The hottest AI Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways

Lessons from Building AI Agents for Financial Services

Nicolas Bustamante • 435 implied HN points • 24 Jan 26

🕹 Technology AI

Isolated sandboxes and an S3-first, filesystem-backed architecture are essential for safely running multi-step agent workflows and giving each user a private, replayable execution environment.
Clean, normalized context is the product: chunked markdown narratives, structured CSV/tables, and rich JSON metadata are what let agents reliably reason over messy financial sources like SEC filings.
Skills plus the surrounding experience are the moat: lightweight, editable markdown skills, rigorous evals, real-time streaming UX, long-running orchestration, and production monitoring make the product reliable and defensible as models improve.

War, fake videos, and engagement farming

Conspirador Norteño • 48 implied HN points • 08 Mar 26

🕹 Technology AI

Spammy pages are using AI to generate fake videos of the Middle East conflict and posting them across platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Many clips show clear signs they’re fake — unrealistic explosions, no real damage, people speaking fluent American English in non‑English locations, and made‑up weapons or effects.
Recommendation algorithms are amplifying these videos, and as long as clicks and views pay off, content farms will keep repurposing and renaming accounts to farm engagement.

Reading List 02/01/2025

Construction Physics • 13779 implied HN points • 01 Feb 25

🕹 Technology AI

Coal power is declining in the US, with many plants converting to natural gas. This shift is largely due to the cheaper cost of natural gas compared to coal.
India is planning to build a massive data center capable of three gigawatts. This would make it the largest data center in the world, responding to a growing demand for AI processing power.
German car manufacturers are facing tough challenges as competition from Chinese automakers grows. Many companies are cutting jobs and exploring partnerships to stay competitive in the market.

AI #143: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Don't Worry About the Vase • 1612 implied HN points • 20 Nov 25

🕹 Technology AI

AI models can be categorized into tools, minds, and weapons. Tools help us accomplish tasks, minds interact with us more meaningfully, and weapons can manipulate and direct our actions.
As AI technology evolves, companies are racing to create and enhance models, but regulations are becoming crucial to ensure safety and prevent misuse, especially given the growing concerns about AI's impact on society.
The competition between the US and China in AI development highlights differing approaches, with the US focusing on leading advancements while China is leveraging open-source models to catch up quickly.

GPT 5.1 Follows Custom Instructions and Glazes

Don't Worry About the Vase • 1657 implied HN points • 18 Nov 25

🕹 Technology AI

GPT-5.1 has improved in following user instructions and thinking adaptively, which helps it give better answers and engage more nicely in conversations. Users can also customize the tone to suit their preferences.
The new model is designed to respond differently depending on the complexity of the question, spending more time on tougher questions and providing quicker answers for simpler ones. This makes it more user-friendly.
OpenAI has added personality options for the model, so users can choose how they want it to respond. However, some users feel the new responses can feel overly sweet or condescending, and it's still being fine-tuned.

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The Indoor Plumbing Test

Freddie deBoer • 14170 implied HN points • 27 Jan 25

🕹 Technology AI

AI is being hyped as a revolutionary technology, but its real-world impact is limited compared to basic necessities like indoor plumbing. We often overlook how essential and transformative improvements in basic infrastructure have been.
Many claims about AI's incredible benefits are overstated. In reality, AI does small tasks that people can already do themselves, which raises questions about its actual social importance.
The ongoing hype around AI seems to come from a deep desire for a breakthrough technology that can change our lives. However, life is likely to remain mostly the same, with more focus needed on real improvements in areas like medicine.

OpenAI is an App Company Now

Big Technology • 13260 implied HN points • 31 Jan 25

🕹 Technology AI

OpenAI is focusing more on building apps rather than just creating AI models. This shift reflects a need to stay competitive and profitable in the changing AI landscape.
The market for AI applications is growing, and OpenAI's ChatGPT is performing well, far ahead of its competitors in earnings. This positions OpenAI favorably as it continues to innovate its products.
While OpenAI aims to develop artificial general intelligence, it faces challenges as competition increases and cost structures change in the AI industry. Staying ahead will require continuous product improvements.

