Weekly Top Picks #120

The AI industry has spent $725 billion in a high-stakes gamble on returns, while the U.S. government moves to nationalize AI models as strategic resources. A Chinese court ruled companies cannot offload automation costs onto workers, and top AI models scored below 0.5% on the ARC-AGI-3 benchmark, challenging claims of artificial general intelligence. Richard Dawkins now believes Claude may be conscious, as debates over a "permanent underclass" intensify.

Weekly Top Picks 120 Q1 earnings / Trump wants to nationalize AI / China protects its workers / ARC-AGI-3 defeats GPT-5.5 and Opus-4.7 / The "permanent underclass" / Dawkins x Claudia Hey there, I’m Alberto 👋 Each week, I publish long-form AI analysis covering culture, philosophy, and business for The Algorithmic Bridge. Paid subscribers also get Monday how-to guides and Friday news commentary. I publish occasional extra articles. If you’d like to become a paid subscriber, here’s a button for that: THE WEEK IN AI AT A GLANCE Money & Business: The price tag of the AI gold rush: $725 billion. Will it pay off? Geopolitics: The US government plans to treat AI models as national resources. Work & Workers: A Chinese court ruled that companies can’t dump the costs of AI automation onto workers. Another thing China leads in. Products & Capabilities: The best AI models in the world score below 0.5% on ARC-AGI-3—is this what you call AGI, guys? Culture & Society: A thorough take on the “permanent underclass” story. Philosophy: Richard Dawkins is starting to think that Claude is conscious. THE WEEK IN THE ALGORITHMIC BRIDGE PAID SpaceX + Cursor + Mistral / Jensen v Jensen / The job AI can’t take / GPT-5.5 and ChatGPT Images 2.0 / An anti-grammar app / Terence Tao on the future Weekly Top Picks 119 https://www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/weekly-top-picks-119 : PAID 21 concrete protections drawn from 30+ studies on what AI does to your cognition. The checklist version of last week's literature review. How to Protect Your Brain From AI in 5 Minutes https://www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/how-to-protect-your-brain-from-ai : PAID New Federal Reserve research confirms what private data already suggested, that AI is killing junior coding jobs first. This is the Worst Career Decision You Can Make Right Now https://www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/this-is-the-worst-career-decision : Keep reading with a 7-day free trial Subscribe to The Algorithmic Bridge to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.