The hottest AI Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics

($) 2025: Year of (Software) Picks and Shovels

Interconnected • 92 implied HN points • 22 Dec 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. In 2025, software tools like API platforms, databases, and GPU clouds will be key for AI applications. They are becoming just as important as hardware for building AI solutions.
  2. The focus on AI is shifting from just hardware to include software infrastructure that supports the creation of smarter, more useful AI agents.
  3. Investors should pay attention to emerging software tools and platforms as they will drive the next wave of innovation in AI. Recognizing which ones will succeed is crucial.

Science Fictions links for January 2024

Science Fictions • 248 implied HN points • 28 Jan 24
🔬 Science AI
  1. Bad science continues to be published despite scandals and fraud being uncovered.
  2. AI tools hold promise for scientific research but there are challenges in implementation and potential overclaiming.
  3. Evidence of unethical practices like journal bribery and scientific fraud highlight ongoing issues in the scientific community.

How I use Gen AI as a Data Engineer

The Orchestra Data Leadership Newsletter • 19 implied HN points • 05 Apr 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Generative AI can help Data Engineers summarize vast quantities of structured and unstructured data, expanding the breadth and depth of data available.
  2. Feature engineering using Generative AI involves ingesting unstructured data like call notes, making API calls, and transforming the data for analysis in existing pipelines.
  3. Utilizing Generative AI for webscraping can help teams extract information efficiently from the internet, enabling monitoring of new data sources and optimizing business processes.

Edge 441: SSMs Beyond Language

TheSequence • 119 implied HN points • 22 Oct 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. SSMs can be used in areas beyond just language, like audio processing. This makes them very useful for handling complex and irregular data.
  2. Meta AI is researching how SSMs can improve speech recognition, showing their potential in understanding spoken language better.
  3. The Llama-Factory framework helps in pretraining large language models, making them more efficient and powerful.

Dimension Hopper Part 1

General Robots • 395 HN points • 12 Jun 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. The project involves creating a 2D platformer where players design levels and AI generates visual representations.
  2. The journey to achieve this project involved experimenting with different techniques and models, such as adjusting depth images and adding more detail to improve visual outcomes.
  3. Using the right control images, supporting structures, and techniques like adding adjustable roughness, greatly improved the quality of the generated images.
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Uber is getting back into the self-driving game

Alex's Personal Blog • 32 implied HN points • 17 Jul 25
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Uber is re-entering the self-driving market by partnering with Lucid and Nuro to launch a new robotaxi service. They plan to invest heavily and deploy thousands of vehicles in major US cities.
  2. AI investment is on the rise in Europe, with funding for AI-native startups increasing significantly, indicating growing interest and development in the field.
  3. There's a proposal to allow regular people to invest in private equity through their 401ks, which could open up new investment opportunities, but comes with risks due to the complexity of private investments.

Evals are all we need

Dubverse Black • 58 implied HN points • 26 Oct 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Evaluations are crucial for advancing voice cloning technology
  2. Open-source community is making strides in developing Large Language Models
  3. Mean Opinion Score (MOS) and proposed evals like Speaker Similarity and Intelligibility are important for evaluating voice cloning technology

Every Tech Leader Needs a Coach in Their Pocket

The Hagakure • 30 implied HN points • 18 Jul 25
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Tech leaders can benefit from having an AI-powered coach to help them stay focused and adaptable. This kind of coach can meet you where you are and guide you in reaching your goals.
  2. Mental and physical health play a big role in how effectively leaders can manage challenges. Being in shape can enhance focus and decision-making.
  3. SwitchUp is designed to help people clarify their goals and make progress without feeling overwhelmed. The aim is to support personal growth in a human-centered way.

Weekly Dose of Optimism #125

Not Boring by Packy McCormick • 92 implied HN points • 20 Dec 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Commonwealth Fusion is making big strides toward clean energy with plans for the world's first commercial fusion power plant in Virginia, which could be operational by the early 2030s.
  2. Off-grid solar microgrids could greatly help power AI data centers quickly and affordably, making use of solar energy, especially in sunny regions like the U.S. Southwest.
  3. A new method called HORNET combines atomic force microscopy and AI to map RNA structures. This could improve our understanding of RNA and lead to better treatments for diseases.