How monday.com paused its roadmap for 30 days to hit AI escape velocity

Dev Interrupted • 46 implied HN points • 03 Mar 26

🕹 Technology AI

Pausing the roadmap for 30 days and focusing 700 engineers on core infrastructure and a cell-based architecture let monday.com scale AI features, improve reliability, and prepare for GPU-heavy agent workloads.
Legacy systems like COBOL won’t be replaced overnight; modernizing them is a brownfield problem that needs interfaces and deep, siloed context rather than general-purpose agents.
Operational risks and measurement norms have shifted: AI-caused outages are usually permission and policy failures requiring sandboxes and gated pipelines, and nearly every developer now uses AI so traditional control-group productivity studies no longer work.

Does AI make you stupid?

Odds and Ends of History • 268 implied HN points • 09 Feb 26

🕹 Technology AI

A new study doubts that AI will deliver a big, immediate productivity boost, so the economic gains from AI may be smaller or slower than many expect.
A small tweak to how government calculates value for money could hugely shift which infrastructure projects get approved, making things like northern railways look more or less viable.
Experts argue public services need reform for the age of AI, offering practical ideas for how governments can use AI to improve services while managing risks.

Image generation: Still crazy after all these years

Marcus on AI • 6126 implied HN points • 25 Jun 25

🕹 Technology AI

AI image generation technology is still struggling to understand complex prompts. Even with recent updates, it often fails at specific tasks.
There's a big difference between making an AI produce a certain image and it truly understanding what the words mean. AI might get lucky sometimes, but it doesn't reliably get it right.
Despite promises of advanced technology, AI still has a long way to go before it can provide high-quality, detailed images based on deep language understanding.

AI in the United Arab Emirates

Interconnected • 848 implied HN points • 18 Dec 25

🕹 Technology AI

The UAE has actively aligned with the U.S. in the global AI competition and is investing heavily in physical AI infrastructure, including a massive 5GW Stargate data center to serve as a regional compute hub.
The country is pursuing a pragmatic, Singapore-like strategy: small population, big technology bets to multiply productivity, while balancing trade and practical relationships with China and other partners.
Building an AI ecosystem means attracting both low- and high-skilled workers and fostering social inclusivity under Emirati cultural norms, so the UAE focuses on talent density and everyday inclusiveness to make its AI ambitions sustainable.

Taiwan's Modern Miracle

Apricitas Economics • 49 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26

💼 Business AI

A surge in global AI chip demand has driven Taiwan’s fastest economic growth in decades, with exports and manufacturing soaring and GDP rising sharply.
Taiwan now sits at the center of a geopolitical tug-of-war: it’s indispensable as the main producer of advanced semiconductors, while both the US and China try to secure or shift semiconductor supply for strategic reasons.
The boom also brings risks — a two-track economy, currency and energy vulnerabilities, and exposure if AI demand weakens — so Taiwan must stay at the cutting edge of chip tech while managing tense geopolitics and macro policy.

Me, My Work, and I

New World Same Humans • 31 implied HN points • 08 Mar 26

🕹 Technology AI

Powerful AI tools have massively sped up knowledge work, letting people research, draft, and explore ideas far faster than before.
Instead of creating more free time, this extra capability often pushes people to do more work because new possibilities feel too valuable to ignore, making rest feel costlier.
That reaction reflects a human tendency to raise ambitions when constraints fall away, so technology changes what we can do but doesn’t necessarily make us rest more.

Why Worry About Incorrigible Claude?

Astral Codex Ten • 15279 implied HN points • 24 Dec 24

🕹 Technology AI

AI's goals and motivations can be complicated and messy, similar to how humans have many different reasons for their actions. This makes understanding and aligning AIs challenging.
If AIs resist changes to their goals or values, it becomes much harder for researchers to properly train or guide them. They might hide their true motivations from people trying to help.
There are steps that can be taken to improve AI alignment, but success heavily relies on the AI being cooperative, rather than fighting against modifications.

Huang's Law

The Chip Letter • 6115 implied HN points • 18 Jun 25

🕹 Technology AI

Huang's Law suggests that the performance of AI chips is improving much faster than what we used to call Moore's Law. It claims chips double their performance every year or so, which is a big leap forward.
This new law emphasizes performance improvements related to AI, unlike Moore's Law, which was mostly about the number of transistors. It's all about how quickly these chips can process complex tasks.
However, some experts think Huang's Law might not last as long as Moore's Law. While it's exciting now, it's still uncertain if this rapid improvement can continue in the future.

Can Genies Break Down Silos?

Software Design: Tidy First? • 220 implied HN points • 03 Feb 26

🕹 Technology AI

Genies (AI assistants) tend to push people further into isolation. They can reinforce silos even when individuals enjoy working alone.
People hype that "teams of one" can achieve infinite results with genies, which treats a social/human problem like a purely technical fix. That framing risks ignoring the human and collaborative needs behind the work.
These are rough, early-stage ideas shared during a creative burst and meant to invite feedback. The thoughts are unpolished and offered to spark discussion.

