Tim Duffy
@timfduffy.com
I like utilitarianism, consciousness, AI, EA, space, kindness, liberalism, longtermism, progressive rock, economics, and most people. Substack: http://timfduffy.substack.com
The 98-99% human/chimpanzee DNA similarity figure usually cited omits insertions/deletions, which add another ~3% to the effective difference. It probably matters how you measure though, like how to count copy # variations or rearrangements. www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
November 30, 2025 at 12:03 AM
The 98-99% human/chimpanzee DNA similarity figure usually cited omits insertions/deletions, which add another ~3% to the effective difference. It probably matters how you measure though, like how to count copy # variations or rearrangements. www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
Here's survey data on which theories of consciousness are considered promising by consciousness researchers. The survey was run at annual meetings of the Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness.
November 29, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Here's survey data on which theories of consciousness are considered promising by consciousness researchers. The survey was run at annual meetings of the Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness.
There's actually some really interesting polling data on these questions and more from the Sentience Institute, thanks to @adriamoret.bsky.social for pointing me to it! www.sentienceinstitute.org/aims-survey-...
November 28, 2025 at 11:01 PM
There's actually some really interesting polling data on these questions and more from the Sentience Institute, thanks to @adriamoret.bsky.social for pointing me to it! www.sentienceinstitute.org/aims-survey-...
I expect both AI x-risk and AI consciousness to be taken seriously by the general public in the coming years for a couple reasons:
-Fictional depictions of AI often depict AI risk/sentience
-There are simple intuitive arguments for both
-Non-AI folks I talk to seem open to them
-Fictional depictions of AI often depict AI risk/sentience
-There are simple intuitive arguments for both
-Non-AI folks I talk to seem open to them
November 28, 2025 at 7:59 PM
I expect both AI x-risk and AI consciousness to be taken seriously by the general public in the coming years for a couple reasons:
-Fictional depictions of AI often depict AI risk/sentience
-There are simple intuitive arguments for both
-Non-AI folks I talk to seem open to them
-Fictional depictions of AI often depict AI risk/sentience
-There are simple intuitive arguments for both
-Non-AI folks I talk to seem open to them
What small models are currently best for running experiments on? Olmo 3 and the smaller Qwen 3s seem like good candidates, any others?
November 28, 2025 at 6:52 PM
What small models are currently best for running experiments on? Olmo 3 and the smaller Qwen 3s seem like good candidates, any others?
This new 6B parameter image model from Alibaba is very popular on /r/stablediffusion right now, and is trending on HuggingFace. If this honeymoon persists it may displace SDXL/FLUX.1 as the cheap/local image gen favorite.
New image model form Alibaba: Z-Image
* just 6B
* fully self-attentional ("single stream") MM-DiT
* significant data annotation, augmentation, curation
distilled few-step "turbo" model released
paper: github.com/Tongyi-MAI/Z...
gh: github.com/Tongyi-MAI/Z...
hf: huggingface.co/Comfy-Org/z_...
* just 6B
* fully self-attentional ("single stream") MM-DiT
* significant data annotation, augmentation, curation
distilled few-step "turbo" model released
paper: github.com/Tongyi-MAI/Z...
gh: github.com/Tongyi-MAI/Z...
hf: huggingface.co/Comfy-Org/z_...
November 28, 2025 at 5:56 AM
This new 6B parameter image model from Alibaba is very popular on /r/stablediffusion right now, and is trending on HuggingFace. If this honeymoon persists it may displace SDXL/FLUX.1 as the cheap/local image gen favorite.
I'm surprised by this steep Opus 4.5 price cut. Has the price of serving it fallen dramatically, or is this just a change to margins?
I'd only expect the cost of serving it to fall if there were an architecture change or with much better inference hardware/software.
I'd only expect the cost of serving it to fall if there were an architecture change or with much better inference hardware/software.
November 24, 2025 at 8:21 PM
I'm surprised by this steep Opus 4.5 price cut. Has the price of serving it fallen dramatically, or is this just a change to margins?
I'd only expect the cost of serving it to fall if there were an architecture change or with much better inference hardware/software.
I'd only expect the cost of serving it to fall if there were an architecture change or with much better inference hardware/software.
I'm surprised that AI lab revenue growth rates have remained steady as long as they have. I expect these lines to bend down a bit soon though, both OpenAI and Anthropic are estimating growth factors of more like 2-3x for 2026. epoch.ai/data/ai-comp...
