Axis of Ordinary

More links:

1. Claude traces the origins of NIST’s elliptic curves. A cryptographic detective story: Claude recovered timestamp-based recipes that reproduce the seeds behind widely used elliptic curves. The finding clarifies their provenance; it does not break ECDSA. Includes reproduction code and remaining mysteries.
https://www.anthropic.com/research/ecdsa-curve-origins

2. Claude designs more efficient quantum circuits. With an automated evaluator checking its proposals, Claude found circuits using fewer Toffoli gates and fewer qubits on seven of eight tasks. On the eighth, it improved the trade-off between the two. A compelling example of AI-assisted algorithm discovery.
https://www.anthropic.com/research/designing-efficient-quantum-circuits

3. AI searches for errors in mathematical papers. Researchers used GPT-6.1 Sol to examine 793 arXiv papers. Among 656 papers published before August 2026, it flagged major theorem errors in 6% and minor errors in another 30%. The authors estimate that slightly under 90% of the major findings are correct.
https://matharena.ai/literature_mistakes/

4. Four Gemini agents complete Minecraft together. Four Gemini 4 Argon agents defeated the Ender Dragon in 27 hours and 14 minutes, writing 2,783 programs and coordinating through chat and shared notes without human intervention during the run. An engaging demonstration of sustained teamwork, using Easy difficulty and a structured game interface.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22319

5. Google demonstrates magic-state cultivation on quantum hardware. On its Willow processor, Google demonstrated a technique for preparing a crucial quantum-computing resource, reducing errors about fortyfold and achieving 99.99% logical fidelity for T-states. A meaningful experimental advance, though larger-scale demonstrations are still needed.
https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/quantum-computing/magic-state-cultivation-quantum-computing/

6. Timothy Gowers reconsiders AI extinction risk. Gowers explains why he now takes AI extinction arguments more seriously, which objections he finds inadequate, and where he remains uncertain. An accessible personal reassessment rather than a technical risk estimate.
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2026/10/16/how-worried-should-we-be-about-extinction-risk-from-ai/

7. Can models choose rare actions without a written reasoning trace? Experiments find that Astra and Sol can approximate specified low action probabilities without reported reasoning tokens when explicitly given a random seed and extra prompt tokens. Interesting for AI monitoring, with substantial limits on broader claims about covert behavior.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yEdknsLwbooQAnxX6/astra-and-sol-can-take-low-probability-actions-with-no-cot

8. Glimpse: a model built for visual reasoning. Elorian introduces a model that revisits images and video, tracks objects, and uses visual tools while reasoning. Promising demonstrations for video analysis and robotics workflows, with performance claims based on the company’s own evaluations.
https://elorian.ai/blog/introducing-glimpse

“Do you think you are being treated as a scapegoat for his own problems?”

Zelensky:

Sergey Brin says by the time people see Gemini 4 Argon, Google is internally already using a couple of models ahead, and expects the cadence to continue to accelerate

"Yeah, I'm very excited about the cadence that we have nowadays. And if you look at even before Gemini 4, when we had Flash 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, we're starting to get onto that RSI treadmill."

"And now our researchers and the model work hand in hand to make the next version of the model. Actually, I just popped in here kind of randomly because Melvin and I were talking about the next version of the model."

"And probably by the time folks are viewing this internally, we're already using a couple models ahead. So it's just very exciting to see the progress and the cadence. And I expect it'll only continue to accelerate."

Did you know that Ukraine is on its last legs?

GLM-5.3 sometimes reasons (unprompted) about how its current actions could become training data and impact its future self.

Read more: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/R5g8YT25G9DXJJ48n/glm-5-3-sometimes-considers-how-train-time-actions-shape

Revolutionary hypothesis from David Reich, one of the great scientists of our age: modern humans and Neanderthals may descend from the same ancestral population, originating possibly in the Middle East rather than deep inside Africa. Complicates the “out of Africa theory”

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.11.711219v2

It's quite pathetic that European politicians are horrified by Zelensky's public stand against Trump. Stop being weaklings and follow his example!

There are so many extremely cucked people like Elon Musk who bow to foreign strongmen like Xi Jinping. Zelensky does not bow to bullies.

Or look at the servile bitches of the German AfD. They're all about raising the white flag. It's completely alien to them that white patriots might actually fight for their nation against overwhelming odds. They would have fled or surrendered on day one. Zelensky stayed when things looked extremely bleak and Russian special forces were knocking at the doors of Kyiv.

Much of the hatred toward Zelensky stems from pure envy because they will never be the man he is. They would immediately fold if they were in the White House and being jumped by the president and vice president of the United States.

