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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

Professor of strategic studies at St Andrews; wrote How the War Was Won and The Strategists, and writes weekly on the war in Ukraine.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The American military is being run on the Russian model rather than the Ukrainian one, and it should be rebuilt on the Ukrainian principles instead.

  RussiaAmerica

  Their words

  The US military is being run by a group that apes the Russians and not the Ukrainians—when we have in front of us one of the best statements of command principles I have ever seen from the latter.

  phillipspobrien.substack.com

Essayist; writes Astral Codex Ten, previously Slate Star Codex.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  For psychiatric disorders driven by amygdala hyperactivity, elective amygdalectomy should be offered and covered by health insurance instead of lifelong therapy and medication.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  If you suffer from amygdala hyperactivity that gives you one of the aforementioned psychiatric disorders, I think that not only should you be offered elective amygdalectomy, but your health insurance should be glad to pay for it (especially if done via ultramodern very safe radiosurgery) one time, rather than for a lifetime supply of more expensive, less effective talk therapies and medications.

  Absurd Adventure And Amygdalectomy Advocacyastralcodexten.com

Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The way to win at capitalism is to make customers' lives better rather than to squeeze them, because creating new things returns 10x where squeezing returns 2x at best.

  Their words

  The way to win at capitalism is to focus on what it actually does (make customers' lives better) rather than the socialist caricature of it (squeeze every penny out of them). The latter gets you 2x returns at best, whereas making new things for people can get you 10x.

  @paulg on Xx.com

Writer and consultant on formal methods and software correctness; author of Practical TLA+ and Logic for Programmers.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The software job losses of the past few years were caused more by the end of zero-interest-rate money and the post-COVID crash than by AI.

  LLMsinterest rates

  Their words

  So, it's hard to tell how much of like the loss of the past few years was AI versus the end of like zero interest rate policy and like the post-COVID crash. And I think it's more the latter, but like again, LLMs are still getting better.

  Formal methods with Hillel Wayneyoutube.com

Chief Product and Technology Officer at Netflix, previously VP of Science at Lyft and an economist at Analysis Group.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Writing lines of Python or C++ may stop being necessary; understanding how code, computer systems and products work will not.

  Their words

  I think there's a difference between being able to write lines of code in a particular language like Python or C++ and understanding how code, computer systems, products work. And I don't think the latter is going away.

  youtube.com

Economist specialising in global income inequality; formerly lead economist in the World Bank research department, now at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of the Global Inequality and More newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  China's cultural and intellectual output to the world is far smaller than its economic weight.

  China

  Their words

  It surely does not “produce” one quarter of world culture or intellectual activity (if the latter is defined as influential books, of fiction and non-fiction, politics, history; films, plastic arts, music, theater etc.)

  A self-absorbed giantbranko2f7.substack.com

Genomics researcher and writer on science, biotech and the culture of research.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Manufacturing and batch-release requirements, not biology, are what kill most promising cell and gene therapies.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Excessive manufacturing requirements are a pervasive problem, especially in the field of cell and gene therapy and they are killing countless of promising medicines before they ever reach patients.

  writingruxandrabio.com

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

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  The right unit of study is a system like inflammation rather than a named disease — understand the system and others can build the therapies.

  Their words

  rather than studying the specific diseases we think that by trying to understand inflammation more broadly that will make it so that other companies that can then use these tools can work on specific therapies.

  youtube.com

Co-founder of NVIDIA and, as of 2026, its chief executive; the company designs the GPUs most large AI models are trained on.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Most advances in AI have come from algorithms rather than raw hardware, which makes China's army of AI researchers its fundamental advantage.

  China

  Their words

  We have got to acknowledge that most of the advanc advances in AI came out of algorithm advances not just the raw hardware. Now if most advances came from algorithms and computer science and programming tell me that their army of AI researchers is not their fundamental advantage.

  Jensen Huang – Will Nvidia’s moat persist?youtube.com

Entrepreneur and founder of Blueprint. Publishes a detailed, freely available longevity protocol documenting the food, supplements, devices and measurements he uses on himself.

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  The health results people attribute to expensive exotic therapies come from a small number of ordinary habits done without exception.

  Their words

  Habits and not expensive, exotic therapies.

  Bryan's Protocolprotocol.bryanjohnson.com

Co-founder and CEO of Shopify; long-time Linux user and Omarchy contributor.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  We have not stopped building great works; ours are operating-system kernels, browsers and silicon lithography rather than bridges and steel mills.

  Their words

  However, we are actually absolutely doing this. It's just the great works are kernels of operating systems, the browser, the um lots of the software platforms, the phones, the um the incredible advances in uh silicon lithography

  youtube.com

Palaeontologist at Queen Mary University of London; studies dinosaur behaviour and writes about what the fossil record can and cannot tell us.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Tyrannosaurs at T. rex size were probably primarily nocturnal.

  Their words

  So, giant eyeballs, they can either see very well, they can see a very long way in daylight, or they can see very well at night. And my suspicion is it's the latter. I think they're probably primarily nocturnal when they get that size.

  youtube.com

Co-founder and chief executive of Sierra, chairman of the board of OpenAI, and formerly co-chief executive of Salesforce and chief technology officer of Facebook.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Even generalised superintelligence will change society more slowly than the AGI community expects, because intelligence is not the only rate limiter.