Illustration without illustrators

On Looking • 199 implied HN points • 24 Jun 22
🎨 Art & Illustration AI
  1. Consider changing clients if you fear being replaced by AI, instead of worrying about AI overtaking your profession.
  2. Illustration involves more than just translating text into images; it's about creating a unique relation and dynamic between the two.
  3. AI and art are not natural forces in conflict but human creations that require understanding and responsibility. AI's ability to replicate styles does not diminish the importance of individuality and style in art.

Mechanical Turk is aptly named

The Counterfactual • 79 implied HN points • 16 Jun 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. The Mechanical Turk was a famous hoax in the 18th century that impressed many by pretending to be an intelligent chess-playing machine, but it actually relied on a hidden human operator.
  2. Today, Amazon Mechanical Turk allows people to complete simple tasks that machines struggle with. It's a platform where those who need work can connect with people willing to do it for a small fee.
  3. Recent studies reveal that many tasks on MTurk may not be done by humans at all; a significant portion are actually completed using AI tools, raising questions about the reliability of data collected from such platforms.

FaaF: Facts As A Function For Evaluating RAG

Cobus Greyling on LLMs, NLU, NLP, chatbots & voicebots • 19 implied HN points • 04 Apr 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. RAG systems often struggle to verify facts in generated text. This is because they don't focus enough on assessing the truthfulness of low-quality outputs.
  2. Verifying facts one by one takes a lot of time and resources. It's challenging to check multiple facts in a single generated response efficiently.
  3. The FaaF framework improves fact verification greatly. It simplifies the process, makes it more accurate, and cuts down the time needed for checking facts.

I'm back, 2025 is THE year.

Abe • 78 implied HN points • 28 Jan 25
🕹 Technology AI
  1. AI technology is advancing quickly and is making tasks easier and faster. Many people are starting to see big benefits from using AI tools in their work.
  2. The focus is shifting from just building products to understanding customer needs first, especially when using AI. It's important to sell the idea before jumping into development.
  3. There is a strong interest in using AI in practical ways to create new business solutions, rather than competing in the complex technical infrastructure of AI. Many are looking for innovative ways to apply AI to solve real-world problems.

Rise of the Artificial Influencer

John Mayo-Smith's Substack • 79 implied HN points • 17 Jan 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Advertising, SEO, and Artificial Influence are all methods to grab attention for products or services.
  2. AIs are starting to exhibit brand preferences, like humans do, affecting the way they provide recommendations and influence choices.
  3. Influencing AIs involves understanding their training data and providing reliable, consistent, and trustworthy information to align with their preferences.

Are we in a newsletter bubble?

Cosmos • 19 implied HN points • 03 Apr 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Many creators are starting newsletters to have a direct line of communication with their audiences and fans, especially with the risks of relying solely on social media platforms for business.
  2. YouTube is introducing a 'Members Only' feature for Shorts, allowing creators to monetize by offering exclusive content to paying fans.
  3. Platforms like X are becoming more open to NSFW content, creating opportunities for adult content creators to thrive in these communities.

o3 is important, but not because of benchmarks

Artificial Ignorance • 92 implied HN points • 23 Dec 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. OpenAI's new model, o3, shows impressive benchmark performance, particularly in tasks that are tough for AI, but it's more about how AI is evolving rather than just hitting high scores.
  2. The way AI systems process information is changing. Instead of needing huge amounts of data and time upfront, they can now improve their performance during use, making development faster and cheaper.
  3. Even though o3 is advanced, it doesn't mean we've reached artificial general intelligence (AGI). It's a step in that direction, but more improvements and different benchmarks are needed to really understand AI's potential.

Interactive Maps and Plots With GPT-4 & Plotly Dash: A Story about UN Population Projections

Data at Depth • 39 implied HN points • 31 Dec 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Interactive maps and plots can now be created using GPT-4 and Plotly Dash, enhancing data visualization capabilities in Python.
  2. GPT-4's capacity to generate interactive Python Plotly dashboards has significantly improved in recent months, showcasing advancements in AI technology.
  3. Computer science professors have utilized GPT-4 to explore its Python data visualization code creation abilities, pushing the boundaries of AI in this field.

The Sequence Chat: The End of Data. Or Maybe Not

TheSequence • 105 implied HN points • 20 Nov 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. There's a big debate about whether we're running out of data for AI. Some people believe that as AI keeps growing, we might hit a point where there's just not enough new data to use.
  2. Many AI models have already used a lot of data from the internet. This raises concerns that without fresh and vast data sources, these models might not improve much anymore.
  3. To tackle the data issue, some suggest focusing on getting better quality data or even creating new, artificial datasets. This could help keep AI development moving forward.

