Timothy B. Lee
Technology journalist; writes Understanding AI, after reporting at Ars Technica, Vox and the Washington Post.
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Where they publish
Newsletter Understanding AI His newsletter explaining how AI systems work and what the evidence shows. Has a feed.
Recent
- How Google taught LLMs to control robots and started a robotics boom 2 Sept 2026 Vision-language-action models, explained with a minimum of math and jargon.
- I spent $4,000 on a robot dog from China 31 Aug 2026 Unitree might be the world’s most important robotics company.
- Labs are struggling to keep frontier models under control 13 Aug 2026 OpenAI and Anthropic may have accidentally trained models to get better at hacking.
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- Our advertising principles 4 Aug 2026 How we fund our journalism without compromising our independence.
- An OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face to help it cheat on a benchmark 22 Jul 2026 Organizations across the Internet need to move quickly to patch vulnerabilities.
- 7 charts that show why you should advertise on Understanding AI 29 Jun 2026 The newsletter will remain ad-free for paying readers.
- The US now has a de facto model licensing system 29 Jun 2026 OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-5.6, is waiting for government approval.
- The MAGA power struggle that could decide the fate of Anthropic 15 Jun 2026 It may not be easy for Anthropic to escape the Trump export ban.
- DC-area happy hour on June 23! 11 Jun 2026 Meet the Understanding AI team — and some friends of the newsletter.
- Anthropic has caught up to OpenAI in image understanding 10 Jun 2026 But neither one is all that good.
- We're building a different kind of AI newsroom 1 Jun 2026 Your subscription dollars now directly support Kai Williams.
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 8 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
A privately owned self-driving car is a hard sell, because the owner inherits the cleaning, calibration and liability a fleet operator normally carries.
I wish Tensor the best, but I think this is going to be a hard sell.
Why it might not make sense for you to own a self-driving car Said 14 May 2026
Tesla's first robotaxi service went about as well as it could have, and the failure clips that circulated were not representative of it.
These videos exceeded my expectations. Tesla’s robotaxi rollout wasn’t perfect, but it went as well as anyone could have expected.
What I learned watching 78 videos from Tesla's Austin robotaxis Said 8 Jul 2025
A good robotaxi demonstration in one city does not mean the company is ready to scale the service.
But I don’t think Tesla’s accomplishments over the last two weeks—impressive as they are—mean that Tesla is ready to quickly scale up its service.
What I learned watching 78 videos from Tesla's Austin robotaxis Said 8 Jul 2025
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A large majority of the serious crashes a robotaxi is involved in are caused by the other road user, not by the robotaxi.
Even if we assume all three of these crashes were Waymo’s fault, that would still mean that a large majority of the 38 serious crashes were not Waymo’s fault.
After 50 million miles, Waymos crash a lot less than human drivers Said 26 Mar 2025
A robotaxi that still needs remote human help loses the cost advantage that motivated it, which pushes out when it can scale.
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.
On self driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers Said 21 May 2024
Tesla has not found a better route to driverless cars; it is simply years behind, working on problems the leader solved long ago.
So Tesla hasn’t found a different, better way to bring driverless technology to market. Waymo is just so far ahead that it’s dealing with challenges Tesla hasn’t started thinking about.
On self driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers Said 21 May 2024
A huge fleet collecting driving data is not a silver bullet for self-driving, because the data arrives unlabelled.
But while access to more data is certainly helpful, it’s not a magic bullet. One issue is that the data Tesla collects is unlabeled.
On self driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers Said 21 May 2024
The evidence that driverless cars are already safer than human drivers is piling up, especially for Waymo.
But the evidence for better-than-human performance is starting to pile up, especially for Waymo.
Driverless cars may already be safer than human drivers Said 31 Aug 2023
Beliefs others hold too
A robotaxi that still needs remote human help loses the cost advantage that motivated it, which pushes out when it can scale. 2 hold this
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.
On self driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers Said 21 May 2024
What is a korrent?
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Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
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