  AGIAI alignment

  Their words

  I don't think all parts of the economy can absorb intelligence equally. So let's just say we develop fairly generalized super intelligence. I always use the analogy like you can invent a lot of drugs, but if clinical trials still take a long time, you're not necessarily going to get new therapies rapidly.

  youtube.com

Runs global health R&D at Open Philanthropy; writes about the science and medicine that could exist and does not.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Going all in on AI is not the highest-return strategy for human flourishing, even if AI does produce rapid scientific advances.

  Their words

  Going all in on AI is not the highest return-on-investment strategy if you care about human flourishing, even if AI might lead to rapid scientific advances.

  AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com

Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI; previously president of Y Combinator.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  People will find new kinds of useful work as AI advances, though it will not resemble the jobs of today.

  Their words

  We will find new things to do, new ways to be useful to each other, and new ways to compete, but they may not look very much like the jobs of today.

  Three Observationsblog.samaltman.com

Software engineer and essayist who writes about programming, formal methods, philosophy and literature at thoughts.wyounas.com.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Principles of the SPIN Model Checker

  Their words

  This book gave me both insight and a deeper curiosity about the subject. This book introduces the SPIN model checker and exposes the reader to the nuances of verifying programs using SPIN. A nice feature of the book is how it explains concepts using thoughtfully developed, freely available tools (such as jSpin) that the author created for pedagogical purposes. It's a demanding book, but the content was interesting. The book presents details about concurrency, temporal logic, non-determinism, advanced SPIN topics, and even case studies. I've already written a few blog posts about the topics I explored while reading this book, and I plan to write more. Overall, it's a good book. I'm sure I'll revisit the latter half again.

  thoughts.wyounas.com

Astrophysicist at the University of Rochester; works on the search for life elsewhere and wrote The Little Book of Aliens and Light of the Stars.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Expecting technology to keep accelerating is a bias of our particular moment; for most of human history the tools did not change at all.

  Their words

  So, we could be fooled into thinking like, "Oh, technology's going to go on forever, we're always going to find new advances." As opposed to sometimes things just flatten out for a long time. So, you have to be careful about that bias that we have living in this time of great acceleration.

  youtube.com

Co-founder of AQR Capital Management; quantitative investor and writer.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Technology has made markets less efficient at long horizons rather than more efficient.

  Their words

  Above I dismissed the notion that technological advances should make the market more efficient in all but the short-term sense. Here, I argue it likely goes the other way at longer horizons. And, IMHO, this is the best of my three hypotheses.

  The Less-Efficient Market Hypothesisaqr.com

Principal engineer at Cloudflare as of 2026, on agents and developer tooling. Streams TypeScript, OCaml and Neovim on Twitch, and wrote the better-result library after writing the same Result type about a hundred times.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  JavaScript has the lowest bar of entry to being productive, but one of the highest bars of any stack to building high-quality, stable, reliable software.

  JavaScript

  Their words

  My hot take is that JS has the lowest bar of entry to building and being productive (a good thing) but one of the highest bars of any language and stack to building high quality, stable, and reliable software. Very few devs have the expertise to pull off the latter

  @dillon_mulroy on Xx.com

Theoretical physicist and philosopher, Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Writes the Preposterous Universe blog and hosts the Mindscape podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The story that Einstein could not keep up with quantum mechanics is almost exactly backwards: his philosophical objections were correct and should have been taken far more seriously.

  Their words

  I think that that story about the latter part is completely wrong, almost 180 degrees wrong. I think that Einstein understood quantum mechanics as well as anyone, at least up through the 1930s. I think that his philosophical objections to it are correct. He should actually have been taken much more seriously about that.

  youtube.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.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Even flawed scientistic rigor in policy analysis is preferable to none, since its absence would open the field to irresponsible, ideological policy advice.

  Their words

  At the end of the day, scientism still seems better than “no scientism,” given that the latter would leave the field open for highly irresponsible and also ideological -- ideological in all directions – pieces of policy advice.

  tylercowen.com

Essayist; writes Astral Codex Ten, previously Slate Star Codex.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  The three-year bet about whether AI image models could handle compositionality was won in three months.

  Their words, before

  In fact, not only did they reach this level in three months, but probably they were at this level before the bet was even made

  Their words now

  I retract my claim to have won and will continue to see how AI progress advances over the next three years.

Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, and a 2024 Nobel laureate in Chemistry for the protein-structure work behind AlphaFold.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Contemporary physical and evolutionary structure-prediction approaches fall far short of experimental accuracy without a close experimental homologue, limiting biological utility.

  Their words

  Despite these advances, contemporary physical and evolutionary-history-based approaches produce predictions that are far short of experimental accuracy in the majority of cases in which a close homologue has not been solved experimentally and this has limited their utility for many biological applications.

  doi.org

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?

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Extending the human lifespan past its natural ceiling will require deep genetic engineering, not just better healthcare.

  Their words

  Clearly something other than the current type of healthcare advances will be needed to crack through the natural human lifespan ceiling-it'll take some deeper recoding of the human genome.

  Mailbag #2waitbutwhy.com