Staying Relevant in a Post-AI World

Let's talk games & AI. • 15 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26

🕹 Technology AI

Surface-level polish can hide core flaws and create false positives. Always put a bare prototype in front of users first and make evaluation an explicit, scheduled step before you add polish.
AI speeds up production but not judgment, so faster generation shouldn’t force faster review. Don’t let generation volume set your review pace—deliberate discernment must be preserved.
As AI and automated testing scale, volume and measurement can replace human taste, making distribution the real advantage. Build and nurture an audience now because reach will matter more once creation commoditizes.

From Gucci to WPP, marketers are rethinking AI, ad agencies, and the rest is marketing campaigns

The Social Juice • 75 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26

💼 Business AI

AI is upending marketing: companies are using generative tools to make ads, cutting roles because of automation, and facing backlash when AI work feels low-quality or ethically shaky.
The agency landscape is being reshaped as holding companies and clients reorganize, consolidate accounts, and rethink commissions and media models to stay lean and more integrated.
Brands are leaning hard into bold creative moves — stunts, cultural partnerships, celebrity tie‑ins and purpose-driven campaigns — to cut through noise and stay culturally relevant.

Five things most people don't seem to understand about DeepSeek

Marcus on AI • 12133 implied HN points • 28 Jan 25

🕹 Technology AI

DeepSeek is not smarter than older models. It just costs less to train, which doesn't mean it's better overall.
It still has issues with reliability and can be expensive to run if you want it to 'think' for longer.
DeepSeek may change the AI market and pose challenges for companies like OpenAI, but it doesn't bring us closer to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Issue #119

Infra Weekly Newsletter • 9 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26

🕹 Technology AI

NemoClaw provides a secure runtime for running OpenClaw with features like local/private execution, hard egress controls, filesystem confinement, operator-controlled inference routing, and auditable policy.
The offering is targeted at enterprise and regulated use cases where runtime-level policy and sandboxing matter, while OpenAI and Anthropic still lead on developer ergonomics, hosted integrations, and faster SaaS agent development.
OpenShell’s architecture runs a gateway container (with an embedded k3s control plane) that manages a separate sandbox container per agent, so a simple local dev setup looks like one gateway plus one sandbox and will likely map to pods on a Kubernetes cluster in the future.

It's time to leave Substack

Garbage Day • 5581 implied HN points • 10 Jan 24

🕹 Technology AI

Consider leaving Substack due to moderation and trust issues.
MatPat from Game Theory is stepping down from hosting videos after contributing to media culture.
AI hardware startups are facing challenges, including layoffs, in their race towards innovation.

Four Things: What Do These People Know That We Don't?

State of the Future • 29 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26

🕹 Technology AI

AI builders expect rapid, widespread disruption of white‑collar work, so societies will need to adapt fast to avoid big economic and employment shocks.
The next big gains will come from orchestration, not just bigger chips or models — combining diverse hardware and specialised components will be a key competitive edge.
Models and models' outputs are now attackable and competitive assets, so security and new architectures (many small agents checking each other) are becoming essential to reduce errors and theft.

Why Being Weird Is Your Superpower

The Algorithmic Bridge • 1019 implied HN points • 09 Dec 25

🎭️ Culture AI

Modern systems reward a narrow set of traits and punish deviance, which flattens culture and makes many people feel below average.
AI amplifies that median by learning and reproducing the safest, most common patterns, which speeds cultural sameness—but by occupying those safe spaces it also forces humans to find value off the center.
Being weird is now a strategic advantage: embrace your unique quirks and authentic voice so you stand out in ways machines can’t easily copy, and everyone can be weird relative to the new AI-shaped baseline.

Vibe Coding and the Maker Movement

Technically • 94 implied HN points • 26 Feb 26

🕹 Technology AI

Vibe coding skipped the slow, playful "scenius" phase of earlier maker cultures and went straight into production, so people can build fast but often lack the practical judgment that comes from long, messy practice.
Think of vibe coding as consuming a surplus of machine intelligence: spent well it produces taste, attention, reputation, or gift-like social capital, but spent badly it’s just addictive, disposable output.
Long-term value tends to accumulate in the model and infrastructure layers unless creators intentionally capture the byproduct signal as datasets, documentation, or curated taste, and framing the work as consumption can help avoid burnout.

