Timothy B. Lee
Technology journalist; writes Understanding AI, after reporting at Ars Technica, Vox and the Washington Post.
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What they believe
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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.
understandingai.orgSaid 14 May 2026This on korrents
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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.
understandingai.orgSaid 8 Jul 2025This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
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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
Show 5 more
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.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 14 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Recommends Transformer
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Recommends The Argument
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Recommends Derek Thompson
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understandingai.org 20 Jun 2025
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Recommends Interconnects AI
Insightful and accessible commentary from a guy whose day job is actually training AI models.
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Recommends AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans
Deep insights into why and how AI systems work (and don't work) from a prominent computer scientist.
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Loved Derek Thompson's newsletter
Derek writes brilliantly about the economy and is co-author of the best-selling book Abundance. I've been reading his work avidly for 15 years.
Recommends Silver Bulletin
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Recommends AI as Normal Technology
Two Princeton Computer scientists cut through the hype to help readers understand what's really going on in the AI world.
Recommends Interconnects
Insightful and accessible commentary from a guy whose day job is actually training AI models.
Loved Slow Boring
Matt has been my favorite blogger for nearly 20 years now and his work has shaped my thinking on a number of policy issues. His newsletter, Slow Boring, has a high signal-to-noise ratio.
Loved Noahpinion
Noah provides deeply insightful economic commentary on a wide range of topics, from renewable energy to the rise of Chian.
Recommends It Can Think!
A great newsletter for understanding the world of robotics, from a working roboticist.
Recommends Apricitas Economics
If you want a deep, data-driven understanding of the economy, you need to be reading this newsletter.
Loved Hyperdimensional
No policy thinker today understands AI more deeply than Dean Ball. He's also an elegant writer.
Where they publish
Newsletter Understanding AI His newsletter explaining how AI systems work and what the evidence shows. Has a feed.
Recent
- Introducing Dan Kagan-Kans 5 Oct 2026 Understanding AI has a new writer!
- 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.
Show 5 more
- 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.
- 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.
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
x.com @binarybits Posts.
Recent
- Area journalist is mad about airlines giving discounts to families. 30 Oct 2026
- It's a good thing Waymo has Toyota making cars for it because they are going to need all the cars they can get. 30 Oct 2026
- I liked Noah's post about how AI could bring about a golden age of science, but nothing in it really contradicts this paragraph. AI may just be part of the "throw ever more brains" process that helps keep the rate of progress steady for a while longer. 30 Oct 2026
Show 17 more
- I think the biggest takeaway from this chart is that Susan Collins is freakishly talented. 30 Oct 2026
- Ludicrous website design from the DC Department of Employer Services. I'm not going to be able to remember what I put down for most of these questions. 29 Oct 2026
- Screenshots like these are funny to see after years of Tesla fans mocking Waymo for its limited geofence and lack of freeway service. 28 Oct 2026
- Elections are (in part) a performance to convince the public that the result is legitimate. Blue state policies like automatically sending absentee ballots to every registered voter signal indifference to fraud. This seems bad regardless of actual fraud rates. 28 Oct 2026
- Ilhan Omar says she was 8 when the Somalia Civil War started — generally dated to January 1991. This is consistent with Omar's October 1982 birth date. But right wingers are pretending she wrote that she was eight in 1989 because that would support immigration fraud accusations. 26 Oct 2026
- He really wants the last week of the campaign to center on an argument about whether Amy Acton was lying when she accused her stepdad of sexually assaulting her at age 12. Incredible. (Yes, that isn't literally what the ad accused her of lying about but come on.) 23 Oct 2026
- It's nonsensical to blame ranked-choice voting here. The problem would be worse for Republicans without it. 22 Oct 2026
- Honestly it's not that surprising that the party that nominated the "grab 'em by the pussy" guy for president three times would nominate a candidate for Ohio governor who handles sexual assault allegations in a shameless and tone-deaf way. 20 Oct 2026
- This is really fun. 19 Oct 2026
- "It may be AI slop, but it's my AI slop." 19 Oct 2026
- A lot of hostility toward creative use of AI is based on the premise that we'll eventually reach the point where the AI is doing the thing rather than you doing the thing with the AI as a tool. I think this is wrong — if it's your idea, it's your creation. 19 Oct 2026
- Last year @NatPurser asked me who my favorite tech writers were. The first name I mentioned was @benjedwards. So I'm thrilled I talked him into writing for me. Check out his new piece on AI and the age of personal media. 19 Oct 2026 understandingai.org
- To be specific, the pattern of the last 4 years has been lab insiders correctly predicting rapid capabilities growth while overestimating the likely real-world consequences. I expect a continuation of both trends in 2027. 16 Oct 2026
- I used to employ a nanny and now employ @chi_t_williams. This has broken DC's tax system (household employers are considered separate from regular businesses) and I'm therefore unable to register to pay unemployment taxes. I've been on the phone for days trying to fix it. 16 Oct 2026
- Disappointingly ignorant article from the Atlantic. There are rare times like 2009 when a lack of demand hurts the economy. But in general too much spending can cause as many problems (i.e. inflation) as too little. There's no general problem from people saving too much. 16 Oct 2026
- To be clear I'm not completely dismissing it! I just see it as a fairly weak signal of how the next year is likely to go. 16 Oct 2026
- "People inside the AI labs claim to have evidence that makes them more worried. And they are not allowed to talk about it." I have trouble taking this too seriously because it's been true for almost the entire 3.5 years I've been covering AI full time. 16 Oct 2026
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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