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