2 Aug 2026
Signal Headquarters

Field Notes · 2 Aug 2026

Best explained

Geoffrey Hinton's use of 'confabulation' over 'hallucination' for AI errors draws a direct parallel to how humans unconsciously fill gaps in fragmented memory to produce a coherent story.

By the numbers

A full Fed balance-sheet unwind would steepen the yield curve another 100 basis points, pushing long-end yields to 5.5 to 6%.

New today — Evidence added

A customer switching from Sierra to Decagon built 7 new journeys in one month, versus only 3 journeys built in a full year on Sierra.

Jesse Zhang

New today — Sharp calls

Lauren Hochfelder on leading indicators invisible in the data: bidder counts for industrial vacancies dropping from many to two.

Lauren Hochfelder

Adam Gleave on jailbreaking open-weight models: it has never taken more than a few hours.

Adam Gleave

Microsoft will bring its Copilot experiences together, including code, into one super app within the current quarter.

Satya Nadella

New today — Useful context

Cleo Abram on neutrinos revealing the interior of a galaxy hidden from light.

Cleo Abram

Tool watch

Claude Code (Anthropic) is reportedly now the majority of Anthropic's revenue, displacing the API-centric model and becoming the dominant coding AI inside tech firms.

Worth quoting

“Every good AI is good in the same way. Every rogue AI is rogue in its own way.”
David Dalrymple
“If we just talk specifically about 300 million ARR, most of that's like almost 70% are agencies.”
Alex Mashrabov
“It's not the stress that burns us down, it's the response to stress.”
Martin Picard
“The transformers can't plan but they can do a very good job of pretending essentially that is in a sense.”
François Chollet
“Something like 46% of the emperors of Constantinople are overthrown through violence. 46%. And that's almost half.”
Anthony Kaldellis
“From Bitcoin's code perspective, it didn't bend the knee. The institutions bent the knee to bring Bitcoin into it.”
Dan Held