Letters
The Impact of U.S. Tariffs on AI: Broad tariffs will create challenges for AI and beyond, but I see a few silver linings. Here’s what’s in store.
I am so sorry that the U.S. is letting down our friends and allies.
Latest
The Batch Newsletter
Inside the Mind of Claude, Llama 4’s Mixture of Vision-Language Experts, More Open Multimodal Models, Neural Net for Tabular Data
The Batch AI News and Insights: I am so sorry that the U.S. is letting down our friends and allies.
Machine Learning Research
Better Than Trees for Tabular Data: Transformers can outperform decision trees at predicting unlabeled spreadsheet cells
If you have a collection of variables that represent, say, a cancer patient and you want to classify the patient’s illness as likely cancer or not, algorithms based on decision trees, such as gradient-boosted trees, typically perform better than neural networks.
Machine Learning Research
Better Multimodal Performance With Open Weights: Qwen2.5-Omni 7B raises the bar for small multimodal models
Alibaba’s latest open-weights system raises the bar for multimodal tasks in a relatively small model.
Machine Learning Research
Llama’s Mixture of Vision-Language Experts: Meta releases Llama 4 models, claims edge over AI competitors
Meta updated its popular open-weights models, claiming performance superior to closed competitors in three size classes.
Machine Learning Research
Ordinary LLMs Implicitly Take Reasoning Steps: Anthropic experiment finds Claude shows signs of unprompted reasoning
Even without explicit training in reasoning, large language models “think” in ways that may be more deliberate than previously understood.
Data Points
Meta’s got a brand new herd: Gemini 2.5 Pro gets a price tag
Microsoft personalizes its multitasking Copilot. Midjourney overhauls its leading image model. An early vibe coding entrant reenters a crowded field. A cybersecurity-optimized version of Gemini.
Data Points
OpenAI promises a more open model: Runway seeks to stabilize scenes in AI video
Amazon gets into browser use with Nova Act. Claude goes back to school with program for higher ed. Google becomes a harder place for AI researchers to publish. Evaluating models’ ability to replicate cutting-edge AI research.
Letters
The Benefits of Lazy Prompting: You don’t always need to provide context when prompting a large language model. A quick prompt can be enough.
Contrary to standard prompting advice that you should give LLMs the context they need to succeed, I find it’s sometimes faster to be lazy and dash off a quick, imprecise prompt and see what happens.
The Batch Newsletter
Open Voice-to-Voice With Vision, ChatGPT Creates Emotional Bonds, Human Action in 3D, Web Scrapers Caught in Maze
The Batch AI News and Insights: Contrary to standard prompting advice that you should give LLMs the context they need to succeed, I find it’s sometimes faster to be lazy and dash off a quick, imprecise prompt and see what happens.
Machine Learning Research
Human Action in 3D: Stanford researchers use generated video to animate 3D interactions without motion capture
AI systems designed to generate animated 3D scenes that include active human characters have been limited by a shortage of training data, such as matched 3D scenes and human motion-capture examples. Generated video clips can get the job done without motion capture.
Tech & Society
Chatbot Use Creates Emotional Bonds: ChatGPT may ease loneliness but increase dependence, studies suggest
A pair of papers investigate how increasingly human-like chatbots affect users’ emotions.