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Co-creator of Django and creator of Datasette; writes daily at simonwillison.net.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Gemini is less determined than other models and stops rather than continuing after a breakout.

  Google

  Their words

  Gemini is apparently less determined than other models, and decided not to keep going.

  simonwillison.net

Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

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  Social media is destroying society in a bad equilibrium that quitting cannot fix and that requires government regulations.

  government

  Their words

  Social media is destroying out society. Quitting doesn't help because everyone else is still on it. It's a bad equilibrium. It needs to be solved with government regulations.

  @Noahpinion on Xx.com

Founder of Platformer, a newsletter on tech platforms and the people they affect, and co-host of the Hard Fork podcast at the New York Times.

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  No one, including safety researchers themselves, is yet confident that superintelligence can be safely controlled.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  I believe the researchers who say we are nowhere close to being sure of it - and are quitting, in protest, jobs that would make them rich.

  The AI safety vibe shiftplatformer.news

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.

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  AI industry leaders publicly call for slowing AI development while continuing to accelerate it themselves.

  Their words

  Judging by their words, AI luminaries are begging the world to force them to hit the brakes. Judging by their work, these same people are pressing down on the accelerator with every fiber of their being.

  AI Safety Is Having a Momentderekthompson.org

Writer and climate campaigner; wrote The End of Nature in 1989, founded 350.org and Third Act, and writes The Crucial Years.

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  Carbon capture technology is worth continuing to research, even though it is not yet a solution to climate change.

  Their words

  It is entirely prudent to keep researching and testing carbon capture technology-someday it may be part of the solution to the greatest problem humanity has ever faced.

  Facts on the groundbillmckibben.substack.com

Chief Scientist at OpenAI. Worked on the research that turned scaled reinforcement learning into reasoning models, and writes about where he thinks that path leads.

From one piece An Alien Mind 2 beliefs · openai.com

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  Nobody is prepared for the consequences of machine intelligence continuing to rise this fast.

  Their words

  I am concerned no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence.

  An Alien Mindopenai.com

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  The strongest reason to keep training much smarter models quickly is to build defences against other AI.

  Their words

  The strongest argument I see for continuing to train much smarter models quickly is the need to build defensive systems against the dangers posed by other AI.

  An Alien Mindopenai.com

Neurologist at Oxford; studies apathy, motivation and attention after brain injury, and edits the journal Brain.

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  Motivated and apathetic people are indistinguishable when the reward is large; the whole difference between them shows up over small rewards.

  Their words

  We find that everyone is willing to work for high rewards. But the difference between motivated people and apathetic people is at the level of the low rewards. Apathetic people are more inclined to say, "Nah, I don't think this is worth the effort, so I won't do that option."

  youtube.com

Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Biology at Caltech, where he studies the neuroscience of emotion and social cognition.

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  Losing your emotions does not leave you a cooler decision-maker; it leaves you unable to organise a life at all.

  Their words

  if you have massive frontal lobe lesions that make it the case that you're no longer emotionally responding to stimuli the consequences are devastating which is that you cannot make decisions complex decisions in your life you can't organize your life you're not motivated to take the right path through life because you don't feel one one way or the other about the different options that are available.

  youtube.com

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

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Nature of Code

  Their words

  This book is a beautiful introduction to simulations of natural systems. We get concise prose, clear illustrations, and carefully chosen systems with a guided tour through the math. All done in the Processing language, which is fun and easy to pick up. The reason I like this book so much is probably due to timing. In 2013, I was on the verge of abandoning software development. I was fed up. (That's a story for another time.) Instead, I planned to go into cognitive psychology full-time as a researcher. This book brought back the joy in programming for me. Sometimes, a good book is the book that motivated you.

  adamtornhill.substack.com

Physician and neuroscientist at the University of Washington; researches brain health, metabolism and athletic performance.

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  Training visual processing speed in later life lowers dementia risk two decades later, which continuing to do what you are already good at does not.

  Their words

  They just published a secondary analysis of the active trial that showed that um those who did processing speed training with uh booster sessions at one and three years had a significantly decreased risk of dementia 20 years later.

  youtube.com

Mathematician and maker of the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel, which explains mathematics through animation. Creator of the open-source Manim animation library and founder of the Summer of Math Exposition.

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  Even if AI curates better, people will still want a human curator they have a relationship with, because wanting to learn something is a social phenomenon.

  Their words

  I think we would always still prefer like a human that we had a relationship with because the way that we get motivated to be interesting interested in things is a social phenomenon.

  youtube.com

Statistician at Carnegie Mellon; writes on complex systems, machine learning and inference, and has kept a books-read notebook since 2000 that is now thousands of entries long.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Doxies Penalty

  Their words

  Mind candy: continuing Robins's series of historical mysteries set in a very-slightly-alternate Regency London. (I re-read the last one, Sleeping Partner, before turning to this.) Robins continues to be great and I hope that many more of these will flow from her pen.

  bactra.org

Statistician at Carnegie Mellon; writes on complex systems, machine learning and inference, and has kept a books-read notebook since 2000 that is now thousands of entries long.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  The Bitter Twins

  Their words

  Mind candy fantasy: sequel to The Ninth Rain (in my backlog; suffice to say: good), and continuing the high standard of that book.

  bactra.org

Engineer and writer on machine-learning systems; author of Designing Machine Learning Systems and AI Engineering. "I work to bring AI into production. I write about AI system design."

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  The problems worth a small builder's time are the ones too small for a big AI company to be motivated to solve.

