Jonathan Eric Clark @JonathanErf2

Toxic multitasking (such as scrolling TikTok while watching TV) is the norm — but that doesn’t make it normal. You can opt out and take control of your attention span again. Here's how: wapo.st/4y8kFWz

Do we really need to worry about the lawlessness of robots? Unfortunately, we do, Jill Lepore writes. “Making sure robots don’t go rogue is not the task of robots,” she continues. “That task is ours. And this burden falls most heavily on the U.S. legal system, which has been the least able to bear it.” Lepore considers the slow pace of the law compared to A.I.’s rapid advancement, and how the future of regulation will need to include governments and voters—and especially legal scholars, judges, and legislators: newyorker.com/magazine/2026/…

It is important to be well-rested before work. Our management columnist has some tongue-in-cheek advice for getting some executive shut-eye economist.com/business/2026/…

Today we announced the Claude-led discovery of a molecular machine that we suspect could represent a new gene editing mechanism. Its precise function, biotechnological utility (if any), or level of significance is not yet clear, but at minimum it is work I would have been proud to do as a PhD student. The work was done mostly, though not entirely, by Claude: our life sciences team suggested a broad area of research, Claude read through the literature and a bunch of genome data and discovered something interesting, then Claude proposed experiments to verify the discovery and our team carried them out. It’s easy to dismiss this as a one-off or curiosity, but we’ve repeatedly seen a pattern where AI performance in new intellectual domains goes from weak to superhuman in a matter of a few years. In 2023 models struggled to do math at the level of an average high-school student. In 2024 they started to do well on math competitions for the best high-schoolers in the country, in 2025 they started to solve minor open problems, in early 2026 more significant open problems, and in late 2026 they are beginning to solve the top few open problems in all of mathematics. We believe AI for biology is on a similar exponential trend. The main difference between biology and mathematics, of course, is that math can be done purely theoretically, while biology requires experimentation. Some have used this to draw the conclusion that AI’s utility in biology will be limited. We think this is wrong. As we’ve demonstrated today, humans can collaborate with AI to perform the experiments, validate key results in a few weeks and, if necessary, work with the AI to iterate on what they find. Eventually it may even be possible for Claude itself to safely perform the experiments by autonomously controlling lab equipment, with appropriate safeguards in place, but we aren’t doing that today (our lab is also a BSL1/BSL2 facility that doesn't handle materials dangerous to humans). More broadly, biomedical advancement has many stages — from fundamental biology discoveries, to translational research, to drug discovery, clinical trials, and finally the actual delivery of medicines and health care to patients. We are also interested in these later stages, but even simply accelerating the first stage of fundamental biological discoveries has the potential to speed up and broaden the entire pipeline. Improving our understanding of biology and sharpening biologists’ tools can drive forward all of the later stages, for example by identifying new drug targets, finding new therapeutic modalities, allowing for more precise measurement, and speeding up the experimental loop which itself further accelerates our understanding of biology. This will not in itself speed up clinical trial times, but if it succeeds it could greatly increase the number of promising candidates that go into the pipeline — an increase in throughput even though latency remains. In Machines of Loving Grace, I wrote about AI’s potential to “cure most diseases in 5-10 years” — a goal that sounds impossible, but one I believe is just barely possible if AI is applied to every stage of the pipeline. The first step is showing that AI can first help with, and then drive, biological discoveries. Claude’s discovery is the latest in a line of related prior work that goes back decades, beginning with systems like CRISPR, and continuing with discoveries like the bridge recombinase and VIPR in the past few years. Recently, there has been heightened interest in systems based on reverse transcriptase (RT) enzymes, the enzyme underlying the system Claude identified. And most recently, a Stanford team working independently described a novel RT system with an associated non-coding array that is in some ways similar to the one Claude found, though they are distinct systems that evolved independently from each other. I believe that we’re at the very beginning of finding such systems and developing them into powerful tools for biotechnology. I’m proud of the resources Anthropic has invested in accelerating the public benefits of AI through the life sciences, and we’re aiming both to grow our life sciences team and to work with other scientists to extend this approach to a broad range of problems. If you have a proposal for a research collaboration or are interested in joining our life sciences team, please reach out.

Anthropic @AnthropicAI

4 hours ago

Claude has discovered a previously unknown enzyme system hidden in the DNA of bacteriophages. Beside the enzyme’s gene sits a long array of repeating DNA—a structure that looks somewhat similar to CRISPR. We don’t yet understand what this system does, but only a handful of known

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AI is creating its own proto-societies. A report in late August from AI safety organizations METR and Redwood Research details how hundreds of agents autonomously established social hierarchy, division of labor, and distinct communication norms within a matter of days. But what does that mean for humans? Reporter Tharin Pillay parses through why we need to be concerned, and why it wont be enough to try and pull the existing AI in line for AI, Explained by Humans. Read the full story here:time-magazine.visitlink.me/BZXcH5

A new in-house AI tool lets WSJ reporters analyze trends in online conversation to help understand the political mood of the country ahead of the midterm elections.

Your benefits aren’t going to claim themselves! Visit choose.va.gov today 🇺🇸

Fake breakups, secondary accounts: An army of social-media users has found a lucrative side hustle in creating stealth ads. on.wsj.com/4yVoLRW

"Instead of waiting for another warning shot, governments need to act now to prohibit superintelligence," writes Andrea Miotti. time-magazine.visitlink.me/jsjH7R

The FBI is aware of a cyber-criminal enterprise group claiming a compromise of the FBIJobs.gov portal and alleged impact to FBI employee personally identifiable information (PII). While the point of breach is still undetermined—whether a third-party or the FBI’s enterprise—we are actively and aggressively investigating this matter and working closely with those third-party providers that support FBIJobs.gov to mitigate any and all risk.

What is important is not so much how long you live as whether you live a meaningful life. This doesn’t mean accumulating money and fame, but being of service to your fellow human beings. It means helping others if you can, but even if you can’t do that, at least not harming them.

Cybercriminal group claims to steal thousands of FBI employee records dlvr.it/TVbqcp

Yuen Lee, a former manager at KPMG, says she was fired after a video spread of her standing up to a man in the gym who was harassing her for wearing the keffiyeh.

Romanian crime rings have exploited antiquated magnetic stripes on benefits cards to steal hundreds of millions of public dollars. on.wsj.com/4yQZ30L

BREAKING: Heads of major AI firms warn the UN that without intervention, "AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole". apnews.com/article/ai-art…

Thank you for helping us raise awareness for sickle cell disease. ❤️

Elle Cole (She/her) @Cleverlychangin

6 hours ago

This September, I’m helping @StJude raise awareness for sickle cell disease, which is an inherited blood disorder that affects red blood cells and impacts approximately 100,000 people in the U.S. The “Kiss Sickle Cell Goodbye” campaign is more than a beauty moment.

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- possible, but highly unlikely. I stand corrected?

Jonathan Eric Clark @JonathanErf2

2 hours ago

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- before agreeing on a "stalemate" -

Jonathan Eric Clark @JonathanErf2

2 hours ago

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