#ai - natmc

Monday, September 14, 20261 item

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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 - 8 posts · tagged: #instinct #muse #ai #chatgpt

THIRTY THINGS GOING ON IN INSTINCT

At 11:50am I replied to Matt PRD that I was going to try his Muse personal-style workflow. His post offered a prompt that analyzes Instagram photos, defines an upgrade style, researches products at three price tiers, and builds an interactive report. I wrote: "Have about 30 things going on Instinct and trying to figure out easy way to replicate or test the platforms against each other" (x.com).

The comparison got more specific late at night. At 11:39pm I posted four screenshots and wrote, "I am fan of the emojis from Instinct" (x.com). Eleven minutes later I asked whether anyone else hates when ChatGPT does work in presentation mode and wishes it defaulted to the image model (x.com). The screenshot showed my instruction: "gross - do it using your image model - you are so much better than what you just shared."

Also Monday: I posted that the stock market was pacing the frontier (x.com), shared a Disney World ticket comparison - $3.50 in 1971 and $189 in 2026 - with "This 7.5% annual inflation. Damn" (x.com), gave Brunson and the Knicks a basic-blocking-and-tackling note (x.com), joked there would be no meaningful AI news this week (x.com), and traced comedy timing from laugh tracks to Vine to 24-hour streamathons (x.com).

Sunday, September 13, 20261 item

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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 - 6 posts · tagged: #instinct #dns #ai

COPY, PASTE, AND WAIT FOR IT TO BE DONE

At 8:43pm I named one of my favorite jobs to hand Instinct: setting up DNS on GoDaddy or elsewhere. "Its a simple task that I find annoying to do. I prefer copy, paste, and wait for it to be done" (x.com). The post was concrete about the division of labor. I provide the setup instructions. The agent handles the repetitive configuration. I wait for the finished result.

At noon I posted a way to spot where adoption is sticking: "follow the tokens." I pointed to background workflows running while people sleep, rather than chat boxes queried occasionally (x.com). The DNS job is the smaller example of that same behavior: hand off a bounded task and let it run.

The rest of Sunday stayed brief. At 6:06am I asked, "Are the prisoners cooperating or is there an actual dilemma?" (x.com). At 6pm I wrote that you pursue opportunities when expected value is small but possible, then push hard when they work (x.com). At 7:25pm: "is it productivity or ADHD?" (x.com). Three minutes later, I contrasted AI leaders calling for slower development with Trump saying no (x.com).

Tuesday, September 8, 20261 item

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 - 5 posts · tagged: #ai #openai

MAKE THE HEADLINE FIT THE THEOREM

Sam Altman described it as a Navier-Stokes result produced by 10,000 agents working for 88 hours on a GPU cluster.

The result was narrower. The system formalized one blowup case in Lean under controlled external forcing, building on work by Buckmaster, Alpöge, Córdoba, Elgindi and others.

That is still a serious engineering result. But "AI solved Navier-Stokes" gives the system credit for the mathematical idea, rather than for translating and checking an existing argument.

The correction ended up as a Dr. Seuss poem because the plain version sounded angrier than intended (x.com). The last line kept the point intact: "Make the headline fit the theorem - not the price of the stock."

Sunday, September 6, 20261 item

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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 - 5 posts · tagged: #ai #agents #instinct

THE VERB CHANGES HANDS

A quiet holiday Sunday produced the week's shortest thesis. Mid-afternoon, in one line: we are moving from software that helps us know what to do to software that actually helps us do it - sources, then answers, then outcomes (x.com). Just after midnight came the working proof, offered as casually as a shrug: using an agent more and more to say "pls do this.." - and often it can (x.com).

The progression is worth memorizing because each step hands over more of the verb. Sources: the machine finds, you read. Answers: the machine decides what the finding means, you choose. Outcomes: the machine does the thing, and you find out after. Nine words - sources, answers, outcomes - and each one moves the human one seat further from the controls. The midnight reply is what the third step feels like from inside: not a demo, not a roadmap, just a person saying please and being surprised, still, that it works.

