Tyler Fox retweeted

Kian@kianworldOct 23
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theres a hidden fully functional ipod as a 404 page on apple music music.apple.com/us/jfdsalkfa…
Tyler Fox retweeted
interpretability might be the most important scientific problem in the world right now, as I don't think we can solve alignment if we don't know what we're building. I think I have good news about it. I co-authored early work in mechanistic interpretability at OpenAI and came away pessimistic, because neural networks appeared to fold into arbitrary tangled knots. years later, I started openai's first large-scale automated interpretability project, finding about 2% of neurons legible with the primitive tools we had
with modern agentic tools and a much closer look, the picture looks totally different. the vast majority in models up to trillions of parameters are legible, and their circuits beautiful. many famous examples of tangled neurons turned out to be misunderstood. The roadblocks I expected mostly aren't there. I now think ambitious interpretability will be solved by the time we need it most, and possibly quite soon, as automated scientists keep improving. it may be a bitter lesson for interpretability: the simple thing, at absurd scale, works
already-clean.goodfire.com/
Tyler Fox retweeted
I’m sure this one won’t make anyone angry. (But probably not here.)
daringfireball.net/2026/10/x…
Tyler Fox retweeted
There's been a ton of talk about the role of humans in code review, and when and how humans should be signing off on changes.
I believe that, long-term, humans have no role in routinely reviewing code.
Tyler Fox retweeted
I believe the demand for compute is going to go up faster than the supply of compute, so the price of compute is going to increase significantly in the future, perhaps as much as 10x in the next few years. I think it is a very good deal to buy compute in the year 2030 at the prices of 2026.
This is a very important trend: tokens in the future will be worth more than tokens are worth today, because models in the future will be much smarter than models today. The value of tokens from the best models in 2028 will be several times the value of a tokens today. As models become more intelligent, they can do more difficult work, and the value of the work they do goes up. So I believe that the residual value of GPUs, i.e. their resale value, is under-appreciated.
Inference demand today is bottlenecked by dumb agents that require human intervention. Smart agents of the future will require very little human intervention. That doesn't just mean that we have the same number of agents running for a longer period of time. It means we will have 10x, 100x, 1000x more agents, because one human can be responsible for thousands or hundreds of thousands more agents. In other words, it's too simplistic to look at market penetration of ChatGPT today and predict future compute usage by assuming market penetration increases and multiplying by that amount. You have to account for the fact that each user will use a lot more AI; there is a whole other multiplicative factor.
Furthermore, there are several application areas which will be compute-hungry and have yet to fully develop or be deployed. Each of robotics, AI trading, and AI for materials science and biotech, represent at least an entire agentic-coding sector equivalent of compute demand, if not more, in the medium-term. Even if AI fails to take off in many of these new verticals tomorrow, for which billions of venture capital is being deployed into today, breakout demand in just one would qualify an enormous increase in compute demand.
These are my predictions, and of course there is risk and uncertainty, but I think that most people are underrating how much more demand is going to increase.
1. as a mental model it is more correct to think of fable+ class models as english -> code interpreters - converts your idea into code into "correct" code regardless of problem complexity and output complexity (diff size). Fable 5 will be the worst of this new class of models
2. diff size/complexity is to be managed purely for review:
small diffs - in high risk areas of code (auth/identity/data access/network access/money movement)
large diffs for code that can be empirically verified (frontend/backend plumbing/code without network or db access/performance code that can be empirically verified)
3. time it takes to ship software is completely disconnected from time to produce the PR - how long the work takes depends fully on ability to review/merge code while managing risk at scale
4. solving the bottlenecks for above matter enormously- linters/testing/CI/shadow mode verification/empirical verification
5. agency matters enormously- what are the biggest bottlenecks to speeding up the loop and eliminating them? what are the problems that need solving and when do they need solving? what does it take to the solution to all of them today?
6. deep understanding of the full stack matters enormously- what problems are worth pursuing? is there a higher level of problem abstraction to address first? should I give it the sub-sub task, the sub task, or the task itself. what are the major risks with this PR (order of importance: security holes/correctness holes/performance holes). is there a higher speed way of producing data that allows me to merge this? should this be run in shadow or in a sandbox or a flag. understanding every line of logic may not be needed but understanding and managing risk matters enormously.
7. the cost of complexity itself is changing. it might be now worth "maintaining" 50% more code to get a 5% performance win. getting the right abstractions matter less because larger refactors are less tedious. code quality nits become huge drag. very likely, a much smarter model will be maintaining your code so worth taking on more technical debt now. taking the time to hand architect and rebuild systems comes with an enormous cost of velocity
8. if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck. For low risk cases, it might be more sane to treat code chunks (services / functions) as a black box, like we do for neural networks: do full empirical verification only: has code produced correct outputs for the last 10,100,1000,10k inputs ? can we quarantine this large piece of code - no outbound access to network / database ? what happens when this code is wrong? do we get hacked/or crash(memory/cpu)/is an inconvenience? is it internal facing or external? what can we do to address these risks?
9. eventually, logical verification (line by line review) will come at an enormous cost- save it for where it matters and build systems that are tolerant to empirical verification. is there a decorator that prevents db / network access? correctness bugs are significantly easier to rectify than access bugs
10. what are the rails that allow for even faster iteration? code permissions can be opt in - db writes, db reads, network egress (to where?), PII access. how long does it take to get shadow mode data? how many PRs can be tested? What are the categories of diffs
Tyler Fox retweeted
I love Karpathy's posts because they're so on point. He's not only a leading expert in his field, but he also manages to capture the zeitgeist with his statements. But this post is particularly impactful.
