2025 letter | Zhengdong

kept by eddie dec 31, 25

Zhengdong Wang argues that compute scaling—underpinned by Moore's Law and empirical trends—has driven AI progress more reliably than human innovation, despite repeated underestimation.

Move 37 Is the Moment AI Changes Everything. It’s Suddenly Happening Everywhere. - WSJ
A decade after AlphaGo's surprising Move 37 stunned Go master Lee Sedol, the article argues that such unconventional AI breakthroughs are now happening everywhere.
also on AlphaGo, DeepMind
Thinking through how pretraining vs RL learn
Reinforcement learning provides far fewer bits per FLOP than pretraining until models achieve high pass rates, limiting RLVR's ability to learn new capabilities.
also on AlphaGo, #scaling-laws, #machine-learning
Anthropic says Claude may want to see your ID
Anthropic may require some Claude users to upload government ID to appeal flagged accounts, citing fraud prevention amid tensions with the Trump administration.
also on Peter Thiel
Why Peter Thiel Is Decamping to the End of the World
Peter Thiel is moving to Argentina due to concerns about the U.S. future and alignment with President Javier Milei's right-wing policies.
also on Peter Thiel
Reflections on 2025 - Samuel Albanie
AI progress follows compute scaling, making evaluation increasingly difficult but promising radical improvements in infrastructure and economic decision-making.
also on DeepMind, #scaling-laws