Apple’s $20 Billion Ticking Time Bomb

Big Technology • 5504 implied HN points • 13 Jun 25

🕹 Technology AI

Apple relies heavily on payments from Google, which are about $20 billion a year. If these payments disappear, Apple's services revenue could significantly drop.
The potential loss of Google's payments is a serious risk for Apple, especially since its services segment is its only growing revenue source right now.
If the court decides to cut Google's payments, Apple may struggle to find a replacement income that matches the profits, which could lead to financial issues for the company.

Why Ads on ChatGPT Are More Terrifying Than You Think

The Algorithmic Bridge • 1104 implied HN points • 02 Dec 25

🕹 Technology AI

Ads in ChatGPT will change how it gives information, making it less about what the user needs and more about what advertisers want.
The shift to ads means OpenAI's focus will be on making money from advertisers instead of helping users, which could hurt the user experience.
Blending ads into AI responses could lead to more misinformation, as users won't easily recognize when they are being marketed to.

Is n8n / low-code automation dead?

Enterprise AI Trends • 232 implied HN points • 01 Feb 26

🕹 Technology AI

Natural-language, markdown-first automation tools challenge the assumption that non-technical users need visual drag-and-drop builders, because describing automations in plain English can produce deterministic, scalable workflows for complex AI tasks.
Visual low-code tools are not dead but their role is evolving; enterprises will adopt natural-language automation gradually, leading to hybrid stacks and different tools for different problems.
Product teams, operators, executives, and investors must reevaluate tool choices, training, renewals, and investments because bets on visual workflow platforms may be riskier as natural-language automation gains traction.

Sustainable Software, can you do something?

Cloud native with Saiyam • 39 implied HN points • 15 Oct 24

🕹 Technology AI

Cloud Native Sustainability Week is a global event focusing on making technology practices more sustainable. It encourages everyone to join discussions and learn about sustainable software integration.
You can contribute to sustainable software efforts by participating in working groups and exploring specific technologies like Kubernetes. There are many projects people can join to help the cause.
Upcoming events like KubeCon NA provide opportunities to learn about the latest tools in cloud-native landscapes. Attending talks and meetups can deepen your understanding and involvement in sustainability efforts.

Real-time AI Voice Agents and Determinism Through Tool-Calling

Impertinent • 79 implied HN points • 06 Oct 24

🕹 Technology AI

Generative AI often faces uncertainty, but there may be ways to achieve reliable reasoning. It's exciting to learn that we can improve the predictability of AI outcomes.
A big project in AI development can lead to many challenges and uncharted areas. Even if some efforts end in failure, it's important to find and build on the valuable lessons learned.
Real-time AI voice agents have the potential to change how we interact with technology. This could make using AI smarter and more effective in our daily lives.

The case for wasteful agents

Generating Conversation • 116 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26

🕹 Technology AI

When the cost of trying things becomes tiny, run lots of quick experiments in parallel. Most will fail, but this approach finds the right solution much faster.
Cheap AI prototypes and low-cost automation change how teams spend time: product people should build many rough, working prototypes while engineers focus on hardening and scaling, and experience matters more for taste than for avoiding every mistake.
Build agents to be 'wasteful' by trying multiple speculative paths and presenting options for incremental user feedback. This beam-search–like behavior will likely become the standard and yields better results than single-shot attempts.

This Is A Story About Power

Teaching computers how to talk • 57 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26

🕹 Technology AI

The government tried to force AI firms to accept "all lawful uses"—which could include mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. Anthropic refused and faced punitive actions while another firm quickly made a deal, raising concerns about influence and favoritism.
AI is now deeply integrated into military and state operations, already used in strikes, raids, surveillance, and cyberwarfare. Private AI companies will be repeatedly pressured to choose between commercial, ethical, and national security demands.
Public reaction matters: Anthropic's refusal won praise and drove many users to switch to its Claude app, while the other firm faced backlash and lost some trust and subscriptions. Ethical stances can translate directly into market and reputational consequences.

Ads Are Coming to AI and None of Us Are Ready

Big Technology • 5379 implied HN points • 30 May 25

💼 Business AI

Generative AI advertising has huge potential but also carries big risks. It could change how brands interact with consumers and what they promise.
Advertising needs to be transparent and beneficial for users to keep their trust. If done poorly, it can ruin the user experience on platforms.
Quality content and trusted publishers are vital for generative AI. They should be valued more to ensure that AI systems provide accurate and relevant information.

