Enough things added up that this week is getting split into two parts.

Then on Monday, if all goes as I expect, we’ll cover OpenAI's Sol, aka GPT-5.6.

OpenAI also gave us an upgraded voice mode, which I haven’t tried out but early reports are that it is a step change.

AI writing, especially Claude writing, is becoming more prominent and harder not to notice, and increasingly a tough read when encountered in the wild. Does anyone care? Or are those who care the weird ones here?

This week saw an excellent paper, which I cover in No Space Like J-Space.

Technically we also got Grok 4.5.

Table of Contents

Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. A whole new world.
Language Models Gain Unexpected Affordances. Wait, you can just do that?
Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Things get old.
Pay The Man His Money. You have a few more days with marginally free Fable.
Huh, Upgrades. Anthropic raises API platform limits.
Grok 4.5 Exists. It might be okay for its price.
F*** It We’re Doing It Live. OpenAI gives us a big upgrade to voice [...]

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Outline:

(00:54) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(03:21) Language Models Gain Unexpected Affordances

(06:12) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(06:54) Pay The Man His Money

(07:37) Huh, Upgrades

(07:45) Grok 4.5 Exists

(09:12) F\*\*\* It We're Doing It Live

(10:24) On Your Marks

(11:13) Better Call Sol

(22:40) Get My Agent On The Line

(23:29) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(25:33) Fool Me Twice

(27:23) I Like Your Style

(33:28) Enough With That Style

(36:58) Fun With Media Generation

(38:51) Copyright Confrontation

(39:30) Cyber Lack of Security

(39:52) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

(45:56) They Took Our Jobs

(51:07) Get Involved

(52:10) In Other AI News

(56:44) Show Me the Money

(57:09) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

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First published:
July 9th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/M9eLyMsH5DLjMYL86/ai-176-part-1-doing-it-live

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Comparison grid showing image variations across different brain regions: V1, V3A, MT, EBA, FFA, PPA, pSTS, and aSTS.

Performance comparison table showing benchmark scores across five AI models: Grok 4.5, Opus 4.8, GPT-5.5, Composer 2.5, and Fable 5.

Two line graphs showing headcount changes by AI adoption intensity for all jobs and entry-level positions.

Job listings for four policy positions in Washington, DC with salaries.

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