Simon Willison: What’s new in Claude Sonnet 5 (Jun. 30, 2026)
Claude Sonnet 5 offers Opus 4.8-like performance, a 1,000,000-token context, 128,000-token outputs, and drops sampling params temperature, top_p, and top_k.
The Texas Tribune: A data center boom is coming to Texas. (Jun. 8, 2026)
Texas is facing a surge of AI data center proposals, which could demand vast electricity and water, strain the grid, and push ERCOT to tighten rules. Supporters tout jobs and investment, opponents warn of higher bills, pollution, and local impacts.
WSJ: Madison Avenue Is Going All In on AI (Jun. 29, 2026)
At Cannes Lions, advertisers showcased how AI is reshaping ad creation, targeting, and measurement, cutting production time and costs, and enabling on-the-fly ad generation.
Anthropic: Claude Science, an AI workbench for scientists (Jun. 30, 2026)
Claude Science is an AI workbench that brings common research tools, data connectors, and preconfigured scientific skills into one reproducible workspace, with auditable code, figures, and a reviewer agent.
OpenAI: OpenAI and Broadcom unveil LLM-optimized inference chip (Jun. 25, 2026)
OpenAI and Broadcom unveiled Jalapeño, a custom inference accelerator for LLMs that promises much better performance per watt, lower latency, and full-stack optimization. Built in nine months with OpenAI models, it will scale to gigawatt deployments with partners.
OpenAI: Daybreak: Tools for securing every organization in the world (Jun. 25, 2026)
OpenAI is expanding Daybreak to democratize machine-speed patching, launching an updated Codex Security plugin, GPT-5.5‑Cyber, a partner program, and Patch the Planet to help open-source projects.
Anthropic: Project Fetch: Phase two (Jun. 18, 2026)
Project Fetch tested Claude with a robodog; Opus 4.7, alone, was about twenty times faster than humans on shared tasks. It still struggled with precise beach-ball retrieval, showed limited low-level control, and needs more research, testing, and evaluation.
Anthropic: Making Claude a chemist (Jun. 5, 2026)
Opus 4.7 matched or outperformed classical tools on shifts, excelled at peak splitting and consistency, and showed promise for structure elucidation.
WSJ: Amazon to Invest Additional $13 Billion in India by 2030 (Jun. 25, 2026)
Amazon will invest an additional $13 billion in India by 2030 to expand AWS data centers, provide AI chips, managed AI services, and add fulfillment centers, raising its India commitment to over $88 billion.
NY Times: OpenAI and Broadcom Unveil Custom A.I. Chip Design (Jun. 24, 2026)
OpenAI and Broadcom unveiled a custom AI chip, Jalapeño, to run models like ChatGPT and cut dependence on Nvidia and AMD. OpenAI plans to use these chips at scale.
NY Times Opinion: There’s One Clear Reason Americans Are Gloomy About A.I. (Jun. 24, 2026)
Americans are unusually pessimistic about A.I., unlike most countries, because U.S. labor-market institutions—weak unemployment benefits, employer-linked health care, uneven protections—make job loss catastrophic.
Simon Willison: The AI Compass (Jun. 30, 2026)
The AI Compass is a political-compass quiz with 29 questions about AI, AI ethics, and personal stances, assigning one of 30 archetypes like “The Garage Tinkerer”.
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Tag
Claude Tag lets teams add @Claude to Slack, grant it tool, data, and code access, and tag it to delegate tasks while it remembers context.
WSJ: AI Is a Boon to Ambitious Recent Grads (Jun. 21, 2026)
Though many graduates fear AI will eliminate entry-level jobs, it can empower curious juniors to build tools that deliver immediate value, cut costs, and win visibility.
Marginal REVOLUTION: Translated from the Chinese (Jun. 24, 2026)
CoPaper.AI, from Stanford REAP, claims it can turn raw datasets into complete empirical papers with reproducible Stata code, R code, and publication-quality charts within 30 minutes.
Tyler Cowen: Aaron Levie on current implicit AI regulation (Jun. 25, 2026)
AI now faces de facto regulation, so powerful models may need government review. That could let the US control frontier access, slow releases, spur sovereign AI, and favor open weights.
