LessWrong posts by zvi

Whatever else you think about Anthropic's agentic coding department, they ship. The highlights of this edition are three related big upgrades. You can use Dispatch to command Claude Code and Claude Cowork from your phone, or use channels to do it via places such as Telegram or Discord. Claude Cowork now can outright use your keyboard and mouse, giving it access to actual everything one can do with...

These are all important, in their own way, call it a treasure hunt and collect them all… “Know thyself.” – The Oracle “Know thine enemy and know thyself; in a hundred battles, you will not be defeated.” – Sun Tzu “You don’t know me. You don’t know me at all.” – Lisa Loeb, ‘You Don’t Know Me’ “Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.” – The Graduate “And Alexander wept, seeing as he had no more...

Yesterday I posted Part 1. Read that first. This is Part 2 of 2. Table of Contents The Socratic Method. The Paradox Paradox. Rubber Ducking. Coherent Extrapolated Volition. The Cult Leader Breaks You Down. The Cult Leader Builds You Back Up. Did You Know There Are Tradeoffs In Epistemics. You Came Here For An Argument. You Have Completed Building The Oracle. How Refutation Works. The Problem Is No...

The Federal AI Policy Framework has been released. Well, it is a four page outline. Mostly it just reiterates existing such outlines. But that is four more pages than we had previously. It includes the beginnings of actual policy proposals, some of which are highly welcome and actively good. Perhaps most importantly, it affirms that we are a Republic in which the way we Do Policy is we pass a law...

A lot happened, but by today's standards this felt like a quiet week. I was happy for the break, and I hope that we get to continue relatively relaxing. The Anthropic PBC vs. Department of War case is working its way through the system. The government responded on Tuesday, and the preliminary hearing is next week. I covered that here. Once that is out of the way, I plan to cover Anthropic's RSP v3...

The news has thankfully quieted down on this front, and is mostly about the lawsuit as we build towards a hearing next week, after which we will find out if a temporary restraining order or an injunction is on the table. The government arguments were going to be terrible no matter what, given the terrible set of facts and who was directing the argument, and their decision not to narrow their scope...

Things are relatively quiet on the AI front, so I figured it's time to check in on some other things that have been going on, including various developments at the FDA. Table of Contents FDA Reformandum Est. FDA Delenda Est. IN MICE. Doctor, Doctor. Trust The Process. Cancer Screening. Autism Everywhere All At Once. Other Mental Problems Everywhere All At Once. Source Data Verification. External R...

It is that time again. After events surrounding Anthropic and the Department of War, I plan on taking full advantage of whatever lulls I can get. Things are only going to move faster over time. That means a higher bar for coverage, and it means potentially skipping more days, or using those days for short posts that either spin off fun little things or that embody concepts I want to refer back to...

The conflict between Anthropic and the Department of War has now moved to the courts, where Anthropic has challenged the official supply chain risk designation as well as the order to remove it from systems across the government, claiming retaliation for protected speech. It will take a bit to work its way through the courts. Anthropic has the principles of law on its side, a maximally strong set...

Benchmarks have never been less useful for telling us which models are best. They are good for giving a general sense of the landscape. They definitely paint a picture. But if you’re comparing top models, like GPT-5.4 against Opus 4.6 against Gemini 3.1 Pro, you have to use the models, talk to the models, get reports from those who have and form a gestalt. The reports will contract each other and...

It feels good to get back to some of the fun stuff. The comments here can double as a place for GPT-5.4 reactions, in addition to my Twitter thread. I hope to get that review out soon. Almost all of this will be a summary of agentic coding developments, after a note. Table of Contents The Virtue of Silence (Unrelated Update). Agentic Coding Offers Mundane Utility. Agentic Coding Doesn’t Offer Mund...

Make no mistake about what is happening. The Department of War (DoW) demanded Anthropic bend the knee, and give them ‘unfettered access’ to Claude, without understanding what that even meant. If they didn’t get what they want, they threatened to both use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to make Anthropic give the military this vital product, and also designate the company a supply chain risk (SCR)...

