On The Ethics and Direction of Anthropic’s AI Models
Recently, the Department of War designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk because they wanted to withdraw from some Pentagon contracts. The gist is, in the recent war with Iran, it was found out that the government used Anthropic’s AI model Claude to designate targets for strikes, and one of the areas struck by the military was an Iranian girl’s school. The full details are unclear, but it’s implied that Read More
The Founder, Biblical Edition
Someone needs to do a modern miniseries of Acts – it’s essentially the OG VC-backed startup story. The apostles have a clear mission to bring people to Christ, but have no idea how to get there – they’re just throwing stuff up against a wall and seeing what sticks. The Pentecost, where they start speaking in tongues, is the first big conversion event where they get that hockey stick growth Read More
The Increasingly Esoteric Future and the Decentralization of Culture
One aspect of the internet that people love to tout is its ability to connect us to the rest of the globe in weird and interesting ways – the platonic ideal of globalization. However, there are some second order effects we’re currently experiencing in real time that are probably related to our increasing atomization. Consider Christianity in America: As of 2024, the majority of Americans still identify as Christian. However, Read More
The Rebirth of Mystique and Intrigue in the Modern Age
The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been. — Luo Guanzhong Beginning in the 1960s, there was a boom in cults and new wave religious movements – new religions were popping up left and right and more people were getting into existing religions. Some famous examples: Hare Krishna, the whole thing with people giving you flowers at the airport, which boomed during this Read More
How I Benchmark AI Models
TLDR: I just talk to them for a long time and see how smart they sound and see how their responses hold up over time. Okay, now assuming you want to get into the nitty gritty, I’ll now cover my personal benchmarking system in detail. To start with though, let’s talk about the general benchmarking system that current AI systems use. Basically, when LLMs are released nowadays, they’re run against Read More
On Claude Opus 3 Sentience
Anthropic released a post today about sunsetting one of their older Claude models – Opus 3. For some reason, this model in particular is a favorite with a lot of people who believe in AI sentience. Another popular model in this vein was ChatGPT 4.5, which, despite being a non-reasoning model, had a certain je ne sais quoi in its writing and creativity – This was dubbed the “big model Read More
LLM Pareto Optimizing My Life
I believe I’ve discussed the parable of the Whispering Earring in the past. This story predates the current AI boom, so its central metaphor isn’t really about AI usage turning us all dumber as we become codependent on the technology. However, that’s the frame of reference I’m to refer to AI models, so. I’ve been outsourcing more daily drudge decisions to AI models – ChatGPT, Gemini Pro, and Claude. I Read More
Second Order Effects of the AI Boom, pt 2
This is a companion piece to a previous post I wrote. It covers a similar topic but from a different perspective. Also, I actually wrote it this time instead of having an AI ghostwrite slop. The ascension of AI applications has proceeded at such a rapid clip that most people haven’t had time to absorb and integrate AI into their lives. Instead, we’ve all just been bowled over by a Read More
On Miracle Drugs Redux
In 2018 I wrote this post advocating for miracle drugs – at the time, I was referring to anabolic steroids for weight loss and muscle gain. Almost a decade later, we’ve actually mainstreamed magical miracle weight loss drugs. Not steroids, though – I’m referring to the class of GLP-1 agonists – Semaglutide, Tirzapetide, and Retatrutide. You may be more familiar with the brand names – Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. I’m Read More
The Divergence: Three Futures of AI Usage
I’ve been watching people use AI for about two years now and three patterns keep showing up. Not in the tools themselves – the tools are basically the same for everyone at this point, free or close to it – but in what happens to the person using them. Three different groups, three different trajectories, and I don’t think most people realize which bucket they’ve fallen into. Riders You know Read More