Robot datasets are a loooong way from the size of LLM datasets

People fold laundry while wearing a head-mounted smartphone. The phone records video, which is processed to track movement of the head, hands and fingers.

New: See why tech companies are paying people to do chores

Featuring many videos of robots attempting to fold clothes

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Enjoyed this essay. "The middle ground between rejecting a technology outright and embracing it fully is usually occupied by people willing to explore it seriously enough to judge it."

Look at the crumbling support among Virginians (America's first data center hot spot) for data centers:

Q: Would you be comfortable or uncomfortable if a new data center were built in your community?

2023: 69% comfortable
2026: 35% comfortable

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Useful: An archive of congressional press releases from 2001-2026, with daily updates. Nice resource by Derek Willis

thescoop.org/archives/2026/04/04/intr...

Back after a few days off, and I think I'm no longer an inbox-zero person

These headlines are so bad

Made my TV debut yesterday, talking about my latest story on AI and jobs with NBC News NOW

I guess this makes some sense since `uvx` is a great way to run mcp servers?

Labels on these scatterplots brought to you by `avoid-overlap` — my library for automatic label placement on charts. Let me know how it goes if you give it a shot. github.com/kevinschaul/...

The feared AI jobs apocalypse may be fine for relatively affluent workers like programmers.

It may not be for clerical and administrative workers.

Great visuals by @kevinschaul.bsky.social with a reminder: We are historically awful at predicting how tech changes work.

wapo.st/4cP2ZHM

New: AI job exposure is important, but there’s more to the picture. Here’s what the research says on adaptability.

Find your job here 🎁 wapo.st/4cP2ZHM

Image

More details on how Pentagon uses Claude from NYT.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/us/politics/i...

Spoke to @eliotpeper.bsky.social, who built a hyperlocal surf forecasting app for his area. He summed it up best:

“Instead of wanting to be Amazon, I want it to be a beloved indie bookstore, right? That’s just perfect for your neighborhood.”

New: I asked readers what websites they want, then fired up Claude Cowork to build them.

We're entering a new era of software built specifically for you.

🎁 wapo.st/4l7EEyK

Here's how NATO's version looks, according to a video they recently posted. Unclear if the U.S. version is similar. Apparently you can ask the system questions like:

"Can you explain the targets on this map?"

As planning for a potential strike in Iran was underway, Maven, powered by Claude, suggested hundreds of targets, issued precise location coordinates, and prioritized those targets according to importance, said two of the people. The pairing of Maven and Claude has created a tool that is speeding the pace of the campaign, reducing Iran’s ability to counterstrike and turning weeks-long battle planning into real-time operations, said one of the people. The AI tools also evaluate a strike after it is initiated, the person said.

The Pentagon began to integrate Anthropic’s Claude chatbot into Maven in late 2024, according to public announcements. The system has been used to generate proposed targets, to track logistics and provide summaries of intelligence coming in from the field. The Trump administration has vastly expanded the use of Maven into many other parts of the military, with over 20,000 military personnel using it as of last May.

The most details I've seen yet on exactly how the military uses Claude. Really great reporting by @taracopp.bsky.social @lizzalichka.bsky.social and Ian Duncan

wapo.st/4b15X9p

Sam Altman tweet: Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome. AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted. We will deploy FDEs to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only. We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.

My goodness.

The hypothetical nuclear attack that escalated the Pentagon’s showdown with Anthropic Start-up Anthropic and the U.S. military are careening toward a clash over government use of artificial intelligence — and whether it should be allowed to kill.

The best story I’ve seen yet on the Anthropic-Pentagon showdown wapo.st/3OCZdqY

Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency Activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a draft executive order that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.

"President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots"

"Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution assigns power to regulate elections to state legislatures and Congress, with no role for the president."

wapo.st/3N5cpEn

Chart goes up https://metr.org/

Opinion | The A.I. Disruption Has Arrived, and It Sure Is Fun We’re entering a new renaissance of software development. We should all be excited, despite the uncertainties that lie ahead.

Lovely Paul Ford essay on AI coding, with lots of memorable lines. Worth a read.

More on responsibly using LLMs for journalism ->

Stunning reporting from NYT: Meta plans to add facial recognition to its smart classes

> Meta’s internal memo said the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the feature’s release.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/me...

Geoffrey Fowler's Substack | Substack What matters for 'We the users' of tech. Click to read Geoffrey Fowler's Substack, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Sadly Geoffrey A. Fowler was among the hundreds of journalists that The Post laid off last week. A massive loss. But he is continuing his coverage in a newly launched newsletter. Give that a follow!

The researchers systematically asked an LLM to compare two places, for every combination, resulting in the scores we visualized. Check out the full dataset and paper here, by Francisco W. Kerche Matthew Zook and Mark Graham (Mark Graham): inequalities.ai/

New: Researchers found a clever way to reveal AI biases, like the states with the laziest people, or the cities with the best pizza.

Look up your city here -> https://wapo.st/4bMoWqk with Geoffrey A. Fowler

Fair point. It's a pretty straightforward task. I'd be curious if it works as a one-shot with your setup.

GitHub - kevinschaul/2025-Federal-Agency-AI-Use-Case-Inventory: The 2025 consolidation of AI use case inventories across U.S. Federal agencies. The 2025 consolidation of AI use case inventories across U.S. Federal agencies. - kevinschaul/2025-Federal-Agency-AI-Use-Case-Inventory

tldr: I had AI write scripts to search for, clean and standardize government data. Highly recommend. Full data available here github.com/kevinschaul/...

How I used Claude Code in a real data journalism project This morning three colleagues and I published a story outlining how the federal government is using AI. Here’s how I used Claude Code to help. Agencies are required to publish a spreadsheet of AI use ...

New blog post: A case study on using Claude Code in data journalism ->
kschaul.com/post/2026/02...