This was the worst week I have had in quite a while, maybe ever. The situation between Anthropic and the Department of War (DoW) spun completely out of control. Trump tried to de-escalate by putting out a Truth merely banning Anthropic from direct use by the Federal Government with a six month wind down. Then Secretary of War Hegseth went rogue and declared Anthropic a supply chain risk, with word...

I’ve been trying to find a slot for this one for a while. I am thrilled that today had sufficiently little news that I am comfortable posting this. Gemini 3.1 scores very well on benchmarks, but most of us had the same reaction after briefly trying it: “It's a Gemini model.” And that was that, given our alternatives. But it's got its charms. Consider this a nice little, highly skippable break. The...

The attempt on Friday by Secretary of War Pete Hegsted to label Anthropic as a supply chain risk and commit corporate murder had a variety of motivations. On its face, the conflict is a tale of three contracts and the associated working relationships. The contract Anthropic signed with the Department of War (DoW) in 2025. The new contract Anthropic was negotiating with DoW, that would have been mo...

This is the long version of what happened so far. I will strive for shorter ones later, when I have the time to write them. Most of you should read the first two sections, then choose the remaining sections that are relevant to your interests. But first, seriously, read Dean Ball's post Clawed. Do that first. I will not quote too extensively from it, because I am telling all of you to read it. Now...

The Department of War gave Anthropic until 5:01pm on Friday the 27th to either give the Pentagon ‘unfettered access’ to Claude for ‘all lawful uses,’ or else. With the ‘or else’ being not the sensible ‘okay we will cancel the contract then’ but also expanding to either being designated a supply chain risk or having the government invoke the Defense Production Act. It is perfectly legitimate for th...

Events continue to be fast and furious. This was the first actually stressful week of the year. That was mostly due to issues around Anthropic and the Department of War. This is the big event the news is not picking up, with the Pentagon on the verge of invoking one of two extreme options that would both be extremely damaging to national security and that would potentially endanger our Republic. T...

The situation in AI in 2026 is crazy. The confrontation between Anthropic and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is a new level of crazy. It risks turning quite bad for all. There's also nothing stopped it from turning out fine for everyone. By at least one report the recent meeting between the two parties was cordial and all business, but Anthropic has been given a deadline of 5pm eastern on Friday to...

A viral essay from Citrini about how AI bullishness could be bearish was impactful enough for Bloomberg to give it partial responsibility for a decline in the stock market, and all the cool economics types are talking about it. So fine, let's talk. It's an excellent work of speculative fiction, in that it: Depicts a concrete scenario with lots of details and numbers. Introduces a bunch of underexp...

Anthropic first gave us Claude Opus 4.6, then followed up with Claude Sonnet 4.6. For most purposes Sonnet 4.6 is not as capable as Opus 4.6, but it is not that far behind, it would have been fully frontier-level a few months ago, and it is faster and cheaper than Opus. That has its advantages, including that Sonnet is in the free plan, and it seems outright superior for computer use. Anthropic: C...

This was the week of Claude Opus 4.6, and also of ChatGPT-5.3-Codex. Both leading models got substantial upgrades, although OpenAI's is confined to Codex. Once again, the frontier of AI got more advanced, especially for agentic coding but also for everything else. I spent the week so far covering Opus, with two posts devoted to the extensive model card, and then one giving benchmarks, reactions, c...

Things that are being pushed into the future right now: Gemini 3.1 Pro and Gemini DeepThink V2. Claude Sonnet 4.6. Grok 4.20. Updates on Agentic Coding. Disagreement between Anthropic and the Department of War. We are officially a bit behind and will have to catch up next week. Even without all that, we have a second highly full plate today. Table of Contents (As a reminder: bold are my top picks,...

There was way too much going on this week to not split, so here we are. This first half contains all the usual first-half items, with a focus on projections of jobs and economic impacts and also timelines to the world being transformed with the associated risks of everyone dying. Quite a lot of Number Go Up, including Number Go Up A Lot Really Fast. Among the thing that this does not cover, that w...

There really is a lot going on these days. I held off posting this because I was trying to see if I could write a net helpful post about the current situation involving Anthropic and the Pentagon. Anthropic very much wants to help DoW defend our country and make us strong. It is clear there have been some large misunderstandings here about how LLMs work. They are not ordinary tools like spreadshee...