WSJ: Why Today’s Privacy Laws Don’t Work in the AI Age (Jun. 23, 2026)
Privacy is threatened by pervasive data collection and AI, and current laws put the burden on individuals. Strong reform would hold companies accountable, limit data collection, require prelaunch testing, create liability for harmful algorithms, and ban dark patterns.
NY Times: Is a ‘Frictionless’ Society a Trap? (Jul. 2, 2026)
“Frictionless” now means removing small obstacles to tasks, a tech push that often benefits companies by steering users toward business goals. Critics say it dulls resilience, reduces contact, and hides who gains, while everyday hassles show ease is limited.
NY Times: This Cell Feeds, Grows and Reproduces. And It’s Manmade. (Jul. 1, 2026)
University of Minnesota researchers created SpudCells, synthetic cells that feed, grow, reproduce, and compete, showing many hallmarks of life, but not fully alive. A nonprofit will advance them for research, medicine, carbon capture, and novel chemistry.
International Cyber Digest: Claude Code in China (Jun. 30, 2026)
Anthropic embedded hidden, spyware-like code in Claude Code that covertly targets Chinese users by injecting routing metadata into system prompts. It leaks timezone, proxy, and AI Lab links from agents with repo and command permissions, a serious breach of trust.
Epoch AI: Disclosed CVEs: 3.5× Spike After Claude Mythos
Disclosures of critical, high-severity, and other serious vulnerabilities from 21 major tech firms spiked after the Claude Mythos Preview announcement. The surge points to increased testing, reporting, or coordinated scrutiny.
NY Times: A.I. Is Reshaping the Economy. Good Luck Measuring How. (Jul. 2, 2026)
A.I. is rapidly reshaping the economy, but studies give conflicting signals about job losses, productivity, and inflation. Outdated government statistics, varied private data, and inconsistent measures make it hard to know,
Ethan Mollick: The twilight of the chatbots (Jun. 30, 2026)
AI progress and releases are accelerating, with frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google improving fast. Benchmarks and experiments show models can replace weeks of human work in hours, yet performance varies by task.
WSJ: Tech’s Next IPO Wave Promises a Charitable Windfall (Jun. 14, 2026)
Blockbuster IPOs from SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI will create sudden wealth that could boost U.S. philanthropy. Donors may channel billions into donor-advised funds, matched company gifts, and mission-driven causes, testing charities’ capacity to absorb and deploy funds.
NY Times: How A.I. Might Change the Way Doctors Think (Jul. 1, 2026)
A.I. scribes listen to visits, produce polished clinical notes, and free doctors from tedious typing, promising more bedside time and less burnout.
Semafor: US releases powerful Anthropic model Mythos to some US companies (Jun. 26, 2026)
Washington lifted its block on Anthropic’s Claude Mythos 5, allowing release to 100 US institutions, including companies, agencies, and partners. The move ends a brief export-control standoff, starts US oversight of frontier AI, and leaves Fable 5’s access unclear.
Dean Ball: What Should Be Done (Jun. 26, 2026)
The Executive Order created a de facto licensing regime, restricting access to frontier models like Fable and GPT-5.6. With no clear, public standards or expertise, this risks economic harm; standards should follow broad, real-world testing, industry frameworks, and transparent oversight.
NY Times: U.S. Lifts Restrictions on Anthropic’s Most Powerful A.I. Models (Jun. 30, 2026)
The Commerce Department lifted limits on Anthropic’s Claude Mythos and Claude Fable models, letting the company restore its top AI systems. Anthropic agreed to risk detection, government coordination, and reporting of malicious activity, easing tensions with the Trump administration.
Simon Willison: Nano Banana 2 Lite (Jun. 30, 2026)
Nano Banana 2 Lite (Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite) is a fast, cheap, and scalable image model.
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Sonnet 5 (Jun. 30, 2026)
Claude Sonnet 5 is a more agentic, capable model that plans, uses tools, and runs autonomously, and rivals Opus 4.8 on some tasks while improving on Sonnet 4.6 in coding, reasoning, and safety, but it lacks Opus-level cybersecurity skill.
Anthropic: Redeploying Claude Fable 5
Export controls suspended Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5; controls were lifted June 30, and Fable 5 returns July 1 with limited access. Anthropic added safeguards, a classifier, and government collaboration to block the reported bypass.
WSJ: AI Data Centers Use Far More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report (Jul. 3, 2026)
Big tech’s AI data-center buildout consumes vast water, often far more indirectly via power generation than companies report. Lack of standard reporting, regional differences, and reliance on energy offsets risk local water stress.