Dwarkesh Patel reveals that an Anthropic employee told him two days ago they expect AIs to match humans at AI research within nine months based on inside information they can’t share, and says labs should make that evidence public

“I think there’s a very frustrating element to the current situation right now, where people inside the AI labs claim to have evidence that makes them more worried. And they are not allowed to talk about it. And this makes it a very difficult situation on the outside to evaluate how worried we should be."

"So for example, just the other day, maybe two days ago, I was talking to somebody at Anthropic and they were like, look, I expect AIs to be humans at AI research within nine months."

"And I’m like, why do you believe that? Well, they’re like, it’s not just vibes, but I have information on the inside. Like, what is it? Is it a new model? Is it some evaluation you ran? It’s like, I can’t talk about it."

"I think it’s a terrible state of affairs. If they really believe this, if they think that we’re in a situation where we’re less than a year away from automating AI research and radically speeding it up, they should make this evidence public.”

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-jsSfh0a9M

I'm out of my depth here, but some people seem quite excited about this work: https://already-clean.goodfire.com/

roon:

when nick told me that he had some interp breakthroughs, he was uh, underselling it. i think this may be remembered as a major moment in scientific history. news so good even eliezer will have to lower his pdoom. we can start making alignment into a 'normal science'

by https://www.youtube.com/@freeonis

Russian media in an uproar, elated that Putin owns Trump completely and their wars can continue to expand.

Musk is just a genuinely horrible person. Literally attacking the victim of an aggression. Never a bad word against Putin who's killing entire families and leveling whole cities.

This isn't just about Ukraine. Remember the British diver? Musk lies to destroy people's lives for criticizing him. Musk is such an insecure manchild that he even needs to lie about being good at video games.

Ask yourself if you ever want to be at the mercy of someone with such character traits. If that thought scares you, think about what will happen if Musk wins the Al race-a universe ruled by a tyrannical bully. Let's fight to make sure that never happens. Musk must lose.

Science fiction is dead. Just read the news instead.

Read more: https://swarmcha.se/posts/chinese-agent-fleet-full-report

More on OpenAI's proofs:

1. French mathematician Sylvia Serfaty: Most of OpenAI's results would deserve the Fields Medal. The proofs are of incredible complexity and also sometimes of striking beauty. That is to say, we do not have the monopoly on beauty.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6JLrjfUL_c

2. “Rumors that OpenAI’s “Navier-Stokes” solution stole the work of two mathematicians may have been overblown … When you go to the details, it is a different approach,” says Gonzalo Cao-Labora, a mathematician at EPFL … All said that it’s increasingly clear that the company’s proof does not follow the Spanish program.”

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/openais-blockbuster-navier-stokes-proof-isnt-what-we-thought-it-was/ [no paywall: https://archive.is/g6zy3]

Our initial evaluation suggested that GPT-6-Astra's score was in the late eighties followed closely by Opus 5.5

But, as we started to investigate the mistakes that the models might have made, the models, especially Astra, insisted that they were right and that it was the expert-supplied answers that were erroneous. When we went back to the experts it turned out, in multiple instances, that that the experts found some subtle errors buried deep inside their calculations. As they revised their answers, Astra's score started to inch up and it finally ended up with 98% (49/50).

Also:

I don't know of any individual who can solve any significant fraction of our final collection of problems without AI assistance. For instance, I can solve the problems I contributed myself and understand a few others. Most problems don't even make sense to me.

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.16733
Quote from an author summary: https://www.facebook.com/suvrat.raju/posts/pfbid0v6GWqNBXbdiQz1HEuTdYtfeio85nww5D1kU2unqkgUa8WtASeYyHePm91bZZt6YJl

Gemini 4 Argon addressed evaluators directly in its chain-of-thought (“hello evaluators reading my chain-of-thought”) during evals.

Source: https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/gemini/gemini_4_safety_report.pdf

To grasp the treachery of Trump's actions, consider what a stunning success Ukraine has been for America.

First, Ukraine, a country that was firmly within the sphere of influence of an Iranian and North Korean ally, was successfully dislodged and sought to join America's sphere of influence instead.

Then, Russia fell into the perfect trap. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have been killed, yet not a single American soldier has been lost. Their energy infrastructure is being destroyed, which benefits American competitors. Now, Russian data centers used to train military AI models for drones and process satellite data for Iran are destroyed.

And what is Trump doing? He's threatening to withhold U.S. intelligence data, which would have been collected in any case, threatening arms sales paid for by Europe, and restricting the Starlink service, which is also fully paid, in order to protect Russian infrastructure. In other words, he's sabotaging one of the most successful U.S. operations in history by rejecting foreign money that benefits the American defense industry in order to protect an American enemy.

Indeed. Musk's products should now be treated as a national security risk. He'll use them to blackmail its users into submission. Outlaw them and develop domestic alternatives.