Newport is also the guy who suggested that Anthropic deserved the Nobel Prize in marketing for the Anthropic launch

Something you won't hear me say often (because, as previously mentioned, I despise The New York Times), but this recent op-ed is essential reading. It's essential because computer scientist Cal Newport is one of the most thoughtful and clear-eyed voices in the AI debate. Anthropic recently dropped a classic of the form: a scary-sounding report titled “When A.I. Builds Itself” that claims A.I. could be moving closer to the capability of “autonomously designing and developing its own successor.” The company hopes that this recursive self-improvement will bring “enormous good” to the world, but also openly worries it might lead to humans “losing control” of these systems.The public reaction to this report focused on a section that seemed to call for a worldwide pause on A.I. development. But if you read more carefully, it becomes clear that a pause isn’t actually what Anthropic proposes. Its report says that “if it were possible” to slow down the technology, then we should, but so long…