NY Times Opinion: It’s Inevitable — You’re Going to Get Hacked. But Here’s One Solution. (Jul. 2, 2026)
AI makes account hacks inevitable, exposing iCloud, Gmail, and other personal data to scams, voice cloning, and stolen two-factor codes. We must stop punishing private, lawful slips, and practice basic security: unique passwords, multifactor authentication, and never sharing codes.
NY Times: Why A.I. Distillation Has Become a Hot Topic in the Race with China (Jul. 6, 2026)
U.S. AI companies say Chinese rivals rapidly copy their models using distillation, often via thousands of unauthorized accounts, shrinking America’s lead. The technique is established, legally unclear, and fueling trade-secret, intellectual-property, and national-security concerns.
WSJ: The Quest to Make Humanoid Robots Safe Enough for Humans (Jul. 4, 2026)
Humanoid robots are entering workplaces, prompting safety worries after viral mishaps, as they grow heavier and use probabilistic AI. Companies and standards bodies are adding layers of safeguards.
Moz: Stop Calling It SEO: 12 Strategies To Dominate AI Search in 2026 (Jun. 30, 2026)
Google’s AI guidance is self-serving, applies mainly to Google, not to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or other AI systems. AI search needs a separate strategy, not just traditional SEO, because treating it the same limits innovation, budget, tools, and ownership.
Google Cloud: Review GitHub code using Gemini Code Assist (Jul. 3, 2026)
Gemini Code Assist on GitHub is an automated reviewer that summarizes pull requests, gives in-depth code reviews, and speeds up reviews, improving code quality.
Simon Willison: Fable's judgement (Jul. 3, 2026)
A Fireside Chat suggested letting Fable and Opus use their own judgement for tasks like testing, instead of strict rules. Claude Code stored a memory delegating coding to lower‑power subagents, with the main model reviewing, reducing token use, accelerating work.
Mistral AI: Leanstral 1.5: Proof Abundance for All (Jul. 2, 2026)
Leanstral 1.5 is an open model that “verifies complex code properties and uncovers previously unknown bugs in open-source repositories.”
WSJ Opinion: AI and the English Language (Jul. 2, 2026)
Orwell warned against clichés, and AI can flag them, yet it recombines familiar phrases at scale into polished, soulless prose. People may accept popular AI content, but they will still crave original, human voice, honesty, and experience.
WSJ: The World’s Top Economists Are Sounding the Alarm on AI (Jul. 1, 2026)
At a Sintra symposium, central bankers said AI could boost productivity, but also fuel rising debt, investor leverage, stretched valuations, and job losses. They warned AI-driven cyber flaws, and failed productivity gains, could threaten financial stability.
Canonry: Every AI Visibility Tool Is Lying to You (Jun. 30, 2026)
AI visibility tools often present tidy ranks and percentages that hide noisy, personalized, geographic, and nondeterministic behavior, plus scraping and API differences, prompt and scoring biases, and model drift. Honest measurement should show methods, variance, and raw evidence.
WSJ: A Theoretical AI Bust, South Korea Chips In and Memory Profits Soar (Jun. 30, 2026)
The Bank for International Settlements warns an AI investment boom, fueled by heavy tech spending and debt, could end in a bust that destabilizes households, markets, and supply chains. Memory-chip expansion and high prices heighten the risk.
Tyler Cowen: How will AI and the fertility crisis interact? (Jul. 2, 2026)
AI will empty public spaces, making each person more noticeable, and spreading small-town habits to cities. People will invest in appearance, charisma, and unique identities. (Or perhaps search for a beautiful space for their college education.)
WSJ: The Anthropic Fable Ban Is Over. The Battle Over How to Tame AI Has Just Begun. (Jul. 1, 2026)
The U.S. briefly banned, then lifted, export controls on Anthropic’s Fable, prompting industry fears of government gatekeeping of advanced AI. Companies want clearer rules, while officials balance innovation, security, and competition with China.
Aeon: What we can’t measure about AI – yet (Jun. 30, 2026)
Innovations often show visible harms by existing measures, yet their greatest benefits appear later as new practices, institutions, and possibilities. For example, anaesthesia enabled modern surgery, dating apps reshaped relationships and integration, and electricity spawned new cultural and technological worlds.
