Ben Labaschin

ML and LLMs, economics, Chicago.

Principal MLE @ Workhelix.

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

Fair thee well @normconf Goodies API, you served us well!

It was a great conference and very useful and not-at-all over-engineered API!

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

New Anthropic research: Natural Language Autoencoders.

Models like Claude talk in words but think in numbers. The numbers—called activations—encode Claude’s thoughts, but not in a language we can read.

Here, we train Claude to translate its activations into human-readable text.

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

Me pointing my agents at my legacy codebase in 2026.

[DaVinci @BiancoDavinci]

Skull of St. Thomas Aquinas being transported to Fossanova Abbey, Italy.

[Thinkwert @Thinkwert]

Nominative Determinism

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

And @danielrock !

[Yann LeCun @ylecun]

Dario is wrong.
He knows absolutely nothing about the effects of technological revolutions on the labor market.
Don't listen to him, Sam, Yoshua, Geoff, or me on this topic.
Listen to economists who have spent their career studying this, like @Ph_Aghion , @erikbryn , @DAcemogluMIT , @amcafee , @davidautor

[Yann LeCun @ylecun]

Dario is wrong.
He knows absolutely nothing about the effects of technological revolutions on the labor market.
Don't listen to him, Sam, Yoshua, Geoff, or me on this topic.
Listen to economists who have spent their career studying this, like @Ph_Aghion , @erikbryn , @DAcemogluMIT , @amcafee , @davidautor

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

I’m excited to share that I’m writing my first full-length book with O’Reilly:

Agent Memory

The book is about how AI agents remember across sessions, adapt over time, and do more coherent work across longer horizons.

More here:
https://t.co/LfzjH2ulBo

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

@mikesimonsen Yeah I mean. Helpful to look at a dashboard of metrics.

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

"Most predictable thing ever happens predictably."

[POLITICO @politico]

Taiwan reports large-scale Chinese military aircraft presence near island https://t.co/MSefbqsIF0

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

A perhaps understated aspect of this data is the increasing rate of *foiled* plots on synagogues. Which, of course, is wonderful.

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

When I built the initial graphic depicting attacked on synagogues, I honestly didn't expect so much feedback.

I took time to refine the chart. I've added attacks per decade to better illustrate the increasing prevalence of these attacks. I've included the US, Canada, Europe.

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

Synagogue attacks have seemed to be in the new more frequently, but I wasn't sure about the historical data. So I charted them below.

Wild stuff.

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

@ShaiDavidai Yeah I need to change that. I honestly didn't think so many people would see this.

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

Synagogue attacks have seemed to be in the new more frequently, but I wasn't sure about the historical data. So I charted them below.

Wild stuff.

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

@WildBillWellman @ESennesh It's a good question. At the end of the day, one would need a causal study, and I'm unaware of any.

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

@Fleischmarket true.

[Robert A. Pape @ProfessorPape]

This morning I was asked on Boston radio about the US–Israel strikes on Iran.

Here is the strategic reality most people are missing:

Airpower alone has never produced positive regime change.

I don’t mean rarely.

I mean NEVER.

[NBC Olympics & Paralympics @NBCOlympics]

Nazgul started the day as just another Italian dog. He'll end it as a #WinterOlympics legend. 🙌

[Ben Labaschin @EconoBen]

“You are Alexander the Great. Your goal is to kidnap the president of Venezuela….”

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Breaking: The Pentagon used Anthropic’s AI tool Claude in its military operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro https://t.co/HwXRnafUo0

[Tim Hopper @tdhopper]

In which @EconoBen and I explore the chaotic reality of the modern "Infinite Multitasker": a world where we operate as conductors rather than coders, managing five terminals and seven projects simultaneously.

Listen below 👇🏻

[Tim Hopper @tdhopper]

My interview with @EconoBen about the evolution of AI agents for developers has given me a lot to think about!

How has your workflow changed over the past year?

https://t.co/4EfkqaLoAL

[Tim Hopper @tdhopper]

For your drive home this evening, I resume my podcast series on AI developer experience with @EconoBen, principal engineer at @workhelix. Enjoy!

https://t.co/4EfkqaLoAL