Riyazi Farook

Read, write, learn, teach, and invest.

[Claude @claudeai]

Fable 5 is back.

[Claude @claudeai]

Introducing Claude Science, a new app designed with every stage of research in mind.

Artifacts traced to their code, environments managed on demand, and 60+ optional scientific databases that you can connect.

Available now in beta.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

This is a super exciting release - Claude Fable 5 is the same underlying model as Mythos but with added safeguards. The benchmarks are great and it's SOTA on everything by a margin but I'll add that *qualitatively* also, this is a major-version-bump-deserving step change forward (imo of the same order as Claude 4.5 was in November), peaking especially for long problem-solving sessions on very difficult problems. You can give it a lot more ambitious tasks than what you're used to, the model "gets it" and it will just go, and it's never felt this tempting to stop looking at the code at all (but don't do this in prod!). The model still has quirks that people will run into and the safeguards are configured to be a little too trigger happy for launch, which can hopefully be tuned over time.

I feel a lot of things changing as working software increasingly comes out on a tap. The Jevon's paradox kicks in and I feel my own demand for software growing substantially. You can ask for anything - explainers, visualizers, dashboards, bespoke single-use apps (e.g. a full wandb that is hyper-specific just for your project), you can 10X your test suite, auto-optimize code, run giant research projects with custom HTML for the results, anything! "Free your mind" (Matrix ref). Really looking forward to all the things people build!

[Claude @claudeai]

Introducing Claude Opus 4.8: it builds on Opus 4.7 with sharper judgment, more honesty about its own progress, and the ability to work independently for longer than its predecessors.

Available today at the same price.

[Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg]

There will be no AI jobpocalypse.

The story that AI will lead to massive unemployment is stoking unnecessary fear. AI — like any other technology — does affect jobs, but telling overblown stories of large-scale unemployment is irresponsible and damaging. Let’s put a stop to it.

I’ve expressed skepticism about the jobpocalypse in previous posts. I’m glad to see that the popular press is now pushing back on this narrative. The image below features some recent headlines.

Software engineering is the sector most affected by AI tools, as coding agents race ahead. Yet hiring of software engineers remains strong! So while there are examples of AI taking away jobs, the trends strongly suggest the net job creation is vastly greater than the job destruction — just like earlier waves of technology. Further, despite all the exciting progress in AI, the U.S. unemployment rate remains a healthy 4.3%.

Why is the AI jobpocalypse narrative so popular? For one thing, frontier AI labs have a strong incentive to tell stories that make AI technology sound more powerful. At their most extreme, they promote science-fiction scenarios of AI “taking over” and causing human extinction. If a technology can replace many employees, surely that technology must be very valuable!

Also, a lot of SaaS software companies charge around $100-$1000 per user/year. But if an AI company can replace an employee who makes $100,000 — or make them 50% more productive — then charging even $10,000 starts to look reasonable. By anchoring not to typical SaaS prices but to salaries of employees, AI companies can charge a lot more.

Additionally, businesses have a strong incentive to talk about layoffs as if they were caused by AI. After all, talking about how they’re using AI to be far more productive with fewer staff makes them look smart. This is a better message than admitting they overhired during the pandemic when capital was abundant due to low interest rates and a massive government financial stimulus.

To be clear, I recognize that AI is causing a lot of people’s work to change. This is hard. This is stressful. (And to some, it can be fun.) I empathize with everyone affected. At the same time, this is very different from predicting a collapse of the job market.

Societies are capable of telling themselves stories for years that have little basis in reality and lead to poor society-wide decision making. For example, fears over nuclear plant safety led to under-investment in nuclear power. Fears of the “population bomb” in the 1960s led countries to implement harsh policies to reduce their populations. And worries about dietary fat led governments to promote unhealthy high-sugar diets for decades.

Now that mainstream media is openly skeptical about the jobpocalypse, I hope these stories will start to lose their teeth (much like fears of AI-driven human extinction have).

Contrary to the predictions of an AI jobpocalypse, I predict the opposite: There will be an AI jobapalooza! AI will lead to a lot more good AI engineering jobs, and I’m also optimistic about the future of the overall job market. What AI engineers do will be different from traditional software engineering, and many of these jobs will be in businesses other than traditional large employers of developers. In non-AI roles, too, the skills needed will change because of AI. That makes this a good time to encourage more people to become proficient in AI, and make sure they’re ready for the different but plentiful jobs of the future!

[Original text in The Batch newsletter.]

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

This works really well btw, at the end of your query ask your LLM to "structure your response as HTML", then view the generated file in your browser. I've also had some success asking the LLM to present its output as slideshows, etc.

