This, exactly: "It doesn’t matter how accurate or useful the information [in AI-generated PR descriptions] is, I’m instantly put off by the thought that it will take me longer to read than it took the driving author to write... even when that driving author is me!"
I've recently started hiding the bulk of my AI-generated GitHub PR descriptions behind a collapsed <details><summary> HTML tag (thankfully supported by GitHub Markdown) and I think it's a useful pattern for making PR slop a little bit less exhausting simonwillison.net/2026/Nov/9…
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Vinamr retweeted
OK, if we assume for the software industry 10yr demand elasticity of 3, & supply elasticity of 5, then AI-driven software coder productivity gain of x3 implies wage gain ~30%, # workers gain ~310%, while x2 gain gives wage ~18%, workers ~145%. How do your assumptions differ?
Vinamr retweeted
Before the Nazis took power in 1933, the groups that leaned most strongly into Nazi or Nazi-adjacent ideology were university students (by far), professors, doctors, Protestant clergy, judges, and the nationalist press. Many teachers too, individually – not yet as a profession.
Vinamr retweeted
AGI and the EMH: what does the market tell us about AI timelines?
TLDR: Markets are not putting much probability on the development of transformative AI (aligned or unaligned!) in the next 30-50 years – as evidenced by low *real interest rates*
forum.effectivealtruism.org/…
Vinamr retweeted
"Henrich, by contrast, posits the following [time] sequence: 4. culture, 3. cooperation, 2. language, 1. intelligence. This is the exciting hypothesis that has been generating interest and attention over the past few decades."
Two accounts of human evolution, that are each other’s exact opposite. Only one can be correct.
Joseph Heath explains which one, and why:
buff.ly/35NxmmK
Vinamr retweeted
Generalization out of distribution is a central crux of the AI risk debate. But there's a double bind
If training on narrow tasks generalizes to broad capability, AIs will be powerful
But then also training on narrow alignment generalizes to broad alignment cf. @OwainEvans_UK
On the other hand, if generalization is weak, that looks bad for alignment but also constrains capabilities
Vinamr retweeted
This is one of the many ways that the professed goal of intellectual progress comes apart from the more heart-felt goal of max personal prestige.
Vinamr retweeted
I don't buy that AI is a threat to humanity for a nerdy statistical reason.
My views are informed by the statistics of things like war. If you look at deaths from human conflicts, you get a continuous spectrum from lots of small events causing a few dozen deaths to rare outliers killing tens of millions.
In my own research, I've studied complex diseases where the overall outcome reflects hundreds of genetic factors combining in different ways.
So if AI can kill billions of people, I would expect to see some version of the same thing: smaller events where one or two of the relevant causal mechanisms are operating, larger events where several combine, and catastrophic events where everything goes wrong at once.
Instead, what we seem to have is real evidence of a few suicides and isolated harms at one end, and wild speculation about complete apocalypse at the other.
That massive discontinuity makes me very skeptical that the AI catastrophic-risk story is real.
Vinamr retweeted
An alternative hypothesis:
- model performance is plateauing
- compute is getting much more expensive
- AI data centers are massively unpopular
- slowing down AI development is a way to explain slowing progress, reduce spending, and try to regain some goodwill.
- This is an effort to save the IPO not humanity.
We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.
Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training.
You can read the full post here: darioamodei.com/post/we-must…
Vinamr retweeted
The biggest impact AI has had on my life has been the increased frequency between "it's so over" and "we're so back" going through my head
Vinamr retweeted
Some new joiners for a total pot size of $575k!
On my side:
@robinhanson
@phl43
@SashaKaletsky
@_gabrielunger
On the fast-growth side:
@jankulveit
plus @SamuelAlbanie continuing to increase his stake 😮
benjaminmoll.com/growth_bet/
Some real diversity of opinion at Google DeepMind: @alexolegimas joins the bet while his colleague @SamuelAlbanie takes the other side increasing his existing stake!
Total size of pot now $425,000!
benjaminmoll.com/growth_bet/
Vinamr retweeted
Economists have always noted that the cost of living, and hence economic growth adjusted for inflation, is extraordinarily hard to measure, because the nature & quality of goods changes over time, vitiating a constant yardstick (how do you compare a cold cellar with a refrigerator? How much did a laptop cost in 1934?) A new method, using AI to valuate goods, shows that 20th C US economic growth was much bigger than previously estimated.
Excited to share our new working paper: how much did the US standard of living really rise over the twentieth century — and when? With @bhwittenbrink
Using 5.1 million Sears catalog listings, we build a quality-adjusted price index for consumer goods, 1900–1990. Two headline findings: growth was much larger than official statistics imply, and its peak came before WWII, not after. (1/9)
Vinamr retweeted
Academics have most of their influence on society via channels where they are not held to the research standards by which they were selected: teaching, media, and government. Are we to hope research instills habits so strong that they don't deviate from them in other channels?