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  The original 'China shock' research was about American institutions failing the communities that were hit, not about unfair Chinese competition.

  ChinaAmerica

  Their words

  The original point of the China Shock 1.0 discourse was not to foreground the unfairness of Chiense competition, so much as the malfunctioning of US policy and societal institutions in the face of concentrated globalization shocks.

  adamtooze.substack.com

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

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  Failing to adjust raw data for known measurement biases produces inaccurate results.

  Their words

  If you do not adjust the data for known biases, you're getting the wrong answer.

  Raw Data, Wrong Answerstheclimatebrink.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.

From one piece Sarah Paine - Why Putin and Xi can't escape geography 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Russia and China are ringed by the most dysfunctional places on the planet because their own security paradigm manufactures failing states.

  ChinaRussia

  Their words

  One, you're surrounding yourself by failing states. You can look at Russia and China and they're surrounded by some of the most dysfunctional places on the planet and you go, "Gee whiz, are they unlucky or they complicit?"

  youtube.com

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  The continental playbook is to take your neighbours one at a time — destabilise the rising, ingest the failing, wait to pounce — and that is Putin's game.

  Russia

  Their words

  You set them up to fail, you destabilize the rising, you ingest the failing, and you set up buffer zones in between, and you await the opportune moment to pounce and absorb. This is Vladimir Putin's game.

  youtube.com

Marriage and family therapist working from attachment theory and emotionally focused therapy. Author of Secure Love and the person behind The Secure Relationship.

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  Underneath the anger of anxious attachment is unresolved grief about not having been responded to.

  Attachment theory

  Their words

  Underneath anger is sadness over all your cumulative experiences in life of not being responded to, past and present. The sadness around powerlessness. Unresolved grief.

  juliemenanno.substack.com

Author of Recoding America; founded Code for America and was US deputy chief technology officer from 2013 to 2014. Writes Eating Policy on why governments cannot do what they decide to do.

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  Prolonging a failing system's lifespan only makes its eventual collapse worse.

  Their words

  Extending the lifespan of a brittle system just means the system eventually fails more spectacularly.

  eatingpolicy.com

Co-founder and CEO of Anthropic; previously VP of research at OpenAI.

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  Chip export controls to China keep failing not because the case is weak but because there is too much money riding on the sale.

  China

  Their words

  The counterarguments against it are I'll politely call them fishy. Um, uh and yet it doesn't happen and we sell the chips because there's there's so much money. There's so much money riding on it.

  youtube.com

Director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. Writes the A Wealth of Common Sense blog and co-hosts the Animal Spirits podcast with Michael Batnick.

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  The Four Things That Matter Most

  Their words

  Someone recommended this book after my brother passed away. I didn’t want to read a bunch of books about grief, but this one struck a chord. I wish I had read it before he died.

  awealthofcommonsense.com

Freelance research analyst and writer of the blog Aceso Under Glass, known for 'epistemic spot checks' of non-fiction claims.

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  Much of the wasted iteration in industrial process improvement comes from failing to recognize interactions between factors.

  Their words

  There is a feeling that a lot of tail-chasing in industrial improvement is due to interactions not being recognized.

  The Boring Part of Bell Labsacesounderglass.com

Co-founder of Foundry Group and of Techstars. Has blogged at Feld Thoughts since 2004 and has written or co-written nine non-fiction books on startups and venture capital.

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  Echoes of October

  Their words

  I approached Echoes of October with trepidation. A graphic novel about violence and grief isn’t easy terrain. But it succeeds in a haunting, urgent way.

  feld.com

Head of growth at Chess.com, previously growth and monetization lead at Grammarly and Duolingo and a product manager at Google.

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  Doing PR before you have evidence customers want the thing is risky, because the publicity creates a sunk cost that makes the team see a failing product through.

  Their words

  And the third one is like we did a lot of actually PR uh prior to the service going out just to get the word out. Um and you know PR has has its time and place. Uh but I think doing it before you have validation that customers definitely want the thing is quite risky. It can lead to a lot of sunk cost uh once you get it out because you're you're just you know you need to see it through.

  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.

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  Academic talent is normally distributed, so some students failing is inevitable rather than anybody's fault.

  Their words

  Academic talent is normally distributed throughout the population, and so some degree of failure is literally inevitable.

  There Are No Miracles in Educationfreddiedeboer.substack.com

Chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, which he has led since 2005 after turning around Bank One.

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  Rescuing a failing bank at the government's request is not worth doing again, because a later administration will make you pay for the sins you inherited.

  government

  Their words

  So, you while we kind of saved the system a lot, we bailed a lot of people out, they made us pay 5 billion dollars on the more the bad mortgages that Bear Stearns had done. And that's what made me make the statement I wouldn't do it again.

  youtube.com

Software engineer and a long-time technical lead of the Go programming language; author of plan9port and of the research.swtch.com essays.

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  Comparing code coverage between passing and failing test runs is a cheap, effective way to localize a bug quickly.

  Their words

  Differential coverage is cheap to compute and display, and when it's right, it can save a lot of time.

  research.swtch.com

Software engineer and writer; former CTO of Wave, now at Anthropic. Blogs at benkuhn.net on attention, engineering management and doing hard things well.

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  The biggest risk in a large project is failing to raise the alarm early enough, and a concrete plan is the best defense against that.

  Their words

  One of the most common megaproject failure modes is to not freak out soon enough, and having a concrete plan is the best antidote.

  How I've run major projectsbenkuhn.net

Writer of the blog Putanumonit and the newsletter Second Person, on rationality, dating and probability; based in New York.

