Understanding AI

The many masks LLMs wear

Why frontier labs struggle to keep their chatbots in character.

Feb 9 • Kai Williams

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January 2026

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.

Jan 29 • Timothy B. Lee

17

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An unlikely ally for open-source protein-folding models: Big Pharma

Drug companies are funding open-source AI to avoid depending on Google.

Jan 28 • Kai Williams

119

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How shifting risk to users makes Claude Code more powerful

People are discovering that Claude Code isn’t just for code.

Jan 20 • Timothy B. Lee

58

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AI is just starting to change the legal profession

I talked to 10 lawyers about how they're using AI.

Jan 15 • Justin Curl

167

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December 2025

17 predictions for AI in 2026

AI will continue improving rapidly, but real-world economic impacts will be modest.

Dec 31, 2025 • Timothy B. Lee, Kai Williams, James Grimmelmann, Steve Newman, Daniel Abreu Marques, Sophia Tung, Charlie Guo, Abi Olvera, and Florian Brand

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Waymo and Tesla’s self-driving systems are more similar than people think

Everyone is moving toward transformer-based, end-to-end architectures.

Dec 17, 2025 • Timothy B. Lee

115

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The best Chinese open-weight models — and the strongest US rivals

The Understanding AI guide to open-weight models.

Dec 15, 2025 • Kai Williams

86

4

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Google and Anthropic approach LLMs differently

The very different cultures of OpenAI's two most important rivals.

Dec 4, 2025 • Timothy B. Lee

106

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Help some of the poorest people in Rwanda

If readers give $20,000 to GiveDirectly, my wife and I will give another $10,000.

Dec 2, 2025 • Timothy B. Lee

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November 2025

Six reasons to think there’s an AI bubble — and six reasons not to

A complete playbook for every AI bubble debate.

Nov 25, 2025 • Timothy B. Lee and Derek Thompson

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Hyperproductivity: The Next Stage of AI?

A glimpse at an astonishing, exhilarating, exhausting new style of work

Published on Second Thoughts • Nov 20, 2025