People worth following

Terence Tao · What's new

[This is a guest post by Abhinav Nellore, Johannes Schmitt, Soledad Villar, and Rachel Ward – T.] OpenAI’s math write-ups at https://github.com/openai/math can be difficult to understand and can have…

Timothy Snyder · Thinking about…

A recording from Timothy Snyder's live video

Tyler Cowen · Marginal Revolution

Here’s the first part of my theory: cybercriminals are not the organized geniuses we implicitly imagine. Anyone building a criminal gang has to find candidates willing to forgo more stable…

Tyler Cowen · Marginal Revolution

Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is one excerpt: Cowen: Talk me out of this worry: So we agree science is an ecosystem, and there’s always a temptation to want to fund the most dynamic…

Derek Lowe · In the Pipeline

This is one of those times - and there are many - when you should evaluate a biopharma news story based on the science and not on the stock market. I’m referring to the clinical trial data that Merck…

Zvi Mowshowitz · Don't Worry About the Vase

Last week at a small conference, there was talk about a future event referred to as The Hackening. As in, within 6-12 months, many predicted that due to advanced AIs and AI agents the internet would…

Terence Tao · What's new

The IAS has opened its application page for its membership program for the upcoming year. This by itself would be unremarkable — the program does this every year — but there is an additional…

Tyler Cowen · Marginal Revolution

From Jesús Fernández-Villaverde: Will AI poison the public finances of many modern states? There is a real risk that it will. Yesterday, I circulated a new paper, “Saving for the Machines,” which…

Anne Applebaum · Substack

The Trump administration’s ugly deal with the Venezuelan regime

Derek Lowe · In the Pipeline

I’m always glad to see articles like this one, where someone goes to the trouble of confirming whether “Compound X is a selective probe for Protein Target Y” is a true statement. That’s because it’s…

Noah Smith · Noahpinion

Immigration, the welfare state, and Keynesian economics are all showing signs of strain.

Dwarkesh Patel · Dwarkesh Podcast

What I learned from touring Intel’s most advanced fab and talking to its leadership.

Zvi Mowshowitz · Don't Worry About the Vase

It was the probably worst day in cybersecurity history. So far. Not only is there a critical flaw in PHP that due to a leak was announced a day before the fix would be available, sending most of the…

Terence Tao · What's new

[This is a guest post by Caroline Turnage-Butterbaugh. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] Evidence in favor of the Riemann Hypothesis comes…

Phillips P. O'Brien · Phillips's Newsletter

The Week The US Told The Gulf States The Truth; How The US Should Pull Out Of The Middle East

METR · METR

For three weeks, from July 21st to August 11th, a METR employee and a Redwood Research employee conducted a pilot high-access exercise to stress-test OpenAI’s internal misalignment monitoring system…

Derek Lowe · In the Pipeline

Here’s one of those disturbing-but-not-necessarily-surprising reports about the state of the literature. In this case, the preprint linked is the result of a deliberate search for papers that are…

Noah Smith · Noahpinion

A movie review, plus some thoughts on dishonesty, belief, and human communication.

Zvi Mowshowitz · Don't Worry About the Vase

A lot of AIs were misaligned this week. A fun little survey. This is not coverage of The Hackening, which appears to have arrived early, including a core vulnerability in PHP. That is a developing…

Scott Aaronson · Shtetl-Optimized

Today, I take a break from your regularly-scheduled AI mathocalypse programming to urge my American readers to vote in the Congressional midterms, early if possible, if you haven’t already…

Timothy Snyder · Thinking about…

And what Ukraine is giving to us

Phillips P. O'Brien · Phillips's Newsletter

Some Home Truths To Understand Where We Have Been And Where We Might Be Going

METR · METR

Scope and access: this review was written based solely on Anthropic’s internal Risk Report from August 2026 and is relatively lightweight. The authors of this review were engaged prior to the “ An…

Quanta Magazine · Mathematics

Unlike other recent AI proofs, this one has been unpacked by human experts. The implications, one mathematician said, are “staggering.”

Noah Smith · Noahpinion

Ramez Naam gives a skeptic’s take on agent swarms.

