Topic
AI
- Thermostats all the way down
In a recent episode of EconTalk, with guest author Stewart Brand, Stewart had a throwaway line I loved. The exchange went like this: Russ Roberts: Yeah, I said when I was running, I was paying attention. I think the b…
- Latent space as a new medium
This piece from Kevin Kelly is both an interesting future-look at what LLMs may have in store for us (with Kevin's typical energizing optimism), and a great layman's primer on what the tech itself is actually doing —…
- Closed loops and AI
Just read this take from Elad Gil: AI will eat closed loops first AI will first automate away the things that are easier to form a closed loop learning system on. This is why code and AI research may be accelerated an…
- What Makes Art Great?
With AI-generated work — writing, visual art, music — there's something missing that we can often identify viscerally (at least if we spend a few minutes paying attention), though not articulate exactly what it is tha…
- Isometric NYC
Using a combination of Claude, Opus, Nano Banana, and lots of satellite imagery, Andy Coenen built this incredible pixel art map of New York City. It's like flying over a realistic version of SimCity 2000. In this pos…
- Agent-native architecture
The folks over at Every published this excellent guide to a new paradigm for software, using what they call "agent-native architecture." In short the idea is that your mental model for thinking about what you're build…
- The Abstraction of AI
OpenAI launched a major update to Sora yesterday. There's something about AI video that just doesn't get me excited. Sound on. pic.twitter.com/QHDxq6ubGt— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 30, 2025 Sure, it's impressiv…
- Can you still be human?
Iain McGilchrist: Who does not now find themselves constantly busy? The young, the middle-aged and the old feel it alike. We are all time-poor; and time is not worth nothing. Time is life. Everything now is freighted…
- Conversational Interfaces
Julian Lehr wrote an interesting post recently on the problems with conversational interfaces, with the fitting title "The case against conversational interfaces". Here's Julian: We keep telling ourselves that previou…
- MVPs with Cursor
Good stuff here on building with Cursor. Some takeaways: Use starter kits to bootstrap project directories Build assistive docs to help the Agent. Remember that the Agent behaves a lot like a human: - A human with min…
- Expected and Unexpected
Some technologies are unpredicted, but evolve. Others are predicted don't seem to materialize (or not yet). Then there are those that are expected AND appear. The unexpected tend to be the most disruptive — no one's h…
- What Matters in the Age of AI is Taste
In this AI era, I've been thinking a lot about what it means for humans in the loop of formerly human tasks. When AI is inserted in all layers of the stack, what's left for us? Sari Azout hits on something I agree wit…
- Personal Software
A common problem I encounter with computers is the everyday minor friction in workflow: the repetitive but only occasional task, or the tedious multi-step process. Perfect example: the other day I wanted to batch resi…
- Prompt Liminal Space
Prompt: “liminal space” Recalls the finale of Interstellar.
- gpt-researcher
GPT Researcher is an autonomous agent designed for comprehensive online research on a variety of tasks. The agent can produce detailed, factual and unbiased research reports, with customization options for focusing on…
- A Periodic Reminder Of Your Pending Competitive Inadequacy
Tyler Cowen:
- Scroll Prize
A group of researchers just won the Scroll Prize, a project to read the ancient Herculaneum papyri, burned and buried in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Using AI and computer vision techniques they were able to dis…
- The Vesuvius Challenge
Dr. Brent Seales, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross have launched a challenge: develop a computer vision algorithm to read and decode the Herculaneum scrolls. Some background: In Herculaneum, twenty meters of hot mud and…
- Anachronistic History
I asked ChatGPT: Write about some creative anachronistic historical events. The results don't disappoint. Every single one is gold, big-budget film caliber material we got here. Scroll down and enjoy... Marco Polo's T…
- Patrick Collison and Sam Altman at Sohn 2023
An interesting discussion between Patrick Collison and OpenAI founder Sam Altman on a predictably fascinating assortment of subjects. AI developments, stagnation, long-term bets, and what's preventing us from having m…
- Against Safetyism
Byrne Hobart & Tobias Huber: Over the past half-century, even leading AI researchers completely failed in their predictions of AGI timelines. So, instead of worrying about sci-fi paperclips or Terminator scenarios, we…
- Census GPT
Census GPT is an open source tool put together by a new team working on product applications for GPT-4. It lets you write natural language questions to query the US Census database — things like the cities in Florida…
- Weekend Reading: Ancient Text, StarLink, and Chinese Origins
📜 Restoring ancient text using deep learning: a case study on Greek epigraphy A project from DeepMind designed to fill in missing text from ancient inscriptions: Pythia takes a sequence of damaged text as input, and…
- mapwith.ai
In a conversation yesterday I learned about this project called RapiD, led by Facebook to use computer vision technology to detect features for mapping in OpenStreetMap. They’re working on a fork of the iD editor that…
- The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence
Most of the popular conversation around intelligence these days (at least in circles I follow) is about the artificial variety — AI, deep learning, neural networks, and the like. Neuroscientists Jeff Hawkins and his c…
- The Incredible Inventions of Intuitive AI
This talk on "generative AI" was interesting. One bit stuck out to me as really thought-provoking: Dutch designers have created a system to 3D print functional things in-place, like this bridge concept. Imagine that y…
