Slow Takes Ep. 27: Marking Their Own Homework

Every story this week is a claim made by the people who gain from it: a proof, a safety report, a jobs figure, a school test, and a toothbrush. Every Monday, Leor from Exploring ChatGPT (https://substack.com/profile/11918492...) and I go through the week’s AI news without the hype. Catch the episode live on Substack (https://theslowai.substack.com/s/slow...) , on YouTube (@exploringchatgptlive) , or as a podcast wherever you get yours, so you can pick the format you enjoy. Use this for the facts, the links and a little extra context. If you know someone who would benefit from more AI news and less BS, please share this with them. 1. OpenAI says it solved Navier-Stokes OpenAI says around 10,000 AI agents working for 88 hours produced a proof (https://openai.com/index/navier-stoke...) that the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe how fluids flow, can break down. It is one of seven Millennium Prize problems worth $1m each, and the route it takes, with a smooth force applied to the fluid, is one the official problem allows. Nobody outside OpenAI has checked it yet, and the Clay Institute says its process will be deliberately unhurried. Then there is the row. NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge, who works at Anthropic, published their own results on the simpler Euler equations hours before OpenAI announced. OpenAI admits it started on 1 September after rumours about their work, and says it cannot rule out that de-identified data from their use of its products helped its models. OpenAI’s own researchers say the run cost millions of dollars, and Leor pointed out that spending more than the prize is worth still pays off in the company’s valuation. My worry is what a brute-forced proof leaves out: the learning that made the problem worth solving. 2. Anthropic’s report card, and a call to slow down Anthropic has published Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026 (https://www.anthropic.com/threat-inte...) , covering December 2025 to August 2026. It includes five cases of people using Claude in ways that could support biological weapons development and six weapons cases, among them a freelance team in Russia writing software for kamikaze drone swarms. Publishing this deserves credit, but Anthropic chose what went in, and nobody outside can check what it left out. Over the weekend Dario Amodei followed with We Must Pace the Frontier (https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-...) , calling for embedded outside evaluators, shared safety standards and limits on the pace of progress, and coordination with countries such as China. Leor raised a problem few people are discussing: rival US companies agreeing to slow down together could fall foul of antitrust law, and Amodei’s essay asks the government for a narrow waiver for exactly that reason. Amodei also writes that pausing made little sense when it was floated in 2023. I disagree; these guardrails belonged in the tools from the start. 3. 40,200 jobs, or 10,400 Verdant, an economic think tank, examined planning applications and staffing figures for 20 planned UK datacentres and puts permanent jobs at around 10,400 by 2035 (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/09/ai-da...) , a quarter of the roughly 40,200 that TechUK, the industry’s trade body, projects. Verdant says TechUK’s 8.5 jobs per megawatt comes from older, smaller sites, and that newer, more automated ones are closer to 1.2. TechUK stands by its numbers, and nobody in this row is neutral. Any jobs forecast to 2035 depends on how fast robotics moves, so even 10,400 may be generous. If a datacentre is proposed near you, ask for the permanent staffing figure in writing, separate from the construction jobs. I have a longer piece on datacentres coming on Friday. 4. Alpha School’s heart-rate test Benjamin Riley (https://substack.com/profile/21461382...) ’s reporting on Alpha School (https://buildcognitiveresonance.subst...) , the private AI school network, describes a boot camp where children watch recorded videos of their parents criticising them while wearing a heart monitor. Go more than 10% above your resting rate and you fail. The same boot camp asks them to win 100 Twitter followers. Leor, a chess player, made the fair point that staying calm under pressure is a real skill. You teach that with patience and calm breathing, and Alpha School has turned it into a public stress test with a pass mark. 5. A camera in your toothbrush Dyson’s $499 CameraJet (https://www.techradar.com/health-fitn...) has a camera just below the brush head, uses AI to aim a jet between your teeth, and streams a live view of the inside of your mouth to the MyDyson app. Dyson says no images are recorded or stored, on the brush or in the cloud. That is Dyson’s word, but why does a toothb...