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Understanding AI

Understanding AI

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LatestTopDiscussions OpenAI’s Astra model is shockingly good at robotics In the future, will general-purpose LLMs control robots? Published on Understanding Robots • 33 mins ago

September 2026

How a single tweet transformed the AI safety debate Most people think AI is risky, but they don’t agree what to do next. Sep 17 • Kai Williams 124 2 14 OpenAI spent millions to solve this famous math problem — mathematicians are furious Mathematics relies on a community of experts openly sharing ideas. Sep 10 • Kai Williams 175 5 16 19 robotics companies to watch I talked with nine of these companies. Sep 4 • Kai Williams 78 7 4 Robot startups are trying everything they can think of to get more data Free apartment cleanings, exoskeletons, 100 robots in a warehouse... Sep 3 • Kai Williams 102 13 How Google taught LLMs to control robots and started a robotics boom Vision-language-action models, explained with a minimum of math and jargon. Sep 2 • Timothy B. Lee 155 2 11 Why humanoid robots won’t catch up to human workers any time soon A deep dive into the current state of humanoid robotics. Sep 1 • Kai Williams 290 68 55

August 2026

I spent $4,000 on a robot dog from China Unitree might be the world’s most important robotics company. Aug 31 • Timothy B. Lee 245 27 31 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 240 13 17 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 279 51 33 Our advertising principles How we fund our journalism without compromising our independence. Aug 4 • Timothy B. Lee 23

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 44 5 6 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 150 4 8

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 164 21 4 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 23 1 1 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 129 3 5 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 136 10 6 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 16 1 Anthropic has caught up to OpenAI in image understanding But neither one is all that good. Jun 10 • Timothy B. Lee 96 3 5 We're building a different kind of AI newsroom Your subscription dollars now directly support Kai Williams. Jun 1 • Timothy B. Lee 48 9

May 2026

OpenAI’s math breakthrough played to AI’s strengths I tried to explain OpenAI’s solution more clearly than OpenAI did. May 28 • Kai Williams 194 25 14 Why it might not make sense for you to own a self-driving car Tensor let me sit in their driverless car. It might go on sale in the US next year. May 14 • Timothy B. Lee 143 4 8 A big lesson of my China visit: compute shortages are holding back Chinese AI One estimate suggests that OpenAI has about as much compute as the entire Chinese AI industry. May 12 • Kai Williams 115 8 7 © 2026 Timothy B Lee · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice Start your SubstackGet the app Substack is the home for great culture