OpenAI’s math breakthrough played to AI’s strengths • I tried to explain OpenAI’s solution more clearly than OpenAI did.

Why it might not make sense for you to own a self-driving car • Tensor let me sit in their driverless car. It might go on sale in the US next year.

A big lesson of my China visit: compute shortages are holding back Chinese AI • One estimate suggests that OpenAI has about as much compute as the entire Chinese AI industry.

I don’t think we are close to “AI scientists” • Today's AI agents are not designed to extract deep insights from new observations.

Human drivers keep crashing into Waymos • Waymo's biggest mistakes happened when it stopped in the wrong place.

Meta is back in the LLM game after a year-long break • What Muse Spark tells us about Meta’s new AI strategy.

Why Anthropic believes its latest model is too dangerous to release • “The language models we have now are probably the most significant thing to happen in security since we got the Internet.”

Bernie Sanders has a plan to stop the AI industry • But it will be hard to assemble a broad coalition of AI skeptics.

Why it’s getting harder to measure AI performance • The most famous chart in AI might be obsolete soon.

OpenAI is shutting down Sora, its AI video app • "We cannot miss this moment because we are distracted by side quests," an exec said.

How to think about AI company finances • OpenAI and Anthropic are using the standard tech startup playbook.

It still doesn’t look like there’s an AI bubble • Anthropic's annualized revenue doubled in just two months.

The Pentagon’s bombshell deal with OpenAI, explained • Only Congress can put meaningful limits on government abuse of AI.

Sorry skeptics, AI really is changing the programming profession • But AI agents aren't making programmers obsolete.

The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic • Anthropic faces a Friday deadline to allow domestic surveillance and automated killer robots.

Waymo just revealed a crucial statistic for scaling its technology • At any moment, just 70 people oversee Waymo’s 3,000-vehicle fleet.

A volcano scorched hundreds of Roman scrolls — can AI recover their text? • Despite early breakthroughs, it could take years to decode all the surviving scrolls.

The many masks LLMs wear • Why frontier labs struggle to keep their chatbots in character.

The feds are probing Waymo's behavior around school children • It's not clear if Waymo was at fault for striking a child at 6 mph.

An unlikely ally for open-source protein-folding models: Big Pharma • Drug companies are funding open-source AI to avoid depending on Google.

How shifting risk to users makes Claude Code more powerful • People are discovering that Claude Code isn’t just for code.

17 predictions for AI in 2026 • AI will continue improving rapidly, but real-world economic impacts will be modest.

Waymo and Tesla’s self-driving systems are more similar than people think • Everyone is moving toward transformer-based, end-to-end architectures.

The best Chinese open-weight models — and the strongest US rivals • The Understanding AI guide to open-weight models.

Google and Anthropic approach LLMs differently • The very different cultures of OpenAI's two most important rivals.

Help some of the poorest people in Rwanda • If readers give $20,000 to GiveDirectly, my wife and I will give another $10,000.

Six reasons to think there’s an AI bubble — and six reasons not to • A complete playbook for every AI bubble debate.

Hyperproductivity: The Next Stage of AI? • A glimpse at an astonishing, exhilarating, exhausting new style of work

An AI “tsunami” is coming for Hollywood — here’s how artists are responding • I talked with nine creators about economic pressures and fan backlash.

Waymo’s next five cities are all in red states • Liberal cities risk falling behind on driverless technology.

Waymo is finally ready for freeway service • The self-driving leader is getting ready to conquer the Sun Belt.

AI ads are going mainstream • Why Google, Coca-Cola, and other companies have embraced AI-generated ads.

Context rot: the emerging challenge that could hold back LLM progress • What if attention isn't all you need?

AI skeptics and AI boosters are both wrong • "We’re in an intelligence explosion already and have been for decades," Andrej Karpathy said.

Sora, OpenAI’s chart-topping AI video app, explained • Sora is number one on the iOS App Store. Meta's AI app is 76th.

AI isn't replacing radiologists • Radiology combines digital images, clear benchmarks, and repeatable tasks. But demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high.

How AI is shaking up the study of earthquakes • “It's kind of like putting on glasses for the first time,” one scientist told me.

The case for AI doom isn't very convincing • I read Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book, "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies."

Welcome Kai! • Understanding AI has a new writer.

Tesla is (still) following in Waymo’s footsteps • Scaling a robotaxi service takes years, not months.

I chatted with the Argument's Kelsey Piper about AI and jobs • Is AI ruining jobs searches? Is it ruining the careers of young programmers? Kelsey and I discussed.

New evidence strongly suggests AI is killing jobs for young programmers • It's a brutal time to be a recent computer science graduate.

I want to hear from you! • Help me make Understanding AI better.

Is GPT-5 a "phenomenal" success or an "underwhelming" failure? • Maybe it's a bit of both.