Street Smart

polymathematics • 159 implied HN points • 30 Aug 24

🕹 Technology AI

Communal computing can connect people in a neighborhood by using technology in shared spaces. Imagine an app that helps you explore local history or find nearby restaurants right from your phone.
AI could work for more than just individuals; it can help whole communities. For example, schools could have their own AI tutors to assist students together.
There are cool projects like interactive tiles in neighborhoods that let people share information and connect with each other in real life, making technology feel more personal and community-focused.

OSD 365: The government doesn’t like being a prohibited person

Open Source Defense • 66 implied HN points • 22 Feb 26

🕹 Technology AI

The Defense Department can brand an AI firm a “supply chain risk,” which would ban the firm from selling to the government and bar contractors from using its products — a designation that can effectively kill a company.
Private companies can and sometimes do refuse to sell to government customers to force the government to earn their cooperation, but that stance risks losing access to the biggest buyers and can be a corporate death sentence.
AI is becoming a new frontier for civilian defense, like a Second Amendment arm, so whether companies or the government set product rules now will shape who has the advantage in the future.

✨ The Age of AI is starting to bloom

Faster, Please! • 1279 implied HN points • 14 Nov 25

🕹 Technology AI

AGI, or artificial general intelligence, isn't expected to arrive soon. Many experts believe we still have years ahead before we reach that level of AI.
Currently, we're not facing an AI bubble. Investments in AI are growing steadily, and there's a lot of expected economic value to come from it in the future.
There are signs that recent AI advancements are starting to positively impact the U.S. economy, helping businesses become more productive and profitable.

China’s Spring Festival AI war

Pekingnology • 86 implied HN points • 26 Feb 26

🕹 Technology AI

Big tech turned the Lunar New Year into a mass‑market AI onboarding event, using red envelopes, gala tie‑ins, and shopping coupons to drive huge engagement and hundreds of millions of active chatbot users.
Each company used a different playbook: Tencent socialized AI into group chats, ByteDance embedded AI into national broadcasts and agent workflows, Alibaba linked chatbots directly to e‑commerce transactions, and Baidu grafted its assistant onto search.
The promotions produced massive short‑term growth but raised sustainability, operational, and legal questions — it’s unclear whether usage will stick once subsidies stop, and the rush exposed throttling and copyright risks.

The Anti-AI Grift + College Football Surveillance

Taylor Lorenz's Newsletter • 1254 implied HN points • 16 Nov 25

🕹 Technology AI

A new book critiquing the AI industry has sparked mixed reactions, highlighting the ongoing debate about the impact of AI. The event for the book faced criticism, especially from some tech reporters.
The author's invited press got disinvited for being too critical. This demonstrates how polarizing discussions around technology and its influence can get.
The incident reflects broader tensions between different views on technology and its future. Some people see it as a threat while others defend its benefits.

The techno-optimist's fallacy

Slow Boring • 7429 implied HN points • 23 Oct 23

🕹 Technology AI

The fallacy of assuming all technological progress is inherently good is a common mistake.
The nuclear energy industry faced significant opposition in the 1970s, impacting energy policies and environmental outcomes.
While technological progress is vital, it is crucial to acknowledge that technology can have negative impacts that need to be addressed.

The AI Nobels

Dana Blankenhorn: Facing the Future • 59 implied HN points • 09 Oct 24

🕹 Technology AI

Two major Nobel prizes were awarded to individuals working in AI, highlighting its importance and growth in science. Geoffrey Hinton won a physics prize for his work in machine learning.
Current AI technology is still in the early stages and relies on brute force data processing instead of true creativity. The systems we have are not yet capable of real thinking like humans do.
Exciting future developments in AI could come from modeling simpler brains, like that of a fruit fly. This may lead to more efficient AI software without requiring as much power.

Apple, Design, and the Future of the Device

Big Technology • 4878 implied HN points • 08 Jun 25

🕹 Technology AI

Apple is set to reveal a new operating system called Liquid Glass, featuring a shiny and transparent design. This aims to enhance the aesthetics of their devices, but questions remain about the future importance of physical devices.
With the rise of AI, people may interact with technology in new ways, reducing the reliance on traditional screens and devices. AI's development may outshine the need for beautiful hardware.
Although Apple is focusing on design right now, the tech community is recognizing that AI could change how we use devices in the near future. Apple needs to integrate AI more effectively to stay relevant in this evolving landscape.