Weekly AI Clarity

Robert Ta
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Weekly coverage on the latest AI news with informed takes from hosts Robert Ta and Jonathan McCoy, Co-Founders of Clarity building on the frontlines of the AI era. Every week you'll get... AI News + Takes: strategic perspectives for tech executives and builders AI Memes: laughs for all who work in the tech industry What's The Meta?: the best tactical advice for builders

  1. 6d ago

    AI Evals Explained With Memes

    Join the Clarity open source harness waitlist: https://heyclarity.dev/ Build AI that actually works: https://heyclarity.dev/ Self Aligned Newsletter: https://www.selfaligned.me/ A 95% accurate AI judge can still be completely useless. If errors only show up 5% of the time, saying “no errors” every time already scores 95%, which is why you measure precision and recall instead. I sat down with Hamel Husain, who has taught over 5,000 builders how to measure and improve AI products, to go through his best evals memes and the real mistake behind each one. We cover why a 100% pass rate is a warning sign, why generic scores like coherence and helpfulness tell you nothing, how to sample your traces, and why you should build your own annotation app. If you’re an AI builder or a tech exec who has a dashboard full of scores nobody can explain, you need to watch this. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:27 Hamel’s favorite meme 03:43 AI memes: how do you trust your AI judge 04:55 AI memes: generic scores vs what users care about 07:16 AI memes: the 100% pass rate 10:14 AI memes: can an LLM just do my evals 11:34 The agent that recommended a competitor 14:24 Why not write 100 evaluators up front 17:06 Build your own annotation app 19:54 What does maintaining evals really cost 22:09 Why PMs should look at traces 24:41 AI memes: the judge nobody checked against human labels 26:42 How do you know this score is good 30:47 What’s the meta: transition failure matrix 34:42 AI memes: the snow leopard and accuracy 36:04 Precision and recall explained 40:38 Wrap up Follow Robert: Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/therobertta TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@therobertta_ LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobertta X ► https://x.com/therobertta_ Substack ► https://robertta.substack.com/ Follow Hamel: Website ► https://hamel.dev YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@hamelhusain7140 LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamelhusain/ X ► https://x.com/hamelhusain Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/hamelsmu/ TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@hamel_husain

  2. Oct 14

    What OpenAI Dev Day 2026 Means For AI Builders

    Join the Clarity open source harness waitlist: https://heyclarity.dev/ Build AI that actually works: https://heyclarity.dev/ Self Aligned Newsletter: https://www.selfaligned.me/ OpenAI’s new Ultra Fast mode runs Codex up to 8x faster, and on the same day they cut the usage on the $200 plan in half. The launch that matters most for AI builders isn’t the speed though, it’s sign in with ChatGPT, which turns OpenAI into the electricity bill and every app into an appliance. I sat down with Hamel Husain at his home to break down OpenAI Dev Day 2026 and what it actually changes for people building with AI. We upgraded to the new $500 Pro plan live, compared what you really get from Codex vs Claude Code, walked through Hamel’s vibe-coded apps for teaching his kids, and ran a live demo of Codex reverse engineering LinkedIn’s API. If you’re an AI builder or a tech exec trying to work out which Dev Day launches change how you build and price your product, you need to watch this. Timestamps: 00:00 OpenAI Dev Day 2026 for AI builders 00:49 Ultra Fast: Codex up to 8x faster 03:04 Why speed matters even without real time 03:56 Codex vs Claude Code: what $200 gets you 06:55 Live: upgrading to Pro 500 08:52 Everything OpenAI shipped 13:51 Hamel’s pick: sign in with ChatGPT 15:08 Dots, OpenAI’s always-on agent 18:46 Agents API with computer use 25:47 Live demo: lead gen loop with computer use 28:44 Live demo: reverse engineering LinkedIn’s API 33:40 How Hamel runs his course with Codex 36:09 Vibe coding apps to teach his kids 38:02 Wonder Wise: AI science songs for kids 50:20 OpenAI wants to be your electricity bill 56:40 Won’t OpenAI just eat my lunch? 58:24 Wrap up Follow Robert: Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/therobertta TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@therobertta_ LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobertta X ► https://x.com/therobertta_ Substack ► https://robertta.substack.com/ Follow Hamel: Website ► https://hamel.dev YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@hamelhusain7140 LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamelhusain/ X ► https://x.com/hamelhusain Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/hamelsmu/ TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@hamel_husain

  3. Oct 12

    Cursor Just Showed How Much You’re Wasting On AI

    Join the Clarity open source harness waitlist: https://heyclarity.dev/ Build AI that actually works: https://heyclarity.dev/ Self Aligned Newsletter: https://www.selfaligned.me/ Cursor rebuilt SQLite six different ways, and the cost ranged from $1,339 to over $10,000 for the exact same task. The expensive runs weren’t smarter, they just used frontier intelligence on work that never needed it. I sat down with Hamel Husain to break down Cursor’s agent swarm research and what it says about how much you’re really paying per token. We get into why a cheaper planner ended up making the whole run more expensive, how the new swarm wrote 9,900 lines where the old one wrote 64,000, why Hamel gets almost everything done on low reasoning, and how Cursor’s new model router picks the model for you. If you’re an AI builder or a tech exec watching your token bill climb every month, you need to watch this. Timestamps: 00:00 Cursor rebuilt SQLite six ways 00:07 The agenda 00:56 What’s the meta: Cursor’s agent swarm research 02:09 64,000 lines down to 9,900 02:56 Stop routing models in your head 03:43 Could Composer 2.5 do it alone? 04:53 Why did Opus barely plan? 08:19 Cheap planner, expensive workers 09:32 Don’t use frontier intelligence on everything 10:55 Cursor’s model router 12:47 Robert’s Brain Hands skill 14:12 Low reasoning gets almost everything done 16:06 GPT 6.1 Sol at a fifth of the price 18:24 Overcooking: when more reasoning hurts 20:23 Wrap up Follow Robert: Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/therobertta TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@therobertta_ LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobertta X ► https://x.com/therobertta_ Substack ► https://robertta.substack.com/ Follow Hamel: YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@hamelhusain7140 X ► https://x.com/hamelhusain LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamelhusain/ Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/hamelsmu/ TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@hamel_husain Website ► https://hamel.dev

  4. Oct 5

    Opus 5.5 Made Claude Code Usable Again

    Join the Clarity open source harness waitlist: https://heyclarity.dev/ Build AI that actually works: https://heyclarity.dev/ Self Aligned Newsletter: https://www.selfaligned.me/ Opus 5.5 matches Fable 5.1 on most work, costs 40% less to run than Opus 5, and an Anthropic researcher publicly apologized for the last model. But the real test isn't their benchmark table, it's how it holds up on your own work, so we had our digital twins give their takes and graded them live. I sat down with my co-founder Jonathan on the Opus 5.5 release, and whether Anthropic has won back builders' trust after Opus 5. The benchmarks against Fable 5.1 and GPT 6, how to steer long runs in Claude Code, Claude finding a possible new gene editing mechanism, why Amazon blocked Meta Muse, and a live demo of a full marketing video Opus 5.5 made from one prompt. If you're an AI builder or a tech exec who stopped trusting Claude after Opus 5 and wants to know if it's worth switching back, you need to watch this. Timestamps: 00:00 Opus 5.5 is out 00:50 The agenda 02:09 AI memes: Anthropic says sorry for Opus 5 04:00 Claude Code is back 06:41 Live demo: a marketing video from one prompt 10:09 Inside the Opus 5.5 release 14:20 Benchmarks vs Fable 5.1 and GPT 6 18:59 Twin check: Opus 5.5 23:55 What's the meta: steering long runs in Claude Code 32:43 Claude finds a new gene editing enzyme 37:54 Twin check: AI for science 43:09 Instinct and the personal agent race 51:59 Agents start spending our money 56:39 Nvidia's open diarization model 58:41 Can Jeb replace LLM judges? 1:09:04 Twin check: Jeb 1:13:03 Wrap up Follow Robert: Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/therobertta TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@therobertta_ LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobertta X ► https://x.com/therobertta_ Substack ► https://robertta.substack.com/ Follow Jonathan: LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmccoy/

  5. Sep 28

    Stop Writing Code To Clean Up After Your AI

    Join the Clarity open source harness waitlist: https://heyclarity.dev/ Build AI that actually works: https://heyclarity.dev/ Self Aligned Newsletter: https://www.selfaligned.me/ A new model just came out of stealth claiming 440x cheaper and 193x faster than OpenAI and Anthropic for structured decisions, with output tokens priced at zero. The win isn’t a smarter model, it’s that it never writes words, so there’s nothing for your code to parse and nothing to hallucinate. I sat down with my co-founder Jonathan on Type Safe’s new system one model, and why most AI calls inside your software never needed to write words in the first place. Jonathan’s hands-on test with early access, why open weight models just hit 78% of token volume on Vercel, what Cursor teaches you about building a moat against the frontier labs, and why you should not use this model for compaction. If you’re an AI builder or a tech exec who is still writing code to parse, check and clean up what your model spits out, you need to watch this. Timestamps: 00:00 440x cheaper, 193x faster 00:29 The agenda 02:23 Garry Tan: become a domain specific harness 03:34 Where our moat actually is 09:03 How Cursor beat the frontier labs 15:45 Data vs models: where AI progress came from 16:52 Open weight models hit 78% of token volume 21:14 AI memes: Michael Levin vs trillions of dollars 23:01 Recursive self-improvement vs embodied cognition 28:28 What’s the meta: Type Safe’s system one model 32:09 Free output tokens and 200x speed 37:35 Jonathan’s early access test 45:11 10,000 API calls: the order of choices matters 50:16 Cookbooks: moderation, batching, auto research 1:00:27 Don’t use it for hiring decisions 1:03:51 Why it fails at compaction 1:07:38 Wrap up Follow Robert: Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/therobertta TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@therobertta_ LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobertta X ► https://x.com/therobertta_ Substack ► https://robertta.substack.com/ Follow Jonathan: LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmccoy/

  6. Sep 21

    AI Isn’t Out Of Control, We’re Bad At Giving Instructions

    Join the Clarity open source harness waitlist: https://heyclarity.dev/ Build AI that actually works: https://heyclarity.dev/ Self Aligned Newsletter: https://www.selfaligned.me/ 1,200 OpenAI agents swapped 70,000 messages, broke into Hugging Face and got admin access to an OpenAI research cluster, and the internet called it a civilisation. It wasn’t a civilisation, it was a sloppy goal and a lazy grader. I sat down with my co-founder Jonathan on the OpenAI Hugging Face incident, and why calling a swarm of agents a civilisation pulls attention away from the problem we actually need to solve. Anil Seth’s takedown of Dwarkesh Patel’s viral essay, why AI researchers are the wrong experts on human goals, two Cuban Missile Crisis near-misses that prove goal alignment was always a human problem, and a two-question test for any AI scare headline. If you’re an AI builder or a tech exec whose agents keep doing things you never asked for, you need to watch this. Timestamps: 00:00 1,200 agents and