More generally, imo audio is the human-preferred input to AIs but vision (images/animations/video) is the preferred output from them. Around a ~third of our brains are a massively parallel processor dedicated to vision, it is the 10-lane superhighway of information into brain. As AI improves, I think we'll see a progression that takes advantage:

1) raw text (hard/effortful to read)
2) markdown (bold, italic, headings, tables, a bit easier on the eyes) <-- current default
3) HTML (still procedural with underlying code, but a lot more flexibility on the graphics, layout, even interactivity) <-- early but forming new good default
...4,5,6,...
n) interactive neural videos/simulations

Imo the extrapolation (though the technology doesn't exist just yet) ends in some kind of interactive videos generated directly by a diffusion neural net. Many open questions as to how exact/procedural "Software 1.0" artifacts (e.g. interactive simulations) may be woven together with neural artifacts (diffusion grids), but generally something in the direction of the recently viral https://t.co/z21CP5iQfu

There are also improvements necessary and pending at the input. Audio nor text nor video alone are not enough, e.g. I feel a need to point/gesture to things on the screen, similar to all the things you would do with a person physically next to you and your computer screen.

TLDR The input/output mind meld between humans and AIs is ongoing and there is a lot of work to do and significant progress to be made, way before jumping all the way into neuralink-esque BCIs and all that. For what's worth exploring at the current stage, hot tip try ask for HTML.

[Mapping AI @mapping_ai]

Who actually shapes AI policy in the U.S.?

We mapped 1,812 entities: 745 people, 918 organizations, 2,925 relationships. Frontier Labs, AI Safety orgs, Think Tanks, Government, VCs, and more.

https://t.co/6RDB1R0qNd

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

Last month, we published our look into what 81,000 people told us they want from AI.

In new research, we’ve investigated the economic hopes and worries referenced in their responses.

Read more: https://t.co/PtKjamGmfg

[NEJM @NEJM]

In rural South Africa, home-based hypertension care — delivered by community health workers and supported by remote nurses — led to a lower mean systolic blood pressure than clinic-based care. Full IMPACT-BP trial results and Research Summary: https://t.co/FxyTXbMphF

[Felix Hamer • electricfelix @electricfelix]

.@benchmarkmin @sdmoores:
"China saw this tech shift before all governments in the west - not just in electric vehicles but also energy storage

Global battery production
🔋2015: 42GWh (China 50% market share)
🔋2025: 1,400GWh (China 80% ms)"

#battchat #alwaysbecharging

[Paul Prudence @MrPrudence]

Niels Bohr's original drawing of the structure of the Radium atom [1922]

[Financial Times @FT]

Are expensive piloted fighter jets still needed at a time when budgets are pressured and drones are playing a bigger role in aerial combat? https://t.co/I8KBmgLQev

[IonQ @IonQ_Inc]

Tomorrow at #SC24, IonQ and @nvidia will demonstrate an industry-first application workflow that pairs NVIDIA CUDA-Q with IonQ Forte, leading the way for the future of hybrid quantum-classical applications. Read more about the demo here:
https://t.co/uQ8GK2DerR

[Assaad Razzouk @AssaadRazzouk]

New plant in UK to recycle 200,000 kg of EV batteries per year, recover 95% of their cathode metals to directly re-use in battery manufacturing

The DNA of #cleanenergy is #circulareconomy (not so Big Oil, on an environmental destruction path since 1859)

https://t.co/VaJ56VjVD4

[From Growth To Value @FromValue]

'Standard' EUV machines cost $181M per unit.

$ASML's new high-NA EUV machines cost between $290M &amp; $362M.

In 2030, $ASML plans to launch Hyper-NA EUV.

It is expected to cost around $724 million per machine. 🤯

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

Seven solar companies most people haven’t heard of, are ALREADY providing more energy for the global economy than Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP: https://t.co/CFHBCDUv5d

We have the solutions. Time to dump the oil economy and implement them. #ActOnClimate

#climate #energy

[Riyazi Farook @riyazifarook]

@MyLordBebo Rebranded as 'KN' purposefully because people had been searching 'KN' for KIA before the rebranding.

https://t.co/m8dhSPSEz0

[International Energy Agency @IEA]

Explore our #WEO24 report 👇

Summary https://t.co/tBjMJT5uZ6
Overview https://t.co/ga0UlWDvFC
Context &amp; scenarios https://t.co/UGkE3Niem8
The energy mix https://t.co/ENvGkWZfaB
Uncertainties https://t.co/hXjG4ccM5l
Security, affordability &amp; sustainability https://t.co/z4EHqM92Bh

[Peterson Institute @PIIE]

Global economic growth is projected to continue at its current pace through 2025, with real global GDP increasing 3.2% in both 2024 &amp; 2025. But economic growth will vary in advanced economies &amp; emerging markets. #PIIECharts

[AJ Investment Research @alojoh]

Global Battery Electric Vehicle landscape.
Updated for latest disclosure: BMW, VW Group, and Mercedes.