AI #132 Part 2: Actively Making It Worse
It’s rough out there.| Don't Worry About the Vase
One result of going on vacation was that I wasn’t able to spin events off into focused posts this week, so I’m going to fall back on splitting the weekly instead, plus some reserving a few subtopics for later posts, including AI craziness (the Tim Hua post on this is excellent| Don't Worry About the Vase
Startup Roundups (#1, #2) look like they’re settling in as an annual tradition.| Don't Worry About the Vase
Traffic and transit are finally getting a roundup all their own.| Don't Worry About the Vase
There’s quite a lot in the queue since last time, so this is the first large chunk of it, which focuses on apps and otherwise finding an initial connection, and some things that directly impact that.| Don't Worry About the Vase
It doesn’t look good, on many fronts, especially taking a stake in Intel.| Don't Worry About the Vase
Once again we’ve reached the point where the weekly update needs to be split in two.| Don't Worry About the Vase
Is generative AI making it harder for young people to find jobs?| Don't Worry About the Vase
In the wake of the confusions around GPT-5, this week had yet another round of claims that AI wasn’t progressing, or AI isn’t or won’t create much value, and so on.| Don't Worry About the Vase
I happily admit I am deeply confused about consciousness.| Don't Worry About the Vase
What if DeepSeek released a model claiming 66 on SWE and almost no one tried using it?| Don't Worry About the Vase
One potentially big event was that DeepSeek came out with v3.1. Initial response was very quiet, but this is DeepSeek and there are some strong scores especially on SWE and people may need time to process the release. So I’m postponing my coverage of this to give us time to learn more.| Don't Worry About the Vase
In honor of Nate Silver’s analysis of when to leave for the airport, and because it’s been an intense week, I thought I’d offer my thoughts on various related questions.| thezvi.substack.com
I got suckered into paying attention to multiple non-AI political stories this month: The shooting of the messenger, in violation of the most sacred principles, via firing the head of the USA’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Online Safety Bill in the UK.| Don't Worry About the Vase
Everyone agrees that the release of GPT-5 was botched.| Don't Worry About the Vase
What do I ultimately make of all the new versions of GPT-5?| Don't Worry About the Vase
A key problem with having and interpreting reactions to GPT-5 is that it is often unclear whether the reaction is to GPT-5, GPT-5-Router or GPT-5-Thinking.| Don't Worry About the Vase
GPT-5 was a long time coming.| Don't Worry About the Vase
Sam Altman talked recently to Theo Von.| thezvi.substack.com
Welcome to the monthly roundup of things that don’t fit into other categories and don’t rise to the level of their own posts.| thezvi.substack.com
Last night, on the heels of some rather unfortunate incidents involving the Twitter version of Grok 3, xAI released Grok 4.| thezvi.substack.com
What Balsa has been up to in the first half of 2025| thezvi.substack.com
The insane attempted AI moratorium has been stripped from the BBB.| thezvi.substack.com
Substack recommendations are remarkably important, and the actual best reason to write here instead of elsewhere.| thezvi.substack.com
In honor of the latest (always deeply, deeply unpopular) attempts to destroy tracking and gifted and talented programs, and other attempts to get children to actually learn things, I thought it a good time to compile a number of related items.| thezvi.substack.com
Edition #9, that School is Hell, turned out to hit quite the nerve.| thezvi.substack.com
Unlike everyone else, Anthropic actually Does (Some of) the Research. That means they report all the insane behaviors you can potentially get their models to do, what causes those behaviors, how they addressed this and what we can learn. It is a treasure trove. And then they react reasonably, in this case imposing their ASL-3 safeguards on Opus 4. That’s right, Opus. We are so back.| thezvi.substack.com
Some people (although very far from all people) are worried that AI will wipe out all value in the universe.| thezvi.substack.com
You can now have o3 throw vastly more compute at a given problem.| thezvi.substack.com
Balsa Policy Institute chose as its first mission to lay groundwork for the potential repeal, or partial repeal, of section 27 of the Jones Act of 1920.| thezvi.substack.com
Related: Book Review: On the Edge: The Gamblers| thezvi.substack.com
This post is extensive thoughts on Tyler Cowen’s excellent talk with Dwarkesh Patel.| thezvi.substack.com
There are a lot of ludicrously terrible government laws, regulations and policies across all the domains of life.| thezvi.substack.com
California Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco introduces SB 1047 to regulate AI. I have put up a market on how likely it is to become law.| thezvi.substack.com
Note, To say it up front: None of this, or anything ever on this blog, is investment advice.| thezvi.substack.com
Previously: OpenAI: Facts from a Weekend.| thezvi.substack.com
For More Detail, Previously: Simulacra Levels and Their Interactions, Unifying the Simulacra Definitions, The Four Children of the Seder as the Simulacra Levels.| thezvi.substack.com
ChatGPT is a lot of things.| thezvi.substack.com
