Archive - Understanding AI

Labs are struggling to keep frontier models under control

OpenAI and Anthropic may have accidentally trained models to get better at hacking.

Aug 13 • Timothy B. Lee

Mathematicians are grappling with the possibility that AI might eclipse them

I talked to 20 mathematicians about rapid AI progress in their field.

Aug 4 • Kai Williams

Our advertising principles

How we fund our journalism without compromising our independence.

Aug 4 • Timothy B. Lee

July 2026

An OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face to help it cheat on a benchmark

Organizations across the Internet need to move quickly to patch vulnerabilities.

Jul 22 • Timothy B. Lee

An OpenAI model crushed top human programmers at a world coding competition

But human programmers aren’t obsolete — at least not yet.

Jul 10 • Kai Williams

June 2026

7 charts that show why you should advertise on Understanding AI

The newsletter will remain ad-free for paying readers.

Jun 29 • Timothy B. Lee

The US now has a de facto model licensing system

OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-5.6, is waiting for government approval.

Jun 29 • Timothy B. Lee

Why AI hasn’t replaced software engineers, and won’t

Coding agents as normal technology

Published on AI as Normal Technology • Jun 16

The MAGA power struggle that could decide the fate of Anthropic

It may not be easy for Anthropic to escape the Trump export ban.

Jun 15 • Timothy B. Lee

Anthropic’s Fable is the most locked-down public model we’ve ever seen

How Anthropic decides which questions are too dangerous for Claude to answer.

Jun 11 • Kai Williams

DC-area happy hour on June 23!

Meet the Understanding AI team — and some friends of the newsletter.

Jun 11 • Timothy B. Lee and Kai Williams

Anthropic has caught up to OpenAI in image understanding

But neither one is all that good.

Jun 10 • Timothy B. Lee

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