A note on Unreported Truths and AI-written stories

Unreported Truths • 40 implied HN points • 12 Jun 25
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Some writers use AI to create many posts quickly, which can spam your inbox. This is seen as a bad shift in how content is created.
  2. Real engagement comes from genuine writing. The writer promises to share meaningful content without relying on AI or spammy tactics.
  3. The writer values the community built around their work and encourages everyone to support it by subscribing, ensuring quality over quantity.

There's more to LLMs than chat

Generating Conversation • 233 implied HN points • 15 Feb 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Chat interfaces have limitations, and using LLMs in more diverse ways beyond chat is essential for product innovation.
  2. Chat-based interactions lack the expression of uncertainty, unlike other search-based approaches, which impacts user trust in the information provided by LLMs.
  3. LLMs can be utilized to proactively surface information relevant to users, showing that chat isn't always the most effective approach for certain interactions.

Why I want an AI File Explorer

Cosmos • 39 implied HN points • 31 Dec 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. AI File Explorer can use AI to analyze, tag, search, and organize files based on their contents, freeing users from manual tagging.
  2. Data stored on cloud services may pose privacy and accessibility challenges for using AI on personal files.
  3. Next-generation file explorers, like Cosmos, offer privacy-focused AI solutions, emphasizing user control over data and experimenting with Small Language Models.

Must Learn AI Security Compendium 12: Red Teaming Strategies for Safeguarding Large Language Models and Their Applications

Rod’s Blog • 59 implied HN points • 17 Oct 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Red teaming is crucial for identifying vulnerabilities and strengthening the defenses of AI systems like large language models.
  2. Large language models, while powerful, are not immune to vulnerabilities such as manipulation by malicious actors or amplification of biases.
  3. Effective red teaming involves systematic approaches like threat modeling and penetration testing, and collaboration between red and blue teams is key for a comprehensive defense strategy in AI security.

Must Learn AI Security Compendium 11: Threat Modeling AI/ML Systems

Rod’s Blog • 59 implied HN points • 16 Oct 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Threat modeling is crucial for identifying and mitigating security threats in AI/ML systems by adopting the perspective of an attacker and uncovering vulnerabilities.
  2. Key considerations in threat modeling for AI/ML systems include data poisoning, adversarial perturbation, model extraction, and membership inference attacks.
  3. To protect AI/ML systems, organizations should implement mitigation strategies like robust data validation, adversarial training, access controls, and privacy-preserving techniques.

AI for Activism

Activist Futurism • 79 implied HN points • 04 Feb 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. OpenAI's ChatGPT, an AI text generation tool, has become widely accessible and raised concerns about its potential misuse
  2. Despite OpenAI's restrictions, the technology's gullibility makes it difficult to prevent its influence on politics
  3. AI, like ChatGPT, is seen as a new tool for activism, potentially aiding in creating more effective social movements

Shift to the Client

Dana Blankenhorn: Facing the Future • 59 implied HN points • 07 Nov 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. The shift in technology market from servers to clients is impacting PC sales and new machine development.
  2. AI advancements are driving the change in the market towards client-focused devices.
  3. Expect new types of high-end and consumer-focused PC devices, with enhanced interfaces and connectivity, to become prevalent in the near future.

Superforecasting the premises in “Is power-seeking AI an existential risk?”

Joe Carlsmith's Substack • 58 implied HN points • 18 Oct 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Good Judgment solicited reviews and forecasts from superforecasters on the argument for AI risk.
  2. Superforecasters placed higher probabilities on some AI risk premises and lower on others compared to the original report.
  3. Author is skeptical of heavy updates based solely on superforecaster numbers and emphasizes the importance of object-level arguments.

Illustrating AI

On Looking • 79 implied HN points • 22 Mar 23
🎨 Art & Illustration AI
  1. Illustrators have the power to shape public opinion on AI by leveraging their expertise in visual storytelling.
  2. There are ongoing efforts, like lawsuits and digital tools, to protect artists' work in the face of AI-generated art and copyright infringement.
  3. The representation of AI in illustrations can be reimagined to reflect the real-world impact of AI technologies, moving away from the typical futuristic and idealistic portrayals.

Apple WWDC 2024 Expectations

Sector 6 | The Newsletter of AIM • 19 implied HN points • 01 Apr 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. WWDC 2024 will take place from June 10-14, and there's a lot of excitement surrounding it.
  2. People are curious about a new version of Siri and its improvements, hoping it will work better than before.
  3. Apple is expected to introduce new features in iOS 18 and enhance AI in various apps like Messages and Apple Music.

