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LessWrong posts by zvi
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Audio narrations of LessWrong posts by zvi
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“Monthly Roundup #42: May 2026” by Zvi
Yesterday00:46:22Tap to summarizeAt least we probably won’t have another pandemic. And we still have a partial Jones Act waiver. For now. Small victories. Table of Contents Hanta Hanta I Don’t Wanta. Bad News. Predictions Can Be Easy Even About The Future. Good Advice. The Efficient Market Hypothesis Is False. There Are Four Skills. While I Cannot Condone This. Good News, Everyone. For Your Entertainment. Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game. The Spire Sleeps And So Shall I. I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars. Government Working. Jones Act Watch. Technology Advances. I Said Woo Hoo. Variously Effective Altruism. The Lighter Side. Hanta Hanta I Don’t Wanta We have learned so much less than nothing from Covid. We’re actively stupider. It's 2026, and here we are again, lying about the virus because we are worried that people exposed to it or from the wrong place might face stigma otherwise. Envidreamz: A local news story highlights passengers on the hantavirus stricken MV Hondius cruise ship who are more worried about facing stigma and rejection back home than [...] ---Outline:(00:22) Hanta Hanta I Dont Wanta(04:25) Bad News(08:45) Predictions Can Be Easy Even About The Future(08:55) Good Advice(11:52) The Efficient Market Hypothesis Is False(13:58) There Are Four Skills(16:27) While I Cannot Condone This(20:57) Good News, Everyone(21:42) For Your Entertainment(22:14) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game(24:09) The Spire Sleeps And So Shall I(29:13) I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars(31:53) Government Working(35:40) Jones Act Watch(41:10) Technology Advances(42:12) I Said Woo Hoo(43:36) Variously Effective Altruism(44:07) The Lighter Side --- First published: May 15th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gZHNLmHkQ7GjnWsYh/monthly-roundup-42-may-2026 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
Transcribe →“AI #168: Not Leading the Future” by Zvi
2d ago01:24:26Tap to summarizeThis is what a lull looks like at this point. The government is having internal arguments. The models are getting improved internally. The coding agent improvements are all what we would expect. There's still a lot happening, including a bunch of cool papers, but I feel able to relax and to take care of some other work while I have the chance. You never know when that chance will be over. Table of Contents From yesterday: Cyber Lack of Security and AI Governance. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Fix everything now. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Travel is harder than it looked. Huh, Upgrades. Opus 4.7 fast mode, Claude Code /goal and agent view. Levels of Friction. AI for tax avoidance. On Your Marks. PrinzBench, ProgramBench and faster harmfulness checks. Get My Agent On The Line. Mona tries to run a cafeteria. Mistakes were made. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Soon. But not quite yet. Fun With Media Generation. Monet does not seem that great. On AI Writing. AI is a hack writer using hack techniques. A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. How to make AI [...] ---Outline:(00:36) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(02:25) Language Models Dont Offer Mundane Utility(03:26) Huh, Upgrades(04:02) Levels of Friction(05:11) On Your Marks(06:38) Get My Agent On The Line(09:42) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(11:11) Fun With Media Generation(12:49) On AI Writing(16:05) A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer(18:35) You Drive Me Crazy(19:23) They Took Our Jobs(21:31) The Art of the Jailbreak(21:49) Introducing(22:29) Claude Has Its Limits(23:28) Show Me the Money(25:15) Show Me The Compute(26:58) Quiet Speculations(28:33) Quickly, Theres No Time(29:32) Chip City(30:37) Pick Up The Phone(31:15) The Week in Audio(31:41) Rhetorical Innovation(36:13) Not Leading the Future(42:24) Elon Musk v OpenAI(43:21) People Just Say Things(43:47) People Just Publish Things(44:37) OpenAI Endroses Kosa And SB 315(48:08) The LLMs All Believe Roughly Similar Things(50:45) I Learned It By Reading YOU(01:08:22) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:18:45) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:20:34) Messages From Janusworld(01:22:31) People Worried About AI For Other Reasons(01:23:06) The Lighter Side --- First published: May 14th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/E4uEiMSpnYRotfzJX/ai-168-not-leading-the-future --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/E4uEiMSpnYRotfzJX/ueeqatwdp3zjjvihhja5" alt="Workplace message about spending limits...
