AI #175: The Fable Continues

Fable’s back. Back again. Fable’s back. Tell a friend. Use your free week to its fullest. This is excellent news. The blip only lasted a few weeks. It was still a fiasco, and we have to deal with the fallout. Our system remains fully ad hoc. The precedent has been set that we may use export controls on models, or order them taken down on 90 minutes of notice based on a misunderstanding. At least some amount of counterproductive additional locking down has occurred to address Amazon’s little demonstration and reassure the government. And for now GPT-5.6 remains in limbo, awaiting its verdict, while OpenAI talks about giving away 5% of the company as tribute. I’ll cover that continuing situation on its own. Whereas the weekly post is about everything else happening in AI this week. Table of Contents Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Exploratory science. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility You May Not Want. Google sees all. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Too dumb to get smart. Huh, Upgrades. GLM-5.2 faster, Nana Banana Lite 2, Claude Desktop on Linux. On Your Marks. Remote labor index shoots upwards with Fable. Get My Agent On The Line. Beware treating them like employees. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Fnord. Cyber Lack of Security. It’s rough out there. On Writing. At least four distinct problems with relying on AI writing. You Drive Me Crazy. AI writing and other advice, gone too far. They Took Our Jobs. Three economists walk into a capabilities bar. Get Involved. FAI legal defense, Anthropic and the rule of law, Grantmaking.ai. Introducing. Jalapeno chips, Claude Science. In Other AI News. Meta cloud sales, trends on OpenRouter. Show Me the Money. OpenAI IPO might get postponed due to lack of demand. Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble. ExponentialView on current AI economy. Quiet Speculations. How Daniel Kokotajlo makes predictions about AI. Glorious AI Future. Masters of the universe must be worthy. Three Pills. AI, AGI, ASI. The Anthropic