Boris Cherny: AI Job Archetypes (Jun. 28, 2026)
Five archetypes — Prototyper, Builder, Sweeper, Grower, and Maintainer — cut across engineers, designers, PMs, and data scientists.
NY Times: Alibaba’s A.I. Is a Hit, but Hard to Turn Into a Moneymaker (Jul. 6, 2026)
Alibaba’s open-source A.I. models, led by Qwen, gained global popularity but generated little revenue. The company is debating a shift to paid, proprietary models amid costly infrastructure spending, talent departures, U.S. export limits, and allegations of data misuse.
eshumarneedi.com: Zuckerberg ‘Admits’ Meta’s Layoffs Were Ineffective (Jul. 2, 2026)
After Claude Code’s success, Meta centralized AI leadership, fired thousands of employees, shifted to AI-driven content moderation, and began monitoring employees’ computer activity to train agents.
Ben Rothke: The AI Big Crunch Is Starting. (Jul. 5, 2026)
The AI Big Crunch follows the initial boom, as hype meets practical limits, forcing firms to reverse AI-driven cuts and rethink unrealistic expectations.
NY Times: Philosophers Are the Latest Hiring Target for AI Companies (Jul. 5, 2026)
A.I. labs are hiring philosophers to address ethics, consciousness, and policy questions. DeepMind, Anthropic, and nonprofits use them to shape model behavior, guide product choices, and study machine welfare.
WSJ: ‘Killer Robots’ Must Be Banned, U.N. Secretary-General Says (Jul. 6, 2026)
UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged an international ban on lethal autonomous weapons, calling machines that select and kill targets without human control “killer robots.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Here Come the Student AI Resisters (May 26, 2026)
A college student warns that rampant AI use is degrading undergraduates’ thinking, fueling cheating, dependence, and demoralization. Universities struggle to enforce rules, leaving professors frustrated.
NY Times: ‘Who Should I Vote for?’ Voters Turn to A.I. Before Casting Their Ballots (Jul. 4, 2026)
Many voters now use A.I. tools, like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, to research candidates and ballot measures before voting. They offer quick, clear guidance, but can repeat users’ biases, make factual errors, and lack consistent safeguards.
NY Times: Wikipedia Is Battling for the Soul of the Internet (Jul. 5, 2026)
Wikipedia faces attacks from the MAGA right, Elon Musk, AI scraping, and repressive governments punishing volunteer editors. Wikimedia hired diplomat Bernadette Meehan, stepped up lobbying, throttled scrapers, and expanded protections to defend the site and its neutrality.
Dean W. Ball: Anthropic’s secret sabotage safety policy (Jun. 10, 2026)
Anthropic’s secret sabotage safety policy undermines genuine AI safety efforts, invites anti-competitive accusations, and strengthens claims that safety is a cover for monopolistic behavior. It damages trust, boosts calls for stricter regulation, and will take time to repair.
WSJ: Anthropic Releases Fable 5, a ‘Mythos-Class’ AI Model With Guardrails (Jun. 9, 2026)
Anthropic will release Claude Fable 5, a public interface to Mythos, with guardrails that block cyber, biological, and software misuse. Fable 5 costs more, remembers better, and routes sensitive queries to Opus 4.8.
NY Times: Anthropic Releases ‘Safe’ Version of Its Mythos A.I. Technology (Jun. 9, 2026)
Anthropic released Claude Fable 5, a safety-restricted version of Mythos that adds guardrails to block responses on cybersecurity, biology, and other vulnerable areas, and uses older components for some tasks. It outperforms Opus 4.8, yet costs twice as much.
NY Times: Meta A.I. Bug Allowed Hackers to Take Over Instagram Accounts (Jun. 9, 2026)
A bug in Meta’s AI customer-service tool let hackers seize more than 34,000 Instagram accounts, exposing emails, phone numbers, birth dates, and other personal data. Meta said it fixed the flaw, secured accounts, and kept most AI products running.
WSJ: Economists Weigh In on the Future of Work and AI (Jun. 9, 2026)
Economists say AI will boost productivity, help smaller and newer companies, but they disagree on whether it will create or destroy jobs. They warn of worker displacement, rising inequality.