Alex Nowrasteh · Substack

Part 4 of What People Really Care About When They’re Mad About Immigration

Scott Aaronson · Shtetl-Optimized

As I announced on this blog a couple weeks ago, I’m teaching a new course this semester at UT Austin, entitled AI Alignment Theory. To call such a course “timely” seems like an understatement; this…

Jack Clark · Import AI

Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research. Import AI runs on arXiv, cappuccinos, and feedback from readers. If you’d like to support this, please subscribe. Subscribe now Here’s a speech I…

Timothy Snyder · Thinking about…

The voices of Ukrainians

Phillips P. O'Brien · Phillips's Newsletter

Ukraine Seems To Get It This Time; Ukraine Keeps Steadily Progressing In The Land War

Quanta Magazine · Computer science

Moritz Hardt, author of a new book on benchmarks, believes these “standardized tests” for artificial intelligence are fundamentally broken — but not unfixable.

Epoch AI · epoch.ai

Z.ai’s GLM-5.3 is the top open-weight model on Epoch’s Cyber ECI, scoring where the closed-weight frontier stood 6–7 months earlier.

Jessica Riedl · Substack

Progressive tax hike revenues should go to kids and working families, not wealthy seniors

Congressional Budget Office · CBO

In this report, the latest in a quarterly series, CBO highlights its recent publications and summarizes its work in progress.

METR · METR

This blog post explains how we approach working with AI companies on projects that the public might rely on to understand risks. It was published on Oct 14, 2026, and we expect to update it over…

Epoch AI · epoch.ai

Months ago, frontier models could barely beat Slay the Spire. Now they win 90%+ at the easiest setting and up to 20% at the hardest. Results from Epoch AI’s new SpireClimb benchmark.

Anne Applebaum · Substack

Trump’s relationship with Moscow remains very weird

Scott Aaronson · Shtetl-Optimized

“The Topic” being, of course, the Mathocalypse, except sometimes with AI alignment and even quantum computing and complexity theory and other stuff thrown in. With Ryan Peterman: Notably, near the…

Quanta Magazine · Computer science

A mathematical mechanism enables AI models to process language at scale, undergirding the current AI revolution. Our columnist asks: Why is attention the key?

Alex Nowrasteh · Substack

Part 3 of What People Really Care About When They’re Mad About Immigration

Jack Clark · Import AI

Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research. Import AI runs on arXiv, cappuccinos, and feedback from readers. If you’d like to support this, please subscribe. Subscribe now New benchmark…

Eric Topol · Ground Truths

A Landmark Study of Immune Cell Aging

Alex Nowrasteh · Substack

The administration wants fewer immigrants, illegal but mostly legal.

Congressional Budget Office · CBO

CBO analyzed the budgetary outcomes under two alternative scenarios in which interest rates are higher than those underlying CBO's February 2026 baseline.

Congressional Budget Office · CBO

The federal budget deficit totaled $2.0 trillion in fiscal year 2026, CBO estimates, $218 billion more than the deficit recorded in fiscal year 2025.

Epoch AI · epoch.ai

Frontier models can handle well-defined tasks reliably, but fail in the more open-ended aspects that prevent full work automation. Explore Epoch AI's Automation Reports: realistic, open-ended tasks…

Quanta Magazine · Computer science

In the shadow of a rumored AI proof of one of the biggest problems in their field, three computer scientists rushed to publish their own milestone result.

Matt Kaeberlein · Longevity Science

What can we learn from the first 10,000 experiments in the search for interventions that extend healthy lifespan?In this episode of Longevity Science, I sit down with Dr. Ben Blue, CEO of Ora…

Eric Topol · Ground Truths

Our conversation on his new book BLOCKERS

Quanta Magazine · Mathematics

Mathematicians are facing the sudden shift with grief, anger, and a desperate search for fresh ideas: “If we don’t adapt, there’s just no more math in 50 years.”

Jack Clark · Import AI

Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research. Import AI runs on arXiv, cappuccinos, and feedback from readers. If you’d like to support this, please subscribe. Subscribe now When should you…

Anne Applebaum · Substack

Definitely not Americans

Quanta Magazine · Mathematics

Maggie Miller explains why our intuition about three dimensions breaks down in four, and how she visualizes 4D spaces as a reel of three-dimensional snapshots.

Dwarkesh Patel · Dwarkesh Podcast

Fall of the Incas & Aztecs.

Eric Topol · Ground Truths

That’s What Biological (Epigenetic) Aging Clocks Are Measuring

Scott Aaronson · arXiv

Recent works have demonstrated that quantum oracles have subtle behavior, as access to inverse, conjugate or controlled queries can exponentially change the query complexity of certain tasks…

Matt Kaeberlein · Longevity Science

In this episode of Longevity Roundtable for September 2026, I’m joined by Brian Kennedy and Marcus Ranney to dig into some of the biggest recent stories in longevity science and medicine.We start…