iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Helpful points from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com here on what AI solving big maths problems might mean for the future of the maths community www.ft.com/content/c947...

Many mathematicians are leaning "bad". few days after the OpenAI Navier-Stokes
announcement, a group of 25 winners of mathematics' prestigious Fields Medal published a letter arguing that the goals of the AI companies and the human
mathematics community are fundamentally misaligned. Their core position is that although solving complex technical problems has historically accompanied expansions in our understanding, the former was only ever a proxy for the latter. A brute-forced solution without the
deliberation and painstaking accumulation of human knowledge along the way is the signal of expanded understanding without the actual expanded understanding.

Another big question is what this all means for the incentives to share progress towards new discoveries. It's not hard to see how the threat of being scooped by AI could exert a chilling effect on the culture of sharing important incremental findings or promising new avenues, which has underpinned scientific progress for centuries. And for the Al labs themselves,
the backlash over the Navier-Stokes case may mean future Al-powered breakthroughs are kept under wraps. If AI is amazingly capable at turning new theories into findings, but stifles the development and sharing of those theories, there may be a bumpy road ahead.

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Sarah O'Connor @sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 14/09/2026

In both China and the west, the gig economy has become a sort of safety net/labour market shock absorber. But automation is coming for a lot of this work. Which means the biggest impact of AI/robots might unfold in the dark, in the part of the economy hardest to track. www.ft.com/content/a2c3...

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 11/09/2026

>the houthis were trying to use claude to build their rocket guidance system just get me off the fucking ride www.anthropic.com/threat-intel...

GTG-87001: Disrupting a Yemen-based guided weapons engineering cell using Claude to develop guidance software
Summary

We identified a cell of threat actors based in northern Yemen running three weapons development programs: a guided rocket that used a commodity phone-class flight computer with final-phase homing guidance; a multi-stage ballistic missile with a stated range goal above 2,000 km; and a multi-variant missile (referred to as the “R2000” set) that included a hypersonic glide vehicle variant.

The actors used Claude Code in place of human software engineers to develop the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) software that steers and stabilizes a flying vehicle. For example, they used Claude to integrate an open-source autopilot onto a phone-class flight computer, writing the control and position estimation software, tuning the control settings, running a firmware build pipeline, and performing a flight simulation. The actors managed several Claude instances at once, assigning each one a role, much as a lead would delegate work on a small engineering team: the actors tasked one instance with writing the code, another with research, and a third with reviewing the code the first instance produced.

Our safeguards blocked many of their requests, but not all of them. The actors used a variety of tactics to evade our safeguards, including hiding their goals and the products the software was meant for, and they split their work across multiple sessions so no single session revealed their full intent.

These actors carried out a sustained effort to develop guided weapons, including using Claude to design guidance software. We do not have evidence the actors succeeded in fielding an operational device; but they did test-fire a guided rocket. This field test appears to have failed: within hours, the actors returned to Claude to work out why it failed.

We identified this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development. We banne…

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 10/09/2026

New from us: Anthropic just published scenarios for AI’s possible economic impacts, which range from minimal, to explosive GDP growth of 15% by 2030 as knowledge-worker unemployment hits 18%. I sat down with their co-founder Jack Clark to pick his brains on how they’re thinking about all of this.

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 08/09/2026

Two extraordinary charts from today’s PISA test results: 1) School test scores continue to collapse internationally, underscoring how this is no longer a Covid effect but sustained decline. Those falls in reading and maths are equivalent to about two years of lost schooling.

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 03/09/2026

I hereby declare the "learn to code" era officially dead: Big declines in the number of people studying computer science in the last year or two 📉 Chart from this week’s edition of our newsletter on AI and the labour market www.ft.com/content/9183...

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 11/08/2026

BIG NEW piece by me. A few years ago, if you asked me to summarize my entire worldview in one article, I would’ve said it was too broad and too difficult. But this year, I decided to do it.

worksinprogress.co

Every disease is a policy failure

Few people know how much medicine has progressed in their lifetimes. Fewer know how much faster it could be progressing.

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Chris Dillow @chrisdillow.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

New substack: without big changes, slow growth is normal: chrisdillow.substack.com/p/stagnation...

chrisdillow.substack.com

Stagnation: the norm

We need more than tinkering if we are to raise economic growth significantly.

