Weekly Top Picks #101
What AI models can't do / Is AI linear algebra? / ChatGPT amnesia effect / The race to AGI / Where's AI golden age? / AI's effects on writing / Manus' grift
The week in AI at a glance
Reasoning: what top AI models can and can't do: A mathematician weighs in on AI models’ ability to solve FrontierMath problems.
If AI is linear algebra you’re a bunch of atoms: Biologist Michael Levin talks about what he sees as a mistake that people make when thinking about AI.
ChatGPT amnesia effect + automation bias = disaster: People will forget that ChatGPT makes mistakes and will uncritically take his word as truth.
The race to AGI is more heterogeneous than you think: Not everyone is pursuing OpenAI’s approach, particularly Ilya Sutskever and Francois Chollet.
AI has memorized so much—why hasn’t it discovered anything? Dwarkesh Patel, Scott Alexander, and Gwern weigh in on this question.
If you care about AI’s effect on writing, watch this: David Perell and Tyler Cowen talk about AI and the future of writing.
Manus is NOT a second DeepSeek moment: When something is hyped by influencers first instead of researchers—beware.
The week in The Algorithmic Bridge
(PAID) Weekly Top Picks #99: The xAI-DeepSeek spectrum / Grok against Elon and Trump / Tyler Cowen on slow AI take-off / GPT-5 in May / Satya on AGI and GDP / AI skeptic syndrome / Claude Sonnet 3.7
(FREE) xAI and DeepSeek Have Shattered the AI Industry’s Golden Tenet: They revealed that scale and efficiency are inversely correlated and to a large degree, interchangeable.
(FREE) GPT-4.5 Feels Like a Letdown But It’s OpenAI’s Biggest Bet Yet: In one sentence: OpenAI did not train GPT-4.5 to raise the ceiling but to raise the floor.
(FREE) Weekly Top Picks #100: Special “Ask Me Anything” issue.
(PAID) If AI Is So Great, Someone Should Tell GDP: Why is AI’s impact not reflected in the main growth and development metrics, like GDP, TFP, and HDI?
(FREE) The Human Toll of Waiting for AI to Take Over: An argument in favor of automating terrible jobs without forgetting about the people who dwell there.