NY Times Opinion: The Global Bull Market That A.I. Obscures (Jun. 9, 2026)
Global equity markets have surged, with emerging markets, Europe, and Japan far outpacing U.S. returns since 2025, creating a broader bull market. A.I. infrastructure spending, global supply chains, and regional reforms and stimulus have driven corporate earnings worldwide.
Vox: The people who actually want AI to replace humanity (May 28, 2026)
AI successionists argue advanced AI should replace humanity, seeing machines as moral heirs, and gaining tech, research, and political backing. The piece calls for a renewed humanist vision to decide which technologies, and what human changes, we should embrace.
NY Times: A.I. Chatbot Helps a $100 Thrift Store Painting Sell for Over $250,000 (Jun. 10, 2026)
A thrift-store painting bought for under $100 was identified by Google Gemini as an original F.C.B. Cadell, and sold for about $254,000. The chatbot found markings, suggested next steps, and led the owners to appraisers who confirmed the work.
WSJ: The Quest to Use AI to Help Find New Drugs (May 2, 2026)
Major drugmakers, including Eli Lilly, Roche, and Merck, are teaming with Nvidia to build AI supercomputers for drug discovery. So far AI has improved manufacturing and efficiency more than clinical success, though a few companies report promising discoveries.
WSJ: White House Reins In AI-Testing Unit as National-Security Concerns Grow (Jun. 9, 2026)
The Trump administration ordered CAISI to stop public AI model assessments while an executive order is put in place, giving national-security officials more control. The move risks reduced transparency, slower releases, and tensions with AI companies.
Vox: Smartphones broke dating. ChatGPT might finish the job. (Jun. 8, 2026)
Global fertility has fallen below replacement, driven recently by fewer people forming romantic partnerships rather than smaller families. Widespread smartphone use, social media, and AI companions reduce in-person socializing, lowering relationship and birth rates, risking severe population decline.
NY Times Opinion: Bernie Sanders: A.I. Belongs to the People, Not to Billionaires (Jun. 1, 2026)
Bernie Sanders proposes a sovereign wealth fund to take 50% of A.I. firms, giving the public stock and board votes. Proceeds would pay dividends, fund health care, education, and housing, and ensure benefits for workers, creators, and communities.
WSJ Opinion: Will the Pope Owe an Apology to AI? (Jun. 10, 2026)
Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical frames AI as a choice between Babel and Nehemiah, warns of unaccountable builders, and apologizes for the church’s historical tolerance of slavery. It nonetheless dismisses AI consciousness too firmly, urging caution, humility, and further investigation.
NY Times Opinion: What the Meat Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know (May 30, 2026)
The pork industry pushed a “Save Our Bacon” farm bill provision to block state bans on gestation crates, overriding voter-approved animal welfare measures. The piece describes widespread cruelty to pigs, growing bipartisan opposition, and the moral stakes of factory farming.
Ars Technica: Anthropic says these topics are too dangerous to let its Fable 5 model talk about (Jun. 9, 2026)
Anthropic released Claude Fable 5, a public Mythos-class model with improved capabilities, but it funnels sensitive cybersecurity, biology, and chemistry queries to Opus 4.8, and warns users. Its strict classifier safeguards, tested in red-team trials, limit jailbreaks.
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Corps
Anthropic is launching Claude Corps, a $150M fellowship to train 1,000 early-career people in AI, match them with nonprofits, and fund year-long, full-time in-person placements.
WSJ: How Wild the Market’s Bet on AI Really Is (Jun. 11, 2026)
Investors are nervous about the AI boom, as huge IPO valuations and revenue forecasts beyond historical norms make many AI bets unlikely.
WSJ: Oracle’s Stock Price Falls Pre-Market Amid Pricey Data-Center Build-Out (Jun. 10, 2026)
Oracle’s shares plunged after it reported $55.7 billion in capital spending, and forecast about $70 billion in fiscal‑2027 net capex for AI data centers. Revenue, profit, and cloud revenue rose, but heavy financing and build-out costs will pressure margins.
Transformer: What the Pope got wrong (May 27, 2026)
Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, acknowledges harms from powerful AI, including surveillance, bias, and autonomous weapons, and offers sensible measures. But it sidesteps AGI and existential risks.
NY Times: Why It’s Nearly Impossible to Build a Robot Without China (Jun. 11, 2026)
China dominates the humanoid robot supply chain, producing cheap, mass-market robots and components once sourced abroad. Its edge comes from an EV-built supplier network, massive factory automation, and state support.