November 20, 2025 at 8:16 PM
I'm surprised that AI lab revenue growth rates have remained steady as long as they have. I expect these lines to bend down a bit soon though, both OpenAI and Anthropic are estimating growth factors of more like 2-3x for 2026. epoch.ai/data/ai-comp...
Reposted by Tim Duffy
Evidence that Gemini 3 is very large:
1. the QT
2. Artificial analysis (image)
quote: x.com/artificialan...
report: artificialanalysis.ai/evaluations/...
3. Demis Hassabis said 1-2 months ago that major version numbers indicate OOM scaling, minor is RL scaling
1. the QT
2. Artificial analysis (image)
quote: x.com/artificialan...
report: artificialanalysis.ai/evaluations/...
3. Demis Hassabis said 1-2 months ago that major version numbers indicate OOM scaling, minor is RL scaling
November 19, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Evidence that Gemini 3 is very large:
1. the QT
2. Artificial analysis (image)
quote: x.com/artificialan...
report: artificialanalysis.ai/evaluations/...
3. Demis Hassabis said 1-2 months ago that major version numbers indicate OOM scaling, minor is RL scaling
1. the QT
2. Artificial analysis (image)
quote: x.com/artificialan...
report: artificialanalysis.ai/evaluations/...
3. Demis Hassabis said 1-2 months ago that major version numbers indicate OOM scaling, minor is RL scaling
A friend of mine has early access to cutting edge corporate jargon, I heard the phrase "let's double-click on that" from him long before anywhere else. I asked him what's new these days and he says it's "the shark closest to your body" for the most urgent issue.
November 19, 2025 at 6:59 PM
A friend of mine has early access to cutting edge corporate jargon, I heard the phrase "let's double-click on that" from him long before anywhere else. I asked him what's new these days and he says it's "the shark closest to your body" for the most urgent issue.
On gpt-oss-120b, InferenceMAX shows tok/s capping out at about 400. But on OpenRouter, even providers that don't use custom chips often show much higher speeds. What accounts for the difference?
November 8, 2025 at 4:27 PM
On gpt-oss-120b, InferenceMAX shows tok/s capping out at about 400. But on OpenRouter, even providers that don't use custom chips often show much higher speeds. What accounts for the difference?
@vgel.me is fundraising for her model tinkering, she's done some really interesting interpretability work and I think funding this has very high returns in terms of LLM understanding per dollar. manifund.org/projects/fun...
November 7, 2025 at 6:07 PM
@vgel.me is fundraising for her model tinkering, she's done some really interesting interpretability work and I think funding this has very high returns in terms of LLM understanding per dollar. manifund.org/projects/fun...
My new headphones have an equalizer built in.
November 7, 2025 at 5:34 PM
My new headphones have an equalizer built in.
I'm curious to hear what folks think of this. Eli Lilly is actually up today, Novo Nordisk is down. Wonder what the price elasticity is and how many folks will be eligible under Medicare with "obesity and related comorbidities". The price for the likely upcoming pill form is only $150/mo.
November 6, 2025 at 8:33 PM
I'm curious to hear what folks think of this. Eli Lilly is actually up today, Novo Nordisk is down. Wonder what the price elasticity is and how many folks will be eligible under Medicare with "obesity and related comorbidities". The price for the likely upcoming pill form is only $150/mo.
It feels like the consciousness I'm experiencing is the only one in my brain. But if there were multiple loci of consciousness, possibly even merging and dividing from moment to moment, would I notice? I think I wouldn't, and that we shouldn't be sure we're alone in our brains.
November 6, 2025 at 6:41 PM
It feels like the consciousness I'm experiencing is the only one in my brain. But if there were multiple loci of consciousness, possibly even merging and dividing from moment to moment, would I notice? I think I wouldn't, and that we shouldn't be sure we're alone in our brains.
Moonshot just released the thinking version of their K2 model. One big change is that the experts (except the shared expert) are quantized to INT4. The #1 question I have on it now is whether the reasoning training has solved its frequent hallucination. moonshotai.github.io/Kimi-K2/thin...
November 6, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Moonshot just released the thinking version of their K2 model. One big change is that the experts (except the shared expert) are quantized to INT4. The #1 question I have on it now is whether the reasoning training has solved its frequent hallucination. moonshotai.github.io/Kimi-K2/thin...