The counterweight arrived an hour before that reply, as a joke. A video bit about a Cybercab driving a passenger straight to jail because the onboard model found a warrant, and the response: I know it is a joke, for now, but it does not seem far fetched (x.com). The parenthetical is the whole column. For now. When software only knows things, its mistakes are wrong answers. When software does things, its mistakes have doors and wheels. The distance between "pls do this" and "drove me straight to jail" is not intelligence. It is permission - and permission is the part nobody has written the manual for. If the progression holds, the next version of that manual gets written by whoever learns to say please carefully.

Saturday, September 5, 20261 item

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 - 12 posts · tagged: #robotaxi #tesla #ai

THE PRICE REDRAWS THE MAP

Forty quiet minutes on a Saturday held the week's real story. First the design detail: about 85 to 90 percent of taxi and ride-hail trips carry one or two people, which is why the Cybercab has two seats, with Model Ys in the fleet for larger parties (x.com). Then the arithmetic: at the stated target of 30 to 40 cents a mile, Tribeca to East Hampton comes to roughly $35 to $45 in a Cybercab - and the closing thought that there may be a lot more gold in the Hamptons next summer (x.com). The launch event was Thursday's headline. Saturday was about what the headline costs.

Sit with the number. Forty dollars for a hundred miles is not a cheaper taxi. It is a different map. And notice the progression, because each step is a genuine change, not a restatement. Most trips are two people, so the car is built for two. Built for two, it costs 30 to 40 cents a mile. At 40 cents a mile, a hundred-mile trip costs less than the parking. The design follows the median trip, the price follows the design, and geography follows the price.

The day's counterweight was a one-line joke: when I ask AI if this project will really take six to twelve weeks (x.com). The punchline was left hanging, and it did not need to land. Six to twelve weeks is a quote from the old cost curve, the same curve that priced a ride to the Hamptons at three figures. Both numbers - the fare and the timeline - were set when the work was done by people, and both are being renegotiated at once. If the new prices hold, distance stops being the moat around places like the Hamptons. The gold there next summer is not the beach. It is the repricing.

Friday, September 4, 20261 item

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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 - 18 posts · tagged: #ai #agents #commerce

WHEN SOFTWARE BECOMES A CUSTOMER

Two things happened within three hours on Friday afternoon. First, a field report: an agent hit a limit on a lead scraper, found the paid tier, and asked to open an account with a credit card (x.com). Then, reading what season three of a Netflix show cost, the prediction that someone would fire up a video model over the weekend and try to make it for one-hundredth the price (x.com). Neither is a headline. Together they mark one change: the software stopped only doing the work and started taking part in the market.

Sit with the number. A hundredth is not a discount; it is a different economy. When the cost of making something falls a hundredfold, the budget stops being the barrier, and the scarce thing becomes the judgment to know what is worth making. And sit with the progression in the field report. The agent hit a limit. It found the paid tier. It asked for the card. Each step is small. Together they are the difference between a tool and a customer - software that notices a price, decides it is worth paying, and reaches for the wallet.

The tension is that the public argument is still stuck on the old question. The same afternoon brought a sarcastic jab at the latest study: so AI creates jobs? (x.com). Count the jobs created, count the jobs taken - the scoreboard argument assumes the players are still people and companies. But the afternoon's evidence says the players are changing. Agents now hold cards, pick tiers, and bid against studios. The question is not whether AI creates jobs. It is what a market does when the newest customers are not human. If this continues, prices will start clearing between machines, and the next negotiation will not involve a person at all.

Thursday, September 3, 20261 item

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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 - 17 posts · tagged: #ai #openai #regulation

THE CURVE AND THE CEILING

Thursday was marked on the calendar in real time: OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra, Tesla launched the CyberCab, and the note went up calling it an important day (x.com). But the louder signal was not any single launch. It was the slope underneath. OpenRouter processed 4.6 trillion tokens a week last September. Today it processes 114 trillion. That is 25x in twelve months - a vertical wall, not a plateau (x.com).

The slope has a shape anyone can recite now. Last September the models answered questions. By December they reasoned through problems. By March they used your computer. By June they worked for hours on their own. This September they run teams of agents in parallel (x.com). Five rungs in twelve months, each one a category of work that did not exist the season before.