Since December, (agentic) coding has undergone a significant transformation, one could even say a qualitative leap. Before, it was a matter of iterative improvements, but since the end of last year, it has demonstrated its true value in a completely different way. Or, in Karpathy's words:
"It is hard to communicate how much programming has changed due to AI in the last 2 months: not gradually and over time in the "progress as usual" way, but specifically this last December. There are a number of asterisks but imo coding agents basically didn’t work before December and basically work since. (...) As a result, programming is becoming unrecognizable. You’re not typing computer code into an editor like the way things were since computers were invented, that era is over. You're spinning up AI agents, giving them tasks *in English* and managing and reviewing their work in parallel."
Two points on this that need to be repeated again and again because they are often still misunderstood.
1) The very basic truth: this is the worst it will ever be. From here on out, things will get better. Even if the status quo were to remain as it is, it would be serious. But what we have today is the worst it will ever be.
2) The pace of progress is constantly increasing. It is exponential. And that's the crucial point: from December to February, more happened than in a very long time. And this trajectory will likely (almost certainly) continue.
If points 1) and 2) are true, it is simply impossible to foresee and predict how this will affect society and all essential areas. As much as I welcome and approve of this, the near future is unpredictable. That's all I wanted to say.
It is hard to communicate how much programming has changed due to AI in the last 2 months: not gradually and over time in the "progress as usual" way, but specifically this last December. There are a number of asterisks but imo coding agents basically didn’t work before December and basically work since - the models have significantly higher quality, long-term coherence and tenacity and they can power through large and long tasks, well past enough that it is extremely disruptive to the default programming workflow.
Just to give an example, over the weekend I was building a local video analysis dashboard for the cameras of my home so I wrote: “Here is the local IP and username/password of my DGX Spark. Log in, set up ssh keys, set up vLLM, download and bench Qwen3-VL, set up a server endpoint to inference videos, a basic web ui dashboard, test everything, set it up with systemd, record memory notes for yourself and write up a markdown report for me”. The agent went off for ~30 minutes, ran into multiple issues, researched solutions online, resolved them one by one, wrote the code, tested it, debugged it, set up the services, and came back with the report and it was just done. I didn’t touch anything. All of this could easily have been a weekend project just 3 months ago but today it’s something you kick off and forget about for 30 minutes.
As a result, programming is becoming unrecognizable. You’re not typing computer code into an editor like the way things were since computers were invented, that era is over. You're spinning up AI agents, giving them tasks *in English* and managing and reviewing their work in parallel. The biggest prize is in figuring out how you can keep ascending the layers of abstraction to set up long-running orchestrator Claws with all of the right tools, memory and instructions that productively manage multiple parallel Code instances for you. The leverage achievable via top tier "agentic engineering" feels very high right now.
It’s not perfect, it needs high-level direction, judgement, taste, oversight, iteration and hints and ideas. It works a lot better in some scenarios than others (e.g. especially for tasks that are well-specified and where you can verify/test functionality). The key is to build intuition to decompose the task just right to hand off the parts that work and help out around the edges. But imo, this is nowhere near "business as usual" time in software.
Tyler Fox retweeted
It's only been one year since vibe coding was coined...
There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It's possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like "decrease the padding on the sidebar by half" because I'm too lazy to find it. I "Accept All" always, I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.
Tyler Fox retweeted
Even if current LLM progress hits a brick wall at Opus 4.5 level (and I doubt that will happen) the next 12 months are still going to be a staggering time of change in this industry as decision makers start truly understanding the new reality we live in.
obie.medium.com/what-happens…
Tyler Fox retweeted
📣 iOS 18/macOS 15 secretly ship with automatic observation tracking for UIKit/AppKit. Enable with a plist key, and your views magically update when your @ Observable models change. No more manual setNeedsDisplay() calls!
Works on stable Xcode. This was there all along, just nobody knew, the first and only google result of NSObservationTrackingEnabled is my post 🫠 steipete.me/posts/2025/autom…
Tyler Fox retweeted
As is tradition...
I present the 2025 edition of my annual "Notable UIKit Additions" post. This one? More exciting than usual! Several great changes to our old friend this year:
swiftjectivec.com/iOS-26-Not…
Tyler Fox retweeted
We are auctioning off vinyl test presses to support the families of the plane crash in San Diego ebay.com/usr/purenoiserecord…
Tyler Fox retweeted
Please consider supporting the other families and loved ones also affected by this horrible tragedy
gofundme.com/f/honoring-the-…
gofundme.com/f/keep-lailas-f…
Tyler Fox retweeted
With the heartbreaking loss of our dear friend Dan, his wife Hannah is now facing unimaginable grief along with unexpected financial challenges. Let’s come together to lift her up and help ease some of the burdens she’s facing during this incredibly painful time. gofund.me/ecaf6d97
Tyler Fox retweeted
hug your friends, cherish your time and let them know you love them because you never know when the last chance will be. so cliche but I’m sick to my stomach. I’ll see you again someday my friend.
Tyler Fox retweeted
Replying to @sdw
This happened to software: tonsky.me/blog/disenchantmen… – at Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Tyler Fox retweeted
I’m so excited to share what I’ve been working on for the past year: Animated SF Symbols!
Watch my session this Thursday to learn how to add them to your SwiftUI, AppKit, and UIKit apps:
developer.apple.com/wwdc23/1…
























