Monday AI Brief
Monday AI Brief is a shorter and less technical version of Monday AI Radar. You can get it as an email newsletter.
People continue to lose their minds about Claude Code. We’ll begin this week’s newsletter with a look at what people are using it for and where they think it’s headed. Here’s my short take: Claude Code’s present usefulness is 30% overhyped. A lot of the amazing things people are reporting are genuinely amazing, but they’re quick working prototypes of fairly simple tools. But…
Sometime in the past couple of months, AI crossed a really important capability threshold. By the end of 2025, it was clear to any programmer who was paying attention that our profession has completely changed. By the end of 2026, I think that same thing will be true for many professions. Most people won’t realize it right away, and it may (or may not) take a few years for the changes to really take hold, but the writing is now very clearly on the wall.
Happy New Year! It would be silly for me to wish you an uneventful year, but I hope most of your surprises are good ones.
This week we’re talking about the challenges of benchmarking advanced AI, looking at new (and slightly longer) timelines from the AI-2027 team, worrying about AI-related job loss, and asking Claude whether it’s a person.
On paper, this was a quiet week: there were no major releases, and no big headlines. Online, though, there’s been a big shift in the vibe since the release of Opus 4.5 a month ago. It’s now undeniable that AI is transforming programming, and it feels increasingly likely that the same will happen to all other knowledge work before too long.
But that’s not all—we review the latest evidence of accelerating progress, discuss whether AI might increase the demand for knowledge workers, and look at how Claude handles mental health crises. And shoes! If you’ve been wanting more fashion reporting in these pages, today is your lucky day.
Welcome to the shorter and less technical version of Monday AI Radar.
This week brought some great 2025 retrospectives and some brave predictions for 2026. It was hard to pick just one, but I think Prinz did a great job summarizing what is likely to be one of humanity’s last “normal” years. We’ll also try to get our heads around the “jagged frontier” of AI capabilities, look at some impressive new accomplishments, and end on a meditative note as we contemplate life in a world that doesn’t need human labor.
Welcome to the shorter and less technical version of Monday AI Radar. We’re focusing on model psychology this week with pieces on training “character” at Anthropic, what we do and don’t know about the possibility of AI consciousness, and some hard questions about whether AI should prioritize obedience or virtue. Plus grading the big labs on their safety practices, copywriters talk about losing their jobs to AI, and a lighthearted look at a recent big AI conference.
Welcome to the shorter and less technical version of Monday Radar. Each week I’ll pick a couple of the most interesting and important pieces from the full update.