I haven’t independently verified each link.
asserted
I → verify → link
On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading.
asserted
two → end → post
I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can’t guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.
asserted
you → correct → this
41: Today in etymology, h/t @TheHistoryOfTh2: “don” (as in to don gay apparel) was originally a contraction of do on; “doff” (as in to doff one’s hat) was originally a contraction of do off.
asserted
doff → don → off
Related: the archaic word “nigh”, meaning close, is mostly forgotten except in the phrase “the end is nigh”.
asserted
end → mean → phrase
But its comparative (nigh-er) survives as “near”, and its superlative (nigh-est) survives as “next”.
asserted
superlative → survive → next
42: This @St_Rev tweet helped me connect different forms of mystical experience in a productive way:
asserted
me → help → way
There’s a lot of bad criticism of Pangram, but Freddie de Boer’s seems fair enough.
asserted
Boer → ’ → Pangram
He gives some good examples of Pangram’s AI percent tracker (eg “100% AI-written”) behaving in bizarre ways.
asserted
He → give → ways
The CEO of Pangram showed up in the comments and admitted the behavior was bizarre; he attributed it to Pangram chunking text into ~300-word intervals, so anything that relies on sub-300-word resolution will give bad results.
asserted
that → show → results
The synthesis AIUI is that you can still trust Pangram for long documents, but shorter excerpts will at the very least have the wrong percent attached to them.
asserted
percent → trust → them
Since most people use Pangram for long documents, I don’t think this needs to be more than an asterisk, but it’s still good to know.
asserted
it → use → asterisk
My favorite response is @hradzka’s: “We got more St. Augustine before The Winds Of Winter”.
asserted
We → get → Winter
45: Claim: AI is now better at persuading people than expert humans like champion debaters and professional canvassers (paper, tweet thread).
uncertain
AI → persuade → debaters
This remained true even when “expert humans chose their issues, researched in advance, underwent hours of live, structured practice, and were incentivized with £1,000 cash bonuses” and even after “experts received a coaching tool that let them practice against the AI that beat them, review their performance history, and see what AI would have said at key moments”, and it remained true in a situation with real-world consequences (convincing people to actually donate money to a real charity).
asserted
people → remain → charity
However, the AIs regress back to human level when forced to respond “at human speeds and with human-length messages”.
asserted
AIs → regress → messages
Obviously this is just one, slightly hokey operationalization of “persuasion” and they still can’t do miracles.
asserted
they → do → miracles
Still, this is a good time to reread my post Sakana, Strawberry, and Scary AI.
asserted
this → reread → post
In the past, we thought “AGI” would “be here” when AIs could play chess, prove novel mathematical theorems, create art, or write award-winning short stories; now all those things have happened, but they feel sort of like “cheating” and like they shouldn’t count.
uncertain
they → think → cheating
Likewise, in the past, we thought we’d agree that AI was “dangerous” after it hacked out of its sandbox, lied to users, or tried to escape monitoring.
asserted
it → think → monitoring
Again all those things have happened; again, they somehow feel too cheap.
asserted
they → happen → ?
This paper seems like the same process coming for “superpersuasion”.
asserted
paper → seem → superpersuasion
We thought there would be some cool scary high-tech future where AIs could outpersuade humans.
uncertain
AIs → think → humans
Now that it’s happened, it’s only happening for some specific boring reason, in some specific situation, so it feels like it shouldn’t count.
asserted
it → happen → situation
There’s plausibly a motte-and-bailey going on here between “AI could never outpersuade humans” and “AI could never do godlike persuasion where it can persuade anyone of anything in one second”.
uncertain
it → ’ → second
While the latter remains dubious, the only intuitively-compelling specific fundamental limit was “the human level”; now that that’s been breached, we get to see how far it takes us.
asserted
it → remain → us
46: Nominative determinism, h/t @doubleunplussed: engineer Tom di Mino claims to have cracked Linear A, the writing system of ancient Crete.
uncertain
Mino → claim → Crete
47: “If Persona Selection underlies alignment, why is it hard to get AIs to be honest?
asserted
AIs → underlie → alignment
Tell them they’re Fred Rogers, Immanuel Kant, or Ned Stark.”
asserted
they → tell → them
48: More interesting things happening in AI alignment:
IMHO this will definitely definitely not work, but I imagine many of the people in the world best-qualified to work on it are ACX readers, so feel free to apply for what will probably be extremely fun and lucrative jobs at this insane company.
asserted
what → happen → company
West Africa is being terrorized by a jihadist organization called Support Group For Muslims.
asserted
Africa → terrorize → Muslims
Between these people and M.I.L.F., I’m ready to conclude that Islamic extremism has a branding problem.
asserted
extremism → ’m → problem
When Trump and Elon Musk dismantled USAID (including PEPFAR distribution services) in early 2025, scientists warned that this could cost thousands or millions of lives.
uncertain
this → dismantle → lives
@AviBittMD points out that there hasn’t been any excess mortality in South Africa, an AIDS hotspot where we would expect these deaths to be concentrated.
asserted
deaths → point → Africa
@alexkesin has a good response: after a brief dip, the number of people on PEPFAR-provided treatment is back to the same level as before the cuts!
asserted
number → have → cuts
This seems to be a combination of various government agencies walking back most of the administration’s PEPFAR cuts after a few months, and foreign nations and private charities filling in the gap until this happened.
asserted
this → seem → gap
Related: Asterisk: What’s The State Of PEPFAR Now?
asserted
State → ’ → PEPFAR
Has anyone researched whether we should update towards international development aid working better than expected, vs. just assume that this is an effect of being in the EU (or being a country which has just cast off communism) which is only coincidentally related to EU aid levels?
asserted
which → research → levels
New Chinese model Kimi K3 is out and very good, but is unfortunately causing a repeat “Deepseek moment” where everyone panics and says that China has caught up to / surpassed the US.
asserted
China → cause → US
I briefly got caught in the crossfire because I’d written days earlier that China was 6-12 months behind and people were telling me it “hadn’t aged well” (I hate that expression).
asserted
I → catch → expression
…and 120 more, not listed.