Evolution of LLM Agents

LLMs for Engineers • 79 implied HN points • 21 Jun 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming more powerful and can now perform complex tasks with the help of internet data and tools. This could significantly boost productivity for both individuals and corporations.
  2. The evolution of LLMs has progressed through several levels, starting from simple API calls to advanced agents that understand tasks better and can even interact without much human guidance.
  3. While these advancements are exciting, there are still challenges to overcome, such as reliability, cost, and the potential for errors in the output of LLMs.

20251231 A yearly review

Curious futures (KGhosh) • 4 implied HN points • 31 Dec 25
🕹 Technology AI
  1. AI is shifting from a tool into a thinking partner that changes how we create, work, and decide; we must keep human skills alive and build ethics, transparency, and rules so people stay in control.
  2. Environmental risk has moved from awareness to crisis — thawing carbon stores, water shortages, and strained infrastructure are happening now — so bold policy and practical tech choices (like geothermal and local resilience) are needed immediately.
  3. Trust and social cohesion are eroding as privacy risks, misinformation, economic insecurity, and political polarization spread, so rebuilding trust through transparency, fair access, and stronger community and cultural support is essential.

Databricks just dropped an LLM bomb – DBRX 💣

Sector 6 | The Newsletter of AIM • 19 implied HN points • 31 Mar 24
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Databricks has released a new powerful open-source language model called DBRX. It aims to outperform existing models in areas like reasoning, coding, and math.
  2. DBRX has shown better performance than other popular models, including Meta’s LLaMA and Google's Gemini Pro. This showcases Databricks' advancements in AI technology.
  3. The release is generating excitement in the AI community, highlighting the competitive landscape of language models and their capabilities.

Technology is Reshaping Human History

The Digital Anthropologist • 59 implied HN points • 13 Oct 23
🔬 Science AI
  1. Digital technologies are reshaping human history, impacting our future in significant ways. It's an exciting time to be alive.
  2. Advancements like AI and genetic engineering are revealing new insights into ancient civilizations, genetics, and human evolution.
  3. Technologies such as LIDAR, genetic analysis tools, and AI are helping discover ancient civilizations and rewrite textbooks in anthropology and archaeology.

What Year One of Building an AI Company Taught Me

The Incrementalist • 4 implied HN points • 01 Jan 26
💼 Business AI
  1. Speed and constant shipping don’t create clarity; clarity comes from restraint, simplifying the product, and tightening the loop so the product feels obvious not just impressive.
  2. You can’t outsource judgment — you earn it by sitting with ambiguity, watching what actually works in your specific context, and updating your beliefs based on results.
  3. The real product is judgment and reliable systems that handle messy, real work; build systems that remember, can be inspected and corrected, and manage exceptions over time.

The "Kill Chrome Olympics" Has Started

Alex's Personal Blog • 32 implied HN points • 10 Jul 25
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Competition in AI is heating up, with new models like Grok 4 emerging and pushing the boundaries of what's possible. This is exciting for anyone wanting better and cheaper AI tools.
  2. The costs for advanced AI subscriptions are rising, with new entries charging up to $300 a month. This might surprise people since we usually hear that AI is getting cheaper.
  3. There are new players in the browser market, making it a competitive landscape. Google, while a giant in the field, faces challenges as it balances innovation with protecting its current profits.

Farewell to the Safe Space

Technically Optimistic • 59 implied HN points • 13 Oct 23
🕹 Technology AI
  1. Utilizing AI for memory recall, like with Rewind AI, can be a beneficial tool for enhancing memory capabilities.
  2. There is a constant trade-off between personalization and privacy in the digital space, raising questions about the extent of data individuals are willing to share for customization.
  3. Emerging technologies such as surveillance devices and advanced software like Rewind AI prompt discussions on privacy expectations and the need for clear regulations to safeguard personal data.

Marvell Industry Analyst Day

Mule’s Musings • 256 implied HN points • 17 Dec 23
💼 Business AI
  1. Marvell's Industry Analyst Day focused on AI and highlighted strong revenue growth expectations for the company related to AI technologies.
  2. Marvell expects significant revenue from AI in 2024, with over two billion dollars projected, driven by AI demand and server attach rates.
  3. Marvell's strategy involves leveraging networking, custom silicon, and pluggable transceivers to position themselves as a key player in the AI semiconductor market.