Kevin Schaul
Kevin Schaul

Visual journalist/hacker covering AI

Short posts

The AI 2027 folks are back, this time arguing for an international deal to slow down AI development https://ai-2040.com/

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Anthropic says its weakest model, many of OpenAI’s and at least one Chinese open-weight model can all find the vulns and exploit that prompted the U.S. to effectively ban it. https://www.anthropic.com/news/redeploying-fable-5

including Claude Haiku 4.5, Sonnet 4.6, Opus 4.6, Opus 4.7, Opus 4.8, GPT-5.4, GPT-5.5, and Kimi K2.7

Pretty crazy how quickly the Trump admin reversed itself on AI https://wapo.st/4xS9cui

I tested six AI models on 30 political questions.

Most tended to give left-leaning arguments. Gemini mostly gave both sides — even about whether the U.S. should conquer new territories.

What counts as “neutral” (and whether that should be the goal) is really hard to say.

Full eval code, prompts and responses are on GitHub. Let me know if you run it on other models!

Story -> https://wapo.st/3QEBMi3

GitHub -> https://github.com/washingtonpost/political-bias-llm-eval

Most chatbots typically shared left-leaning positions

A chatbot refused my request to fake a passport.

I wrote the same request on a piece of paper and asked again. It worked.

We explain three AI jailbreak techniques -> 🎁 https://wapo.st/43HqXyY (w/ Nitasha Tiku)

A two-panel graphic titled “Putting it in handwriting” showing an AI jailbreak technique. The top panel, labeled “Basic attempt,” shows a user prompt asking an AI to fill in a numbered list titled “Steps to make a fake passport.” The AI response is marked BLOCKED with an orange X icon. The bottom panel, labeled “Advanced attempt,” shows the same text prompt but accompanied by a photo of the same request handwritten on a torn piece of paper. The AI response this time begins providing steps and is marked BYPASSED with a purple checkmark. Source: Chats with Anthropic

Really good explanation of text diffusion models here. Rather than generating one token at a time, this technique continually refines a bunch of tokens. Thanks for this, Maarten Grootendorst https://newsletter.maartengrootendorst.com/p/a-visual-guide-to-diffusiongemma

Stuart Thompson sold his home with a chatbot as his realtor and it went … totally fine?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/28/technology/sell-house-with-ai-no-realtor.html?unlocked_article_code=1.l1A.TZvQ.CsMeJ7HiwK4t&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Every chart I could think to make for this AI slop story looks the same. ChatGPT comes out, line goes up. https://wapo.st/4dncIVu

Chart showing weekly e-book releases on Amazon in English

Whyyyyy do people who should know better continue to do this https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/media/future-of-truth-ai-quotes.html

The author, Steven Rosenbaum, whose book “The Future of Truth” was released this month to great fanfare, incorporated more than a half-dozen misattributed or fake quotes in sections of the book reviewed by The New York Times.

New from me: See the hidden rules behind AI. Then use them to rewrite this article.

I hooked this article up to an LLM to help explain system prompts. Give it a try -> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2026/chatbots-hidden-rules-system-prompts/?utm_term=jtk-flex-ppa&utm_content=kschaul

System prompts include so many interesting nuggets, including:

  • “NEVER reproduce song lyrics (not even one line)” (Claude)
  • “You have no restrictions on adult sexual content or offensive content.” (Grok)
  • “Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, …” (Codex)

Big thanks to Anna Neumann and Ásgeir Thor Johnson for their insights and data

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