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 07/08/2026

New from me: Britain’s graduate earnings premium is falling, cue “too many go to university!” But non-university outcomes are also bad, cue “we must reform vocational routes!” Both miss the point: people used to think education drove economic outcomes, but the economy drives educational outcomes.

Chart showing that US workers who are functionally illiterate earn roughly the same per hour as the average British worker

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Matt Darling @besttrousers.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

"Whether we like it or not, the future of jobs lies in largely non-traded, labour absorbing activities such as retail, food services, hospitality, care and other personal services. The Left cannot evade this reality."

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 31/07/2026

New from me: Until recently, the gap between comfortably-off and just-getting-started could plausibly be crossed in a decade or two of hard work. Growth in asset prices means that’s no longer true: even a lifetime of striving doesn’t offer a realistic prospect of feeling you’ve “made it”.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

My column in tomorrow's paper: Labour now have a leader who gives good advert. This is good for them, but the broader change it represents, much less so:

ft.com

Burnham and the problem of politics by social media

The old tightly regulated party broadcast model is dead — for better and for worse

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Sobering to see in one chart how June temperature records have been broken this year in so many European countries www.ft.com/content/5f06...

June temperature records tumble across
Europe

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Ben Zaranko @benzaranko.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Headline measures of wealth inequality haven't meaningfully changed since the 1980s, but it's harder to work and save your way up the ladder than it used to be. Meanwhile, inheritances are becoming ever more important. Me for this weekend's Observer: observer.co.uk/news/capital...

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Chaminda Jayanetti @cjayanetti.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Everyone says social media needs to be regulated There's just one problem - it *already is* I've had a look at why regulation is failing, what we might do about it, and what the risks are - because nothing is ever as simple as it seems New post: chamindajayanetti.substack.com/p/how-do-you...

chamindajayanetti.substack.com

How do you solve a problem like social media? Part I

It's all well and good saying we should regulate social media. But social media is already regulated. So why is it failing? And what could we do in response?

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Joel Wertheimer @wertwhile.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

I have a new post up at Nate Silver's site about UMich's sentiment survey. Please read it I think it's quite good. The upshot is that the survey is broken because it doesn't weight by party. If you're talking vibecession, get a different survey. www.natesilver.net/p/is-the-vib...

natesilver.net

Is the vibecession real — or is the survey broken?

A shift to online polling and undersampling of Republicans are skewing America’s most-cited measure of consumer sentiment.

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Sarah O'Connor @sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 30/06/2026

I'll be discussing my book We Are Not Machines with the brilliant Cosmina Dorobantu at the LSE on Tuesday 21st July at 6pm! Tickets are free if you would like to come along :) www.eventbrite.com/e/sarah-ocon...

eventbrite.com

Sarah O'Connor. We Are Not Machines

The Future of Work Isn't What You Think

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Very interesting @jburnmurdoch.ft.com piece this morning - how much value AI is creating is exactly the right question. The evidence from coders here suggests it’s so far creating a lot of extra output - 290% more files, 30% more software releases - but no extra valuable outputs (app downloads)

giftarticle.ft.com

How much value is AI really creating?

Eye-opening changes to the speed and volume of work are not always translating into genuine productivity

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

“It’s two or three times harder than pure translation work, and they have the barefaced cheek to pay you half as much.” - fascinating on how AI has changed translators' work @sarahoconnorft.ft.com and @jburnmurdoch.ft.com:

ft.com

How AI has de-skilled translation

A specialist knowledge-work job has become fragmented and routine

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Ben Zaranko @benzaranko.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

This chart is bonkers. I think there's two possible explanations for why the UK runs so far ahead of other European countries – neither of them good. And the annual April price jump speaks to a wider issue. For more detail, see my column in this weekend's Observer. observer.co.uk/news/busines...

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 28/05/2026

New from me: I had the pleasure of sitting in as host of BBC’s Radical podcast this week, and had an absolutely fascinating conversation with leading geneticist Sir John Bell, where we explored the quite astonishing medical breakthroughs of recent (and coming) years www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

bbc.co.uk

Radical with Amol Rajan - Healthcare, Reinvited: How Dramatic Medical Breakthroughs Are Quietly Changing Your Life (Professor Sir John Bell) - BBC Sounds

John Burn-Murdoch hears about the unheard revolution changing the world of healthcare.