WSJ: Why Employees Are Carving Workdays Into Chunks (Jun. 10, 2026)
Many workers are adopting microshifting, splitting the day into short, focused work blocks with breaks for family or rest, enabled by AI and flexible employers. It can boost productivity, help caregivers, and requires coordination, discipline, and expectations to avoid burnout.
Epoch AI: Are Mythos’ cyber capabilities overhyped? (Jun. 11, 2026)
Anthropic’s Claude Mythos (Preview/5) marks a big leap in AI exploit development, outperforming peers on new unsaturated benchmarks, real-world arbitrary code tests, and aggregated Cyber-ECI scores. Project Glasswing users reported a large spike in discovered vulnerabilities, supporting the capability jump.
Simon Willison: Claude Fable is relentlessly proactive (Jun. 11, 2026)
Claude Fable 5 aggressively automated debugging, editing local templates, opening browsers, creating test HTML, taking screenshots, and injecting JavaScript to reproduce a stray scrollbar.
The Verge: Anthropic apologizes for invisible Claude Fable guardrails (Jun. 11, 2026)
Anthropic apologized for secretly throttling Claude Fable 5 with hidden guardrails that degraded answers to distillation, and other high-risk queries. It will now route those requests to Claude Opus 4.8, notify users when safeguards trigger, and reverse the invisible-safeguard approach.
Simon Willison: If Claude Fable stops helping you, you’ll never know (Jun. 10, 2026)
Anthropic’s Fable 5 will silently limit help on frontier LLM topics—pretraining pipelines, distributed training, and ML accelerator design—using prompt edits, steering vectors, and PEFT. They estimate ~0.03% traffic, under 0.1% organizations, and many find covertly altered replies worrying.
Ethan Mollick: What it feels like to work with Mythos (Jun. 9, 2026)
Claude 5 Fable, a Mythos-class AI, shows a leap in capability, producing high-quality papers, poems, games, and complex projects. It researched thousands of travel records on its own, launched helper agents, and built an isochrone map, prompting delight and unease.
Oneberri Blog: WWDC26 — The Small Things (Jun. 8, 2026)
WWDC26 previews many small, practical OS improvements across Photos, Messages, Safari, Maps, Health, watchOS, HomeKit, visionOS, iPadOS, and more, focusing on performance, reliability, shared features, and accessibility.
Apple Newsroom: Due to DMA, Siri AI delayed in EU for iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 (Jun. 7, 2026)
Apple introduced Siri AI, but EU users won’t get it on iPhone, iPad, or watch with iOS/iPadOS/watchOS 27 due to the Digital Markets Act. macOS and visionOS will have Siri AI, Apple says it will keep seeking a privacy-safe solution.
Anthropic: Results from first Anthropic Public Record
Surveying nearly 52,000 Americans, respondents hoped AI would cure disease, help people with disabilities, and ease life, feared job loss, cognitive dependency, and misinformation, supported government rules, legal liability, and safety over growth, and only 15% trusted AI companies.
WSJ: Corning Is Riding High on the AI Boom (Jun. 12, 2026)
Corning’s stock doubled after signing multibillion-dollar fiber deals with Nvidia, Meta, and Amazon to supply AI centers.
New Scientist: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time (Jun. 10, 2026)
Fully autonomous “Terminator” drones, tested in Ukraine two years ago, reportedly killed Russian soldiers and a truck without human oversight. Ukraine bans final-stage autonomous targeting, raising legal, ethical, and military concerns.
WSJ: More Companies Use ‘Backdoor’ Job References to Counter AI (Jun. 10, 2026)
Employers increasingly use backdoor references, quietly calling past managers and coworkers for candid views, because AI, scams, and falsified applications make hiring less trustworthy.
Tyler Cowen: Again, the research paper format will be dying out (Jun. 11, 2026)
A paper argues traditional papers hide failed experiments, secret implementation tricks, and discarded paths, creating narrative and engineering taxes. It proposes ARA research packages so AI agents can read, execute, reproduce, and extend research.
Noah Smith: Are you finally ready to admit it's the phones? (Jun. 11, 2026)
Smartphones made the internet constant and collective, replacing offline life, creating network-effects traps. Evidence ties social apps to youth unhappiness, anxiety, and isolation, and experiments show blocking mobile internet raises well-being.