Matt Beane
@mattbeane
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Study work with intelligent machines, esp. robots. @MITSloan PhD, @Ucsb Asst Prof, @Stanford fellow, @tedtalks Book, Substack: https://t.co/OJQa0by9MT
Santa Barbara, CA
Joined November 2008
I'm so grateful and exited to share that my book will be published on June 11th! It's called "The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines" Available for preorder now, here's a bit of the story: https://t.co/IQ1rncIiPt
wildworldofwork.org
"The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines" will be published on June 11th by HarperCollins. You're getting the scoop early!
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Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science: it has led to premature claims of universality (due to over-sampling of English speakers) and limited the cognitive constructs being examined (due to the use of English as a meta-language). https://t.co/XH56AS0B8K
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The universe is a beautifully consistent system of rules. Intelligence is the efficiency with which you can go from the output of these rules (what you can observe) back to the rules themselves.
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Perfect timing - processing these two articles with my @UCSBTMP students in two weeks.
Worth reading: where the AI 2027 folks and the AI as Normal Technology growth folks agree and disagree. For normies, and as we saw with the LEAP survey, I think you can fairly characterize this range as upper/lower bounds for "what 75% of knowledgeable folks studying AI believe"
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Relieved to see @sjhasker independently (I think - doesn't look like he's read my book or seen my work) getting concerned in @Forbes about the expert-novice connection and default genAI use. He likewise proposes fixes aligned with what I've suggested. https://t.co/Ig9rQ0NSaA
fortune.com
Without a new approach to entry-level training for lawyers, accountants and other knowledge workers, we’re risking the future of these crucial professions.
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What an interesting potential dampening effect on technological development: potential talent avoids the work because they assume it will be automated before they get there. I tend to doubt this would deter top talent?
I recently received an email titled “An 18-year-old’s dilemma: Too late to contribute to AI?” Its author, who gave me permission to share this, is preparing for college. He is worried that by the time he graduates, AI will be so good there’s no meaningful work left for him to do
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Some pretty eye-opening data on the effect of AI coding. When Cursor added agentic coding in 2024, adopters produced 39% more code merges, with no sign of a decrease in quality (revert rates were the same, bugs dropped) and no sign that the scope of the work shrank. Big impact.
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This excellent review paper by @johnjhorton and colleagues explores the impact of AI on firm boundaries, organization, and strategy, focusing on the role of AI agents in performing search, bargaining, and contracting functions on behalf of consumers. 3/3
nber.org
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Amazing demo of what's possible with AI vs. without. But please, please, don't let this convince you that robotics will happen *far* faster. Faster, sure. But software was always the "easy" part there - blockers are integration, supply chains, manufacturing, maintenance, etc.
New Anthropic research: Project Fetch. We asked two teams of Anthropic researchers to program a robot dog. Neither team had any robotics expertise—but we let only one team use Claude. How did they do?
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We gave our teams a series of challenges: gain control of the robodog, have it fetch a ball, then get the robodog to operate autonomously. The team with Claude accomplished more tasks, and in half the time.
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@AnthropicAI @Northeastern @Waymo (techinically) Why this happened is reasonably clear in retrospect, but worth exploring. Cost per failure a clear reason...
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Speaking next week at an @AnthropicAI/@Northeastern event. Flying to SFO, now (woot!) I'll @Waymo to San Jose. That's... still partial autonomy for flight (first in 1912!), and full autonomy for rides (first in 2019!). Funny, given that flight is easier to automate.
Exciting expansion! @Waymo now serves the whole SF Bay Area Peninsula from SF to San Jose and is taking riders on freeways. https://t.co/fNgqQtHB7b
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I think this is a very important piece of work (Tetlock-connected forecasting re AI), reading carefully... https://t.co/i8VDVPmZFR h/t @Afinetheorem
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I think folks who know better, esp on twitter, are still underrating the extreme impact the MIT paper had about 95% of AI projects failing within enterprises. I keep hearing it over and over and over again.
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It's one thing to try to predict the number job losses (or gains!) from AI. It's another thing to predict second-order effects. New kinds of jobs. New products. New services. Negative externalities inside and outside organizations. The list is vast, the task is (too?) *hard*.
We knew this time was coming: An AI-generated song is now the #1 Country Song
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Gotta love to see it. As the study itself says, its findings aren't surprising and fit what we know about earlier technologies.
According to a new study from the Yale Budget Lab, AI has caused no discernible disruption in the labor market based on 33 months of data since ChatGPT’s release.
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Roughly, this tracks with what I'm hearing. Glad we're getting more reports out there on the state of genAI deployment/results in business (e.g., the @Wharton one). Then we can get back to the interpretive problems we used to have...
MCKINSEY JUST DROPPED THEIR 2025 AI REPORT. HERE’S THE TLDR: 1/ 90% of companies “use AI,” but 67% are still stuck in pilot mode. Corporate AI theater is alive and well lol. 2/ 62% of orgs are experimenting with AI agents, 23% are scaling AI agents. Most are in tech and
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Ah. Just heard it. (chatting with a CXO from a big 5 consultancy): AI itself is a stake in the heart for the training = reskilling for AI theory (it was always a lie). Why? Training is out of date before it's delivered. Change in AI products/capability is officially too fast.
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https://t.co/OUfKPOwiFa works. Hard to find that next book. You folks are my #1 source. This is now #2.
book.sv
Great book recommendations.
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@amasad @adamdangelo @a16z @Steve_Yegge Relatedly, I think you will dig: https://t.co/Pjcc8TKUS7 Coauthored with Steve, Brendan (CommBank), and Jon (O'Reilly). Incorporates recent primary research I'm leading on genAI use in SWE across 24 firms.
itrevolution.com
Rather than predicting developers' obsolescence, this paper reveals how AI tools are creating new opportunities while fundamentally changing what it means to be a software engineer.
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Hey, @amasad - heard you and @adamdangelo chatting on @a16z about AI use knocking jr employees out of the action. Inspired by @Steve_Yegge's "Death of the Junior Developer"? This is real. I've been studying it since 2012, wrt LLMs since 2023. Book, more:
mattbeane.com
An insightful and surprising guide to protecting your skill in a world filling with AI and robots
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