In the late 2010s I was really interested in Mars settlement, though I ultimately became convinced it would be much more difficult than I initially thought. Here are some of the things I wrote about:
November 4, 2025 at 8:39 PM
In the late 2010s I was really interested in Mars settlement, though I ultimately became convinced it would be much more difficult than I initially thought. Here are some of the things I wrote about:
Glad to see this commitment by Anthropic. Preserving models is a low-cost move that could have safety and welfare benefits. Hopefully we'll see other companies commit to this as well www.anthropic.com/research/dep...
November 4, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Glad to see this commitment by Anthropic. Preserving models is a low-cost move that could have safety and welfare benefits. Hopefully we'll see other companies commit to this as well www.anthropic.com/research/dep...
The new 1X NEO robot operates largely using a 160 million (with an m) parameter model that takes instructions as text embeddings from an off-board language model. Surprising that a model that small can even do visual understanding, let alone instruction following and movement.
October 28, 2025 at 11:27 PM
The new 1X NEO robot operates largely using a 160 million (with an m) parameter model that takes instructions as text embeddings from an off-board language model. Surprising that a model that small can even do visual understanding, let alone instruction following and movement.
Reposted by Tim Duffy
Here are some fun statistics from my weekend project. Look how steerable Qwen 3 0.6B is! With an R² of .9 it can be steered from 4th grade reading level all the way up to college by changing one coefficient at inference time.
Here's "What is AdS/CFT correspondence?" steered toward grades 5 and 17.
Here's "What is AdS/CFT correspondence?" steered toward grades 5 and 17.
October 20, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Here are some fun statistics from my weekend project. Look how steerable Qwen 3 0.6B is! With an R² of .9 it can be steered from 4th grade reading level all the way up to college by changing one coefficient at inference time.
Here's "What is AdS/CFT correspondence?" steered toward grades 5 and 17.
Here's "What is AdS/CFT correspondence?" steered toward grades 5 and 17.
When people say "abolish the FDA" do they mean just the drug part or do they mean the food part too? I'd like to keep the food part please
October 20, 2025 at 7:27 PM
When people say "abolish the FDA" do they mean just the drug part or do they mean the food part too? I'd like to keep the food part please
Huel Black has more lead than nearly all foods in the FDA Total Diet Study data for 2018-2020. But one comes close when measured per calorie, sweet potatoes.
Huel: 6.31 ug/400 kcal = 15.7 ng/kcal
Sweet potato: 12.1 ug/kg / 1000 kcal/kg = 12.1 ng/kcal
Huel: 6.31 ug/400 kcal = 15.7 ng/kcal
Sweet potato: 12.1 ug/kg / 1000 kcal/kg = 12.1 ng/kcal
October 15, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Huel Black has more lead than nearly all foods in the FDA Total Diet Study data for 2018-2020. But one comes close when measured per calorie, sweet potatoes.
Huel: 6.31 ug/400 kcal = 15.7 ng/kcal
Sweet potato: 12.1 ug/kg / 1000 kcal/kg = 12.1 ng/kcal
Huel: 6.31 ug/400 kcal = 15.7 ng/kcal
Sweet potato: 12.1 ug/kg / 1000 kcal/kg = 12.1 ng/kcal
Reposted by Tim Duffy
FUNNY THAT THERES SUCH A STRONG CORRELATION BETWEEN EVAL AWARENESS AND SAFETY SCORES
October 15, 2025 at 5:43 PM
FUNNY THAT THERES SUCH A STRONG CORRELATION BETWEEN EVAL AWARENESS AND SAFETY SCORES
Notes on the Haiku 4.5 system card: assets.anthropic.com/m/12f214efcc...
Anthropic is releasing it as ASL-2, unlike Sonnet 4.5/Opus 4+ which are considered ASL-3
Anthropic is releasing it as ASL-2, unlike Sonnet 4.5/Opus 4+ which are considered ASL-3
October 15, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Notes on the Haiku 4.5 system card: assets.anthropic.com/m/12f214efcc...
Anthropic is releasing it as ASL-2, unlike Sonnet 4.5/Opus 4+ which are considered ASL-3
Anthropic is releasing it as ASL-2, unlike Sonnet 4.5/Opus 4+ which are considered ASL-3
Haiku 4.5 just dropped
Introducing Claude Haiku 4.5
Claude Haiku 4.5, our latest small model, is available today to all users.
www.anthropic.com
October 15, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Haiku 4.5 just dropped