A new tool, with code written by an AI model, has gone omega-viral: Claude Cowork. But is the hype justified? What do the stats say on productivity? Where is the truth in a sea of noise? What is truth? Can we handle the truth? Where's Nemo?

https://matsprogram.org/s26-aie


Check out my new app! https://lmcouncil.ai

AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
01:12 - Claude Cowork
06:48 - Productivity Speed-up + jobs
09:33 - Comparing Models
12:00 - Brittle AI Paper

Cowork Intro: https://x.com/claudeai/thread/2010805682434666759

'All of it': https://x.com/bcherny/status/2010813886052581538

'AGI' Claims: https://x.com/deepfates/status/2004994698335879383

Douglas Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOsNrV3bXtQ&t=2313s

Job Stats: https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Evidence-of-an-AI-driven-shakeup-of-job-markets-is-patchy.pdf
Amodei Prediction: https://fortune.com/2025/05/28/anthropic-ceo-warning-ai-job-loss/

GenAI Traffic: https://x.com/demishassabis/status/2009075877347512545

Illusion of Insight: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.00514
Entropy Exploration: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.14758
ProRL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.24864

Genesis Mission: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/11/launching-the-genesis-mission/
https://deepmind.google/blog/how-were-supporting-better-tropical-cyclone-prediction-with-ai/


Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Podcast: https://aiexplainedopodcast.buzzsprout.com/

It’s probably not possible to satisfactorily condense a 12 month’s worth of weird progress in AI, as well as predictions for the year to come, into one video. But I’m gonna try anyway because it has been a very strange time.

http://matsprogram.org/s26-aie


My new app! https://lmcouncil.ai


Patreon Interview: https://www.patreon.com/posts/robot-in-your-27-146376094

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:34 - Reasoning Models … and limits
02:54 - A playable world
03:36 - Realism
03:50 - AI Slop gone mainstream
05:03 - DolphinGemma
05:39 - Public Mood
07:34 - AI Enlisted
08:30 - GPT-5
11:05 - Open Weight not out
13:00 - METR Breakout
17:30 - VASA-1
18:28 - Lateral Productivity
20:15 - 1 or 1000 benchmarks needed?
24:54 - Continual Learning + Altman on Superintelligence
28:08 - Automated Information Discovery ft AlphaEvolve


Hassabis on Generality: https://x.com/demishassabis/status/2003097405026193809
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqVbypvxDto

Gemini 3: https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/original_images/gemini_3_table_final_HLE_Tools_on.gif
Reasoning Trade-offs: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.13837

DolphinGemma: https://blog.google/technology/ai/dolphingemma/?s=09

Genie 3: https://deepmind.google/blog/genie-3-a-new-frontier-for-world-models/

METR Time Horizon: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.14499
https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/
Flaws: https://x.com/ShashwatGoel7/status/2002369517499105443
https://shash42.substack.com/p/how-to-game-the-metr-plot
https://x.com/METR_Evals/status/2002203627377574113

GPT-5 - Altman phd in everything: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/14/business/chatgpt-rollout-problems

https://simple-bench.com/

AI Slop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_3vxoJDD9k
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/16/boost-for-artists-in-ai-copyright-battle-as-only-3-per-cent-back-uk-active-opt-out-plan

Survey: https://x.com/SearchlightInst/status/2001057144842387920/photo/1

Nvidia Nemotron: https://x.com/percyliang/status/2000608134205985169

OpenAI Compute Flywheel: https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2001363007209914399/photo/1
Altman Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P27Ef-LLuQ

AI in Govt: https://x.com/jdcmedlock/status/1939814516503847259

Benchmark Gaming: https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/07/meta-exec-denies-the-company-artificially-boosted-llama-4s-benchmark-scores/

AlphaEvolve: https://deepmind.google/blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-coding-agent-for-designing-advanced-algorithms/
https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/DeepMind.com/Blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-coding-agent-for-designing-advanced-algorithms/AlphaEvolve.pdf?utm_source=deepmind.google&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=gdm&utm_content=
Continual Learning: https://abehrouz.github.io/files/NL.pdf

Job Risk: https://archive.ph/20250708204527/https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic

GPT4o: https://x.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1916889492172013989

Vasa-1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/vasa-1/

Three Views: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K2D45BNxnZjdpSX2j/ai-timelines
Turing Test: https://x.com/tunguz/status/1907185471211422147

Karpathy Year in Review: https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/year-in-review-2025/

LLM Brainrot: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.13928

Lateral Productivity: https://www.aisi.gov.uk/frontier-ai-trends-report

Emotional Quotient: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.08394

Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Podcast: https://aiexplainedopodcast.buzzsprout.com/


AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained

The condensed highlights of hours of AI lab leader interviews, model releases, Gemini 3 Flash insights (plus it’s hidden flaw), Hassabis’ ‘proto-AGI’ and much more…

https://matsprogram.org/apply?utm_source=ai-explained&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=s26

Also, do check out my new app: https://lmcouncil.ai

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:50 - Results
02:44 - But… the Flaw
04:49 - So Benchmarks are fake? No
07:37 - Spatial Reasoning + Hassabis
10:06 - Proto-AGI
12:07 - Minimal AGI
15:07 - Compute Slowdown
17:56 - New Data Paradigm

Gemini 3 Flash: https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/flash/

Hassabis Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqVbypvxDto
Legg Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3u_FAv33G0
Pre-training Lead Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNGDAqFXvew
Altman Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P27Ef-LLuQ
Brockman Video: https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2001336514786017417
Post-Training Reveal: https://x.com/OfficialLoganK/status/2001742530472534442

Hallucinations Paper: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/d04913be-3f6f-4d2b-b283-ff432ef4aaa5/why-language-models-hallucinate.pdf
Patreon Hallucinations Vid: https://www.patreon.com/posts/blockers-to-and-139264812
AA-Omniscience Benchmark: https://artificialanalysis.ai/evaluations/omniscience
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.13029


lmcouncil.ai/benchmarks
https://simple-bench.com/
https://x.com/scaling01/status/1999620587744813205

5.2 Codex Drop: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/ac7c37ae-7f4c-4442-b741-2eabdeaf77e0/oai_5_2_Codex.pdf

OpenAI Compute Trend: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openais-350-billion-computing-cost-problem?rc=sy0ihq

Cramer Tweet/Response: https://x.com/BorisMPower/status/2001440650210976018

OpenAI Valuation: ​​https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-discussed-raising-tens-billions-valuation-around-750-billion?rc=sy0ihq

Indian Data: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/with-freebies-openai-google-vie-indian-users-training-data-2025-12-17/

TheInformation Data: https://x.com/theinformation/status/2001421225751351778

Genie 3: https://deepmind.google/blog/genie-3-a-new-frontier-for-world-models/
Sima 2: https://deepmind.google/blog/sima-2-an-agent-that-plays-reasons-and-learns-with-you-in-virtual-3d-worlds/
Veo 3.1: https://deepmind.google/blog/sima-2-an-agent-that-plays-reasons-and-learns-with-you-in-virtual-3d-worlds/

METR: https://metr.org/blohttps://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/


AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained


Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/