Transcribe →“Cyber Lack of Security and AI Governance” by Zvi
3d ago00:30:21Tap to summarizeThe real recent story of AI has been the background work being done on Cybersecurity, as we process the Mythos Moment along with GPT-5.5, and figure out both how to patch the internet and what our new regulatory regime is going to look like. The Trump Administration is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the era of at least some situational awareness, and acknowledgment that catastrophic risks are very much a real risk and they need to have a role in supervising frontier model releases. Now that they’re there, Commerce is deciding who gets access to the most powerful model in the world, and they are fighting Intelligence and the national security state over who should be in charge. Another question is, exactly how strong is Mythos, both compared to past model and to GPT-5.5 and also in absolute terms? We got multiple new reports on that, as well as the METR graph results. There's little question Mythos is a big deal, but there's a wide range of big deals out there. Part of the new report from UK AISI is learning that there is a substantial gap between the abilities of the early Mythos Preview [...] ---Outline:(01:28) On Your Marks(05:24) How Good Is Mythos?(11:11) Cyber Lack of Security(14:36) Greetings From The Department of War(16:13) The Prior Restraint Era Begins(20:59) Commerce Versus Intelligence(27:43) The Quest for Sane Regulations --- First published: May 13th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pzjGXSKrkHGdGbtrW/cyber-lack-of-security-and-ai-governance --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
Transcribe →“Childhood and Education #18: Do The Math” by Zvi
4d ago00:25:19Tap to summarizeWe did reading yesterday. Now we do the math. Math is hard. It does not have to be this hard. A large part of the reason math is hard, or boring, is that education studies, especially in math, are worse than you know. It goes beyond the studies failing both math and statistics forever and into what I’d basically call fraud. Various people are at war with math education, and will do what it takes to stop it in its tracks. We must fight back. Education Research Is Worse Than You Know Kelsey Piper lets her title, ‘Education research is weak and sloppy. Why?’ completely downplay the level of utter awfulness she is reporting finding. You know that whole thing where the entire Bay Area school system stopped teaching kids Algebra? That was motivated by criminal levels of fraud. I want Jo Boaler in jail doing hard time for this if it is accurate. Here's the part before the paywall: Kelsey Piper: Jo Boaler is a professor of education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, with an enormously influential body of work arguing that students learn math faster and more effectively [...] ---Outline:(00:42) Education Research Is Worse Than You Know(04:23) The War on Math(06:59) University of California San Diego(15:01) Beyond UCSD(15:57) New York Cant Do Math(16:43) The Academic Standards Seem Low(19:34) New Math(21:32) Math Anxiety Is Often Due To Knowledge Gaps(23:52) Calculus By Eighth Grade Is Highly Practical For Many --- First published: May 12th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZGGgxy6SNPAy9Hj7v/childhood-and-education-18-do-the-math --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
Transcribe →“Childhood And Education #17: Is Our Children Reading” by Zvi
5d ago00:28:50Tap to summarizeReading is the most fundamental thing in education. If you can read, you can do and learn everything else. If you can’t read, well, you’re screwed. We know how to teach reading to children. Phonics. The weird thing is we often choose to not do that, and instead to use methods that are known not to work. Principles often want to not do phonics. Teachers often heavily resist phonics. But yes, you can absolutely overcome this, as Mississippi and other Southern states have done, by insisting upon it and actually enforcing that insistence. You see huge gains. Not all those gains persist into later grades, but a lot of the gains do persist. No, that won’t get the children invested in reading lots of books on their own time. But given their alternatives and what we inflict on them, can you blame ‘em? Table of Contents Mississippi Can Read Now. What Mississippi and Louisiana Did. Spies In Every Classroom. Mississippi Results Are Not Due To Retention. Is Retention Helpful In General? At Eighth Grade A Lot Of This Improvement Remains. England Reforms Its Schools. Mastery Learning. [...] ---Outline:(01:06) Mississippi Can Read Now(02:24) What Mississippi and Louisiana Did(09:10) Spies In Every Classroom(10:41) Mississippi Results Are Not Due To Retention(15:54) Is Retention Helpful In General?(19:46) At Eighth Grade A Lot Of This Improvement Remains(20:41) England Reforms Its Schools(21:45) Mastery Learning(24:16) The War Against Reading(26:24) Is Our Children Reading(26:55) No One Reads Anymore The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 11th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dm2vQZPZcSKb8FhWw/childhood-and-education-17-is-our-children-reading --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
