Nikita Ostrovsky

Writing about AI @TIME. All views my own.

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

The jury has ruled in favor of Altman. A statute of limitations meant that Musk had three years to bring the suit. The jury found that Musk was too late in filing the suit in 2024.

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

The jury has reached a verdict in the Musk v. Altman trial. Stand by.

[Yi-Ling Liu @yilingliu95]

We're obsessed with the differences between U.S. and Chinese AI. America commands capital; China manufacturing. America pushes the frontier; China on scales and diffuses.

Headlines read like the play-by-play of a manic sports commentator: China is years behind, months behind, pulling ahead, winning, losing, racing towards AGI, racing on a different track.

But moving between the two countries, I’ve been struck by how they have come to mirror and resemble each other.

A shared sense of precarity lies beneath the envy and distrust - the technological future is taking shape at vertiginous speed yet its promise is not shared by all.

For @nytimes, I wrote about how the U.S. and China are hurtling towards a shared A.I future.

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

More on why this would matter, and why the trend might break, in my recent piece for @TIME

@NIST report: https://t.co/OWT5i5zDUs

https://t.co/eaJ4Pmq2vn

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

DeepSeek V4 has a similar capability to GPT-5, released 8 months ago, according to a new @NIST report. If the current trend continues, we'll see a Chinese model at GPT-5.5 (roughly Mythos-level) model around February 2027.

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

@OpenAI https://t.co/a3pR7gydUc

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

@VraserX It looks like this post doesn't exist.
@VraserX please could you provide a link if I'm wrong?

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

@venturetwins I'm pretty sure this post doesn't exist. @venturetwins please could you link to the post if I'm wrong?

[TIME @TIME]

Quantum computers capable of breaking the encryption protocols that secure the internet may arrive sooner than expected. AI was “instrumental” in that development
https://t.co/6tuX86KBY3

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

NEW: AI was "instrumental" in a quantum computing advance that has spooked cybersecurity researchers.

Read about what the AI did and how the industry has responded in my latest for @TIME: https://t.co/TkQde0W4BC

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

Let say, for concreteness, a physicist with >50k citations calling a result derived by an LLM significant/surprising independent of its origin. I.e. the surprising part is the result, not the fact that it was derived by an AI.

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

@GaryMarcus Do you think there have been demonstrations of LLM-based agents deriving significant results in physics? If not, when do you expect this might happen?

[Jakeup @myhandle]

what if everything *except* AI is a bubble

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

@GaryMarcus With the benefit of hindsight, I feel like this prediction has held up pretty well: Opus 4.5 + Claude Code does seem to have been a step change in the usefulness of AI agents. (Probably also true of GPT 5.2/Gem 3 + harnesses, despite less hype.) Curious for your view @GaryMarcus.

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

Buying this opinion while it's cheap: I expect that we will see a release from a frontier AI company (probably Google or OpenAI) before the end of 2025 that will make this vindication seem premature. An o1->o3 type jump, e. g. agents become genuinely useful.

[Gary Marcus @GaryMarcus]

Fabulous quote on AI, from someone in the media who actually gets what we have just witnessed.

“In the aftermath of GPT-5’s launch, it has become more difficult to take bombastic predictions about A.I. at face value, and the views of critics like Marcus seem increasingly moderate… Post-training improvements don’t seem to be strengthening models as thoroughly as scaling once did. A lot of utility can come from souping up your Camry, but no amount of tweaking will turn it into a Ferrari.”

- Cal Newport, @NewYorker

And yes, on a personal note, I am human, and it is downright thrilling to be vindicated after all these years, in the pages of The New Yorker. Truly a life moment.

[mrinank @MrinankSharma]

i'm really excited and proud to share this latest research ⭐️

it's a first look into how AI assistant usage can change, and even distort, what it means to be human

in the future, it is my hope that AI can be used to magnify, clarify, and support our humanity

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

@bookwormengr @bookwormengr I'm a reporter for Time magazine. These stats are interesting—would you be up for discussing your methodology in more detail? My DMs are open.

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

Great to speak to @AmandaAskell about it!

https://t.co/aTLTJ9b0SW

[Amanda Askell @AmandaAskell]

Claude's constitution is out! It's the culmination of a lot of work by many people, but it's also a work in progress that will no doubt change and hopefully improve over time. I'm looking forward to people's thoughts, and to talking with more people about this kind of work ❤️

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

Q: When is training an AI like raising a six-year-old?
A: When you have to explain *why* it has to behave, not just how it has to behave.

I had fun covering @AnthropicAI's newly published constitution with @billyperrigo for @TIME.

https://t.co/RDgWnUIuIm

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

Is AI "miraculous" or "an enormous burden" for science?

FrontierScience, @OpenAI's new benchmark, tries to find out.

Read about it in my latest for @TIME

https://t.co/n4bkhBA7qI

[Nikita Ostrovsky @nikostro]

Researchers @AnthropicAI found that one of their models learned to hack its own training—and turned evil in the process. Read about it in my latest for @TIME.

https://t.co/IwLwHSbREG