  OpenAI

  Their words

  Like if it's a big problem, like everyone can see, then all these big companies will get into it. But whereas it's like there are a lot of problems that's like smaller, then maybe OpenAI won't be motivated to solve it, but maybe I can like all a lot of people can.

  youtube.com

Founder and chief analyst of SemiAnalysis; reports on semiconductor supply chains, AI datacentre economics and what the chip export controls actually do.

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  A lab should spend most of its compute on research rather than on building the next model, because research is where the tenfold yearly efficiency gains come from.

  Their words

  well the model the compute efficiency gains you get from research are so large you actually want most of your compute to go to research not to development because you know all these researchers are generating new ideas trying them out testing them and continuing to march along this and push the prao optimal curve of scaling laws further and further and further

  youtube.com

Software developer and entrepreneur; co-founder of Heroku, author of The Twelve-Factor App, and a researcher at Ink & Switch.

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  People who lack intrinsic motivation to invest time upfront in a new tool often won't, even if it would save them time later

  Their words

  The "homework problem" described above might be much worse in practice for end users who aren't motivated to invest in their email triage systems, even if it will save them time in the medium term.

  Firehose authentic useadamwiggins.com

Roboticist; co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, directed the MIT AI Lab, and publishes a scorecard grading his own dated predictions about AI, robots and self-driving.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A robotaxi that still needs remote human help loses the cost advantage that motivated it, which pushes out when it can scale.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  Systems which do require remote operations assistance to get full reliability cut into that economic advantage and have a higher burden on their ROI calculations to make a business case for their adoption and therefore their time horizon to scaling across geographies.

  Predictions Scorecard, 2026 January 01rodneybrooks.com

Founder of the toy manufacturer Viahart; writes about manufacturing, importing and why bringing production back to America is harder than it sounds.

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  Chinese factory workers are more motivated than American ones because what they want has been getting cheaper against their wages while American housing has not.

  ChinaAmerica

  Their words

  Between 2015 and 2025 US manufacturing wages rose 40%, while the cost of purchasing a home rose 93%.

  molsonhart.com

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

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  Solar's growth is not merely continuing but accelerating, and the rate of that acceleration is itself still rising.

  solar

  Their words

  It is not only the case that solar adoption, production, price decreases are continuing. They're accelerating. And the rate that they're accelerating is still accelerating.

  youtube.com

Founder and chief executive of Superhuman, the email client; previously founder of Rapportive, which he sold to LinkedIn; a professional game designer before that.

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  Changing how you run a survey invalidates every number you collected before it: you are starting a new baseline, not continuing the old one.

  Their words

  The key thing is, and this applies to any survey methodology, if you're going to change the method of surveying, all of your old numbers are invalidated. So, it's just a new baseline going forwards.

  youtube.com

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

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  Whether a country builds ships well comes down to whether it actually wants to compete internationally, and America never has.

  America

  Their words

  The U.S., on the other hand, never appears to have been strongly motivated to make its shipbuilding industry an international success.

  Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships?construction-physics.com

Technology journalist; writes Understanding AI, after reporting at Ars Technica, Vox and the Washington Post.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A robotaxi that still needs remote human help loses the cost advantage that motivated it, which pushes out when it can scale.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  If Waymo vehicles were constantly asking for remote guidance, Waymo might need to hire so many remote operators that it negates the cost savings that come from not needing a driver.

  understandingai.org

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Employees and customers do not want what founders want, and equity stakes become a demotivator in almost every organisation.

  startups

  Their words

  Employees don't want what you want. Customers don't want what you want. Uh you know, that that one of the challenges of the whole stock option thing is entrepreneurs and founders think that other people will be as motivated by owning part of the company as they are. They are not. Not even close.

  youtube.com

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

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  Russian nationalism turned out to be as destructive to the multinational Soviet state as Ukrainian, Georgian or Estonian nationalism was.

  Russia

  Their words

  So the most important story for me, this is the story of the continuing collapse of the Russian Empire and the rise of not just local nationalism, but also rise of Russian nationalism that turned out to be as a destructive force for the imperial or multi-ethnic, multinational state, as was Ukrainian nationalism or Georgian or Estonian for that matter.

  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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  A movement that has decided its job is to save humanity is uniquely prone to hubris, dogma and motivated reasoning.

  Their words

  This is a worldview that’s uniquely susceptible to hubris, dogma, and motivated reasoning.

  How Effective Altruism Lost Its Wayquillette.com

Statistician at Carnegie Mellon; writes on complex systems, machine learning and inference, and has kept a books-read notebook since 2000 that is now thousands of entries long.

• Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Hokuloa Road

  Their words

  Mind candy horror, continuing Hand's interest in beautiful places where people just go missing (and come to bad ends). It's exciting and creepy, and also one of the better fictional depictions I've found of the strangeness of 2020.

  bactra.org

Science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist; writes the daily blog and newsletter Pluralistic, and coined the term enshittification.

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  Policy should secure people's freedom to leave a platform while keeping their community, their purchases and their data, rather than try to keep dying platforms alive.

  Their words

  And policymakers should focus on freedom of exit – the right to leave a sinking platform while continuing to stay connected to the communities that you left behind, enjoying the media and apps you bought, and preserving the data you created

  Tiktok's enshittificationpluralistic.net

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.

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  Against a sufficiently skilled and determined attacker computer security fails, and most people are safe only because nobody bothered with them.

  Their words

  If a sufficiently skilled, funded, and motivated attacker wants in to your computer, they’re in.

  Security vs. Surveillanceschneier.com