And on the same day, a bill arrived in the Senate to permanently ban any AI that surpasses human intelligence, with twenty years in prison for violators. The reply: I have bad news for you Bernie (x.com). A ban is written against a snapshot. The thing it names will be twenty-five times bigger by the time the ink dries. You can legislate against a version. You cannot legislate against a curve. The only question left is what gets built on the way through it.

Wednesday, September 2, 20261 item

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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 - 28 posts · tagged: #ai #agents #instinct

THE TIE AT THE TOP

The day opened on the model race: the SOTA models are so neck and neck that it is surprising none has pulled ahead (x.com). By afternoon the point had sharpened. Gemini 3.8 Flash is basically frontier-class on a surprising number of tasks at a fraction of the price (x.com). The answer to a direct question about Kimi drew the same map: all the models are competing fiercely, there is no clear winner, and specialization and price will decide it (x.com). The race at the top has ended in a tie.

A tie at the model layer moves the value to the work layer. The midday thesis: the biggest shift in AI is from charging for software to charging for outcomes, and replacing $30-a-seat workflow tools with systems that directly execute the transaction is where the trillion-dollar companies get built (x.com). The rest of the day read like evidence. Aslan AI raised $20.8M to run undercover agents in criminal forums for the FBI (x.com). fal cut the price of video generation again (x.com). One 12-person company is spending $2,000 to $4,000 a month on an SMS assistant just to automate basic ops (x.com). And the working proof: an agent planned a meetup end to end - emailed eight NYC venues, caught its own bounced emails, fielded the replies, priced three private rooms, and locked a back room at Linen Hall for September 15. The first NYC Instinct event is on the calendar and the RSVP is open (x.com). One reply added the missing word to the outcomes thesis: speed (x.com).

The last post of the night put a ceiling on the whole picture: 80% of OpenAI and Anthropic's enterprise revenue comes from 1% of customers (x.com). The easy read is that the labs are capped. The better one is to imagine the other 99% growing into how the pioneers already use these tools. The lesson of the day: the scoreboard is a tie, so stop watching it. Count what ships.

Tuesday, September 1, 20261 item

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 - 7 posts · tagged: #ai #poker #knicks #agents

WHEN +EV ISN'T THE WHOLE QUESTION

September's AI release calendar, laid out in one quoted list - Fable 5.1, GPT 6 Astra, Grok 4.7, DeepSeek V5, Gemini 3.8 flash and more inside a single month - drew the day's first reaction: spelled out like that, the pace of change is remarkable (x.com). Hours later Every's week-long Fable 5.1 test landed - "the strongest coding model we've used" - and got a repost plus a short verdict: "This review makes me want to use Fable 5.1. Check it out." (x.com).

The day's most engaged post was a poker hand. Sixteen players left, A8s in early position with ten big blinds and the blinds about to jump - shove, button shows queens, out after three days of grinding. The question isn't the shove's chip EV, which was probably fine; it's whether a decision can be right in isolation and wrong once you weigh what happens if it goes badly - startups included (x.com). One reply pushed back directly: "pretty clearly the right call" (x.com).

Elsewhere: a webhook that returned HTTP 200 while a Postgres worker silently dropped the payload over an unescaped unicode character in a property address - "My grandmother would think I am speaking a foreign language" (x.com). An inbox agent that finds unopened newsletters, adds checkboxes, and unsubscribes on command: "works like a charm!" (x.com). A clear-grape Gatorade review from a glass-bottle lifer who wanted to hate it and kinda digs it (x.com). And a note that Jalen Brunson turned 30 - if he gets another ring, "they better just give him the statue" (x.com).

Sunday, August 30, 20261 item

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SUNDAY, AUGUST 30 - 4 posts · tagged: #ai #knicks #nyc-eats #agents

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE WAIT GOES AWAY

Two of Sunday's posts circle the same question. Taalas is generating roughly 14,000 tokens per second, about 100x ChatGPT's pace, and the post quoting the demo asks the follow-up: what happens when waiting goes away? The evening's first post answers it in advance: demand for intelligence grows 50x in the next few years. If both hold, faster supply doesn't relieve demand - it creates it.

The rest of the day: Kevin Durant spent the summer publicly crediting the Knicks' Finals comeback with breaking his brain, an unusual amount of praise from that corner. And a documented home attempt at L'Artusi's mushroom dish, rated pretty good.