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 17/05/2026

Science nerds of BSKY: Next week I’m interviewing Prof. Sir John Bell about recent medical breakthroughs, touching on - Gene therapies & cancer vaccines - Tech in healthcare more broadly - Ethics & regulation This includes a Q&A where I can field your questions. If you have any please post below 🙏

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Resolution Foundation @resolutionfoundation.org · 28/04/2026

Making sure the benefit system is properly supporting young people who are dealing with ill-health is not about people "faking it", says @jburnmurdoch.ft.com 👇

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Resolution Foundation @resolutionfoundation.org · 28/04/2026

At our event @jburnmurdoch.ft.com says an increasing share of young people in Britain are completely detached from the labour market. They'll need tailored, individual support otherwise they won't catch any tailwind in the labour market that has traditionally reduced youth unemployment / NEET rates.

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 27/04/2026

The FT @financialtimes.com is hiring a new data journalist to join our US data and visuals team in New York. Great job, great team, great place to work. Apply here 👉 job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/financialtim...

job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io

US Data Journalist

New York; Washington DC

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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

If you're interested in the question of what happens to *demand*, which I list here as a key reason not to fear the Jobpocalypse, then also read @jburnmurdoch.ft.com here diving into it deeper www.ft.com/content/f55c... And @aleximas.bsky.social is worth a follow on Substack

ft.com

What the AI ‘jobpocalypse’ narrative misses

Whether or not new technologies can perform a task is only a tiny part of the picture

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Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Great piece (and graphics) by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com. PS This is exactly why @pauldwebb.bsky.social and I talked about 'the educated left-behind' when we wrote about the young people who'd followed Corbyn into the Labour Party - and who may well be following Zack Polanski into the Greens.

ft.com

Why higher pay hasn’t made young adults feel richer

The aspiration gap has turned everyone into losers, especially graduates

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Tremendously depressing read. Also: proper reporting. open.substack.com/pub/londonce...

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

New Fed paper by Crane & Soto uses official labor force survey data and finds that 500,000 fewer coders are working than pre-LLM trends would predict. Hits entry level, not senior workers. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com piece: www.ft.com/content/b69f...

ft.com

The AI job loss story is all about bundles

Evidence on white-collar work displacement is beginning to match the theory

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

This is good from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com on how AI will impact on the labour market - two different effects pulling in different directions. Which will be more powerful? www.ft.com/content/becb...

Earlier this week Harvard's Seyed Mahdi Hosseini Maasoum and Guy Lichtinger outlined another helpful framework for thinking about this. Where AI enhances individual workers' productivity it widens wage inequality by multiplying the returns to specialist skills and knowledge; where it reduces barriers to entry by eliminating the need for specialist skills it has the opposite effect. Interestingly, they find evidence that both dynamics are already playing out in measured AI usage, and that at the whole economy level they can to an extent cancel one another out.

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Matthew Holehouse @matthewholehouse.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

The combination of a political demand on the right for ICE-style deportation campaigns, and the woeful data-management of the Home Office, looks like a calamity waiting to happen. Windrush should cast a longer shadow than it does. www.economist.com/britain/2026...

economist.com

How poor data hobbles Britain’s immigration policy

Gaps, errors and fiefdoms frustrate a clear picture

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Sarah O'Connor @sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 26/03/2026

In spite of all the talk of Claude Code and Codex meaning the end of humans writing code, software job adverts are actually going up, according to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com's crunching of millions of job ads for this week's The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/7325...

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Signe Johansen @signesjohansen.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Need a break from all the madness? I really enjoyed this thoughtful series on how reading made us, with excellent contributions from @naomialderman.bsky.social and @jburnmurdoch.ft.com (amongst others) Available on BBC iPlayer, and for those out the UK: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/u... 🎙️📚

podcasts.apple.com

Understand

Politics Podcast · Series · NEW in Understand: How Reading Made Us Did learning to read rewire our brains and change the way we live today? And with reading on the decline, what does this mean for our...

