Closing tabs in Madrid
Hola! Day one of my vacation has begun. To get ready, I’m closing some of these pesty tabs. (Is it “pesty”? That doesn’t sound right. Testy? Pesky! I’m closing some of these PESKY tabs).
I’ve been slow to update the substack with new Claude code material due to all this traveling in Europe the last 47 days (!), but I have a few drafts of posts I’m letting marinating. But until then, here’s some articles.
Daron Acemoglu thinks very little of the public commentary on AI is worth our time.
OpenAI has poached the Apple executive who has been responsible for Apple Vision Pro. This is for work with Jonny Ive on the wearable product line they’re working on. I brought mine with me to Europe and most days still use it. So good hire!
Andrew Baker at UC Berkeley school of law has an article questioning the wisdom of Anthropic hiring Chad Jones from a corporate governance perspective but also just as a citizen of the planet.
Here is one of Chad Jones’s articles on AI, but this is the one Baker discussed.
Here is Chads vita.
An attempt to measuring the size of the AI economy.
The US government softens against Iran’s World Cup team as they continue playing well.
OpenAI on the switch to agentic AI. I think if people are writing skeptically about AI, but seem utterly disconnected from knowing much personally about agentic AI are probably the canary in the mine for me that they’re not updating.
I used to go to the Apple website and see if I could assemble the most expensive computer possible. Now I just go to the Toto page and see if I can find the most expensive toilet. Here’s one for $27k.
Belgium declares a historically high heat wave, which I was fortunate enough to get to experience first hand. And they weren’t exaggerating — it was hot.
Anthropic introduces Claude tag that lets teams work with it more. It includes a slack integration — that or it is that only, not sure.
Ominous predictions that we are only months out from devastating attacks on governments from hackers using frontier AI models. I’m bracing for it.
Are you in the language model weights? I am as are my many scott Cunningham comrades including the most famous scott Cunningham of them all — the Wiccan one.
The world’s most AI pilled economists.
Roger Myerson on optimal auction design.
From Jeremy Yang and coauthors, AI doesn’t just make you faster — it makes you take on tasks you never would’ve. All the more reason that verification versus production is to keep being the pressing issue for us when AI agents are used for producing research.
More signs that AI assistance is making kids complete cognitive tasks faster but learning less. I am worried about this too but honestly I am also worried about the prioritization of grades over learning as its own reward. If you throw AI into that, I am honestly not surprised it stunts learning because unless learning is its own gift to us, it will be tempting if not an outright trap to get stuff done faster and learn less.
Virginia Postrel has a cool article on the history of the Dr Spock book for mothers with small babies.
The US allows Anthropic to release Mythos to “trusted organizations”. A bit more here.
Ive already read six of these eleven books you’re supposed to have read by age 75. So I got time.
Data centers may be about to drive inflation. In which case, get some of these from Amazon prime day while they last at these low low prices! Here’s Wirecutters faves.
But seriously data centers are probably at the stated reason for rising Apple prices, but one does wonder what role tariffs have played too.
Europeans faced with the sticker shock of America’s tipping culture.
Fable may be coming back soon.
And that’s it! Wish me luck!