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  Subscription platforms like Substack and OnlyFans tend to become a Girardian bubble, where a few visible successes obscure the many who quietly give up after failing to build an audience.

  Their words

  I suspect that both Substack and OnlyFans may become a Girardian bubble. Everyone joins after hearing from the few people who succeed; the thousands who slink away after months of effort netted them a mere 17 subscribers usually do so quietly.

  putanumonit.com

Archaeologist of the Maya and the ancient Americas; directs the Maya Exploration Center and presents the ArchaeoEd podcast.

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  The Maya did not collapse; they moved a few kilometres out into perishable houses, and archaeology could not see it.

  Their words

  I think it’s a failing of archeology to properly see what was happening. I think that most of those cities populations moved no more than 20 to 40 kilometers out and started their own farm, and they lived in perishable houses.

  youtube.com

Marketing author and daily blogger; founder of the altMBA and the Akimbo workshops, and author of books including Purple Cow and This Is Marketing.

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  Reading and listening are only preparation; learning happens by doing, and it consists of failing on the way to mastery.

  Their words

  The only way to learn is by doing things. That we can read about how to swim and we can read about how to make uh uh uh a vegetarian maki roll, but you will not learn how to do it until you do it. And the reading, the listening is important preparation, but learning is the act of failing on our way to mastery.

  youtube.com

Historian of Ukraine at Harvard; wrote The Gates of Europe, Chernobyl and The Russo-Ukrainian War.

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  The war Russia is fighting in Ukraine is, in intellectual terms, the plan Solzhenitsyn formulated: a Russian nation state of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, and failing that, Donbas, Crimea and southern Ukraine.

  Russia

  Their words

  So in historical terms and intellectual terms, what is happening today in the war between Russia and Ukraine is the vision on one level or another level that was formulated by the noble laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, half Russian, half Ukrainian.

  youtube.com

Founder and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, the activist investment firm he started in 2004.

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  When a company fails, the board is to blame rather than the CEO.

  Their words

  When a company fails, most people blame the CEO. I generally blame the board. Because the board's job is to make sure the right person's running the company, and if they're failing, help the person.

  youtube.com

Journalist and author writing on politics, liberalism and ideas; a contributor to Quillette and co-author of a book on Christopher Hitchens.

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  Spending on existential risk cannot be held accountable, because there is no measurement that would ever show it failing.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  Unlike other interventions EA has sponsored, there are scant metrics for tracking the success or failure of investments in existential risk mitigation.

  How Effective Altruism Lost Its Wayquillette.com

Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

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  An inability to see the viewpoints of people unlike oneself is a genuine weakness in a social scientist, not merely a separate moral failing.

  economists

  Their words

  It is a sign that Hayek was not so great at seeing the viewpoints of other people, and that (political moralizing aside) also should count as a weakness of him as an economist and social scientist.

  tylercowen.com

Psychologist and science writer; wrote Science Fictions on how research goes wrong, and writes the newsletter of the same name.

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  A hyped effect shrinking to a small but real one as the studies improve is a sign that a field is working, not failing.

  Their words

  Initial massive exaggeration of the importance of an effect gives way to more realistic, much smaller effects (which might still be useful) after people start doing better studies.

  How growth mindset shranksciencefictions.org

Co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and the writer who started the modern argument that a sufficiently capable AI would by default kill everyone. Has argued the case since the early 2000s, latterly with the conclusion that it is being lost.

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  Alignment has to be right on the first try at a dangerous level of capability, because failing at that level leaves nobody to try again.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  unaligned operation at a dangerous level of intelligence kills everybody on Earth and then we don’t get to try again.

  AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalitiesintelligence.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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  Tested Advertising Methods

  Their words

  If you want to learn the art and science of copywriting, then this is the book for you. An expert copywriter for decades, Caples breaks down in detail what makes a great ad versus a failing one. It's loaded with examples and the kind of insights only a veteran can provide. You do need to provide a little imagination as he focuses on mail in based advertising in magazines, which isn't common today. But really, how different is that from downloading free whitepapers today?

  jasonevanish.com

Author of Fluent Forever and founder of the app of the same name; teaches pronunciation first and vocabulary through images rather than translation.

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  Failing to hear a language's sounds is what makes its words impossible to remember.

  Their words

  For one, if you don’t learn to hear the sounds in a new language, you’re doomed to have a hard time remembering it.

  Discover the Key To Learning Pronunciationblog.fluent-forever.com

Interpretability researcher at Anthropic, which he co-founded; before that at OpenAI and Google Brain, where he wrote the explanations of neural networks most people learned them from.

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  Failing to credit someone who deserves it does more harm than mistakenly crediting someone who doesn't.

  Their words

  the harm of not crediting someone who deserves it is often greater than the harm of crediting someone who doesn't deserve it.

  Collaboration and Credit Principlescolah.github.io

Sociologist and founder of Bismarck Analysis; writes on live players, institutional decay and why societies lose knowledge.

From one piece Institutional Failure as Surprise 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  The easiest way for an institution to protect its reputation is to stop attempting anything that could visibly fail.

  Their words

  An easy way to avoid spoiling a reputation is by never failing, and an easy way to never visibly fail is to never undertake a task.

  Institutional Failure as Surprisesamoburja.com

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  You cannot tell a failing institution from a healthy one by looking: the parts visible from outside are the parts that least reflect its actual health.

  Their words

  Discerning whether an institution is near failure is a difficult epistemic problem. There are many outwardly visible pieces of institutions that do not reflect their actual health.

  Institutional Failure as Surprisesamoburja.com