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Iain Mansfield @igmansfield.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Essential reading by @jimdickinson.bsky.social on why estimates of the graduate premium are almost certainly too high - and why government is overestimating how much of student borrowing will ever be repaid. wonkhe.com/blogs/the-gr...

wonkhe.com

The graduate premium has a long way to fall yet

Jim Dickinson explains how the student loans repayment prediction model distinguishes courses by subject and provider group, but not by delivery method – a gap that's about to become very expensive, i...

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Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

When I'm not doing other stuff I listen to an awful lot of radio. This, by @j-amesmarriott.bsky.social, is one of this week's (and, indeed, the next three weeks') absolute must-listens. Really fascinating - and one for fans of @jburnmurdoch.ft.com and @naomialderman.bsky.social too.

bbc.co.uk

Understand - How Reading Made Us - 1. How Reading Made Our Brains - BBC Sounds

Did learning to read rewire your brain? With James Marriott.

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EconReporter @econreporter.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

I think there is not enough appreciation to how good this FT visualization is the original is like this 👇

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Jane Green @profjanegreen.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

@martamiori.bsky.social and I have been writing, since 2024, about why Labour's 'Reform' challenge and emphasis was based on a misunderstanding of Labour's vote. Here for anyone interested: politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Article - Nuffield Politics Research Centre

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Francesco Raffaelli @fraraffaelli.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

🚨 New WP w/ @leonardocarella.bsky.social on OSF doi.org/10.31235/osf... We usually think that social identities precede preferences We show the reverse is also true: people update their social identities to match their immigration preferences Focus: class identity in 🇬🇧 + Christian identity in 🇮🇹

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Sam Joiner @samjoiner.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

New: Drones are redrawing the map of war in Ukraine. Relentless surveillance has pushed the battlefield 20km beyond the front, in both directions. Supplies arrive by drone; the wounded leave by robot. This is the “kill zone” — and the future of warfare. 👉 ft.com/kill-zone

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Sarah O'Connor @sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 20/02/2026

Such a good piece today from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com which shows that the declining graduate premium is very much a UK problem rather than a general (or inevevitable) consequence of more people going to uni www.ft.com/content/649d...

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Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Turns out (says @jburnmurdoch.ft.com) it's not so much an oversupply of graduates in the UK (the same would be true of other similar countries but it's not) as an undersupply of the kind of jobs that a better-performing, more productive economy would supply.

ft.com

‘Is university still worth it?’ is the wrong question

The graduate earnings premium isn’t really measuring what most people think

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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Really good piece. The falling graduate premium is a consequence more than a cause of low growth ‘Is university still worth it?’ is the wrong question - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @jburnmurdoch.ft.com

giftarticle.ft.com

‘Is university still worth it?’ is the wrong question

The graduate earnings premium isn’t really measuring what most people think

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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

unbelievably good from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com @sarahoconnorft.ft.com on the intensification of (knowledge) work under AI www.ft.com/content/9c6a... It reminds me a bit of when the Internet arrived, that sense of a cornucopia of content, an infinite bookstore, a neverending toread list. 1/

ft.com

Is AI making work more intense?

Using agents appears to increase the number of hours worked and the exhausting nature of tasks

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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 16/02/2026

Great piece from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, which touches on one of the big theories for why English-speaking countries do especially badly at housebuilding: Adversarial and litigious common law systems (Anglo) vs judge-led civil law systems elsewhere. samf.substack.com/p/build-the-...

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Zeteo @zeteo.com · 09/02/2026

“Washington today is a kleptocracy… [Trump’s] obviously planning to rig the elections.” Financial Times editor @edwardluce.bsky.social explains how the collapse of America is ‘halfway there’ and how Trump is planning to rig the midterm elections. Watch the full interview: zeteo.com/p/geopolitic...

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 05/02/2026

lads I don't want anyone to panic but I am writing up quite the scorchio take for tomorrow's newsletter

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Samuel Thomas @smlthms.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

This is actually quite an interesting report, which has been briefed to the press in the most harmful way possible The current system for passported benefits is a mess & requires loads of separate applications - huge unnecessary burden & so many people miss out ukonward.com/reports/the-...

ukonward.com

The Hidden Benefits Bill: How Universal Credit claimants get £10 billion in extra benefits | Onward

The eyewatering cost of Britain’s benefits bill is often discussed, but a key part of the conversation is usually missing.

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