Transcribe →“Claude Code, Codex and Agentic Coding #8” by Zvi
1w ago00:23:02Tap to summarizeWhen I started this series, everyone was going crazy for coding agents. Now a lot more people are going crazy for coding agents, as well they should given how much better coding agents keep getting, but also Everybody Knows they are good and is focusing on actually using them. With the slower pace of news here it's no longer clear that the waits associated with doing these updates on their own are worthwhile, so I’m going to fold these updates into the weekly again for now unless there's a new major development. Table of Contents Whoops, Sorry. Huh, Upgrades. Codex of Ultimate Computer Use. Rookie Numbers. I See What You Did There. Just a Ride. They Didn’t Want Our Jobs. Skilling Up. The Lighter Side. Whoops, Sorry Claude Code suffered in April from three distinct issues that have now been fixed. Default reasoning was changed from high to medium to deal with latency, but users disliked this and blamed it on the model. It was introduced on March 4 and reverted on April 7. A bug made it so that [...] ---Outline:(00:38) Whoops, Sorry(01:45) Huh, Upgrades(04:13) Codex of Ultimate Computer Use(08:05) Rookie Numbers(09:12) I See What You Did There(11:38) Just a Ride(11:50) They Didnt Want Our Jobs(18:30) Skilling Up(22:08) The Lighter Side --- First published: May 8th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BS27ZWW2qwDEq5anx/claude-code-codex-and-agentic-coding-8 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
Transcribe →“AI #167: The Prior Restraint Era Begins” by Zvi
1w ago01:26:45Tap to summarizeThe era of training frontier models and then releasing them whenever you wanted? That was fun while it lasted. It looks likely to be over now. The White House wants to get an advance look and have the option to veto your release decisions, and it has used this veto on an expansion of access to Mythos. We have additional clarity on what that might mean and it does not look good. Hassett explicitly used the FDA as a parallel, which is the actual worst option unless your goal is to strange or pause AI development in America, without a parallel action from China. That doesn’t seem like a great plan to me and Susie Wiles is out doing damage control. The part where we are talking to China to coordinate model access restrictions does seem better. Anthropic continues its explosive growth, and it continues to strike compute deals. In addition to a long term expanded deal with Google, Anthropic is now leasing SpaceX's Colossus 1, which has let them expand usage limits immediately, and Elon Musk is now speaking positively about Anthropic, including its motivations. This comes as we get testimony in the Musk [...] ---Outline:(01:45) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(02:45) Language Models Dont Offer Mundane Utility(05:09) Huh, Upgrades(05:37) Grok 4.3 Exists But xAI Kind Of Doesnt(07:02) Show Me The Compute(13:23) On Your Marks(14:05) Copyright Confrontation(14:19) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(15:57) Fun With Media Generation(16:36) A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer(16:48) Cyber Lack of Security(17:05) They Took Our Jobs(17:39) The Art of the Jailbreak(17:49) Introducing(18:09) Musk v OpenAI(21:14) Show Me the Money(23:03) Peace In Our Time(26:18) Quiet Speculations(28:24) Quickly, Theres No Time(30:35) The Quest for Sane Regulations(34:04) People Really Hate AI(34:53) Chip City(35:05) The Week in Audio(36:49) People Just Say Things(40:22) People Just Publish Things(41:05) Google Sells Out(42:08) Greetings From Project Glasswing(44:57) The Prior Restraint Era Begins(56:42) Is This Even Legal?(59:49) Pick Up The Phone(01:03:27) Rhetorical Innovation(01:04:05) People On The Internet Sometimes Lie(01:07:14) Goblin Mode(01:08:34) The Mask Comes Off(01:16:51) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:20:00) Some Penalties May Apply(01:22:28) Messages From Janusworld(01:22:41) Good Advice(01:23:42) The Lighter Side --- First published: May 7th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rn3iKuDcE4SiSg4DW/ai-167-the-prior-restraint-era-begins --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/rn3iKuDcE4SiSg4DW/p01jclv3ezu3anfxgkhe" alt="Marc Andreessen tweets: "Current AI custom prompt: You are a world class expert in all domains. Your intellectual firepower, scope of knowledge, incisive thought process, and level of erudition...
Transcribe →“What is Anthropic?” by Zvi
1w ago00:17:30Tap to summarizeWhat is Anthropic? How does it relate to Claude? What is OpenAI? What is ChatGPT? How does OpenAI relate to it? Is it a mere tool? Is a future of Tool AI a thing, and why do people keep claiming that it is, or that saying makes it so? This post organizes and gives context for a bunch of discussions and messaging on Twitter that would otherwise be quickly buried and lost. What Is Anthropic? Here is one theory, and various people thinking about it. Roon as always is using rhetorical flourish (e.g. note that Roon thinks it is obvious that parents worship their children, in this sense) but this perspective is definitely useful. Such discussions by default disappear when they happen on Twitter, so here is a preservation of key parts of it. roon (OpenAI): it is a literal and useful description of anthropic that it is an organization that loves and worships claude, is run in significant part by claude, and studies and builds claude. this phenomenon is also partially true of other labs like openai but currently exists in its most potent form there. i am not certain but I [...] ---Outline:(00:35) What Is Anthropic?(11:35) What Is This Supposed Tool AI? --- First published: May 6th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6wbLXhkQAPcunrYnq/what-is-anthropic --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Transcribe →“The AI Ad-Hoc Prior Restraint Era Begins” by Zvi
2w ago00:18:34Tap to summarizeThe White House has ordered Anthropic not to expand access to Mythos, and is at least seriously considering a complete about-face of American Frontier AI policy into a full prior restraint regime, where anyone wishing to release a highly capable new model will have to ask for permission. This would be the antithesis of all their previous rhetoric, and all their actions to systematically avoid laying a foundation to do this in an orderly and informed fashion. But now, with the existence of Mythos, and a potential coming hackastrophe where cyber attackers will by default have the edge and we desperately need defenders to have a head start, it is not clear they feel they have a choice. If implemented well, this could be the right thing. By default, it won’t be implemented well. Project Glasswing Cannot Expand The government is now deciding which models can and cannot be made available on particular terms to particular parties. This is already happening. Anthropic wanted to expand the number of companies with access to Mythos as part of Project Glasswing. The White House said no. It is not clear this is any of [...] ---Outline:(00:54) Project Glasswing Cannot Expand(02:33) The Ad-Hoc Prior Restraint Era Begins(09:44) Implementation Through CAISI(12:49) What Should We Do About AI?(14:16) The Chain of Command Nonsense Continues(16:29) The Government Should Maintain Multiple AI Providers(16:56) Hows It Going To End? --- First published: May 5th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QX2ZCfkpWGqkyvStN/the-ai-ad-hoc-prior-restraint-era-begins --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Transcribe →“Housing Roundup #15: The War Against Renters” by Zvi
2w ago00:25:50Tap to summarizeSo many are under the strange belief that there is something terrible about not owning the house in which you live. So we massively subsidize home ownership, and try to actively interfere with renting. Except when we do rent control, which turns renting into a form of owning, and allows us to take real property and de facto give it to current renters. A lot of this is pure attempts to punish and exclude the poor. If you can’t afford a downpayment, we don’t want you living here. Go away. Some of it is the belief that when you rent, you are being ‘taken advantage of’ and that such a deal could not possibly be fair. Some of it is that if you don’t own, you don’t have the incentive to drive up property values. Which means you won’t properly work to ‘improve’ your local area, especially that you won’t conspire to block housing. The result of this is that if you’re not willing to commit to living in one place for years, or you can’t afford a down payment, you get punished, and punished hard. Owning Versus Renting The graph [...] ---Outline:(01:08) Owning Versus Renting(03:11) Build To Rent Is Good Actually(08:16) Elizabeth Warren, Full Supervillain(09:44) The Better Case Against Corporate Housing Ownership(11:50) The ROAD Act Bans Building And Then Renting Houses(14:17) Rental Covenants(15:09) Extended Eviction Delay After Nonpayment Is Mostly Bad(16:51) Los Angeles Renting(19:30) Sufficiently Advanced Rent Control Is Indistinguishable From Ownership(23:05) England Tries To Ban Renting(24:36) Claude Rental Discounts --- First published: May 4th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jW4TeNZhxBA9Fzdim/housing-roundup-15-the-war-against-renters --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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