What began as an effort to build better infrastructure for online surveys and data collection has grown into something larger. Today, we're officially launching Proof of Human on @ycombinator. Our new name reflects our mission: to preserve human trust on the internet in the age of AI. As AI becomes increasingly capable, knowing whether there's a real human on the other side is becoming fundamental infrastructure. If you're working on a difficult human verification problem, we'd love to hear from you. Welcome to the Proof of Human era.

BREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford “for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.” #NobelPrize

“Do you think that getting married young has made you less ambitious?” Welcome to the first episode of SOTA Wives with Sarah Chieng (Head of DevX at Cerebras, ⁠@MilksandMatcha⁠) x Vivian Midha Shen (General Partner at Y Combinator, ⁠@vivianmshen⁠). In episode 1: finding your person before getting rich, turning down startup funding to finish MIT, what a YC partner sees in founders, and how a birthday post became “psychological violence.” 4:08 Finding your husband before the exit 8:48 Did we marry away our ambition? 18:04 The internet called Sarah's birthday “psychological violence” 20:47 Does your YC partner secretly think you’re doomed? 23:47 Building a startup with your ex-boyfriend 28:54 SF cat parties

The most capable individuals are learning and shipping 1000x faster using AI. I sat down with Gabriel Petersson (@gabriel1) - a high school dropout who self-taught Math & ML with AI and is now an AI Researcher at OpenAI. We deep dive into the most important traits to thrive in the age of infinite leverage: – How to learn hard skills insanely fast with AI – Dropping out in Sweden → America on the O-1 @extraordinary visa - How to get hired by the best when you are a nobody – How to turn prompting into a daily habit – Why America is still the launchpad for ambitious builders - Breaking down Gabriel's most iconic tweets Curiosity + Agency + AI will take you further than any legacy credential Timestamps: 01:12 - Swedish high-school dropout → OpenAI research scientist 03:04 - First startup & sales hacks: door-knocking, instant A/B tests 05:28 - Couch-life grind & learning to code under pressure 08:16 - Learning by doing: top-down vs bottom-up; what schools miss about AI 12:10 - Recursive learning with ChatGPT: ELI5, intuition, gap-filling 16:20 - Prompting habits, make AI your always-on tutor 22:16 - Research workflow: papers, code inserts; “shortcuts to foundations” 27:13 - Feedback obsession, elite code reviews, AI as reviewer 33:12 - Path to the US🇺🇸 Midjourney, getting the O-1 @extraordinary visa, shipping demos that signal skill 39:29 - bypass recruiters via proof of work, risk-free trials & academia hot takes 55:06 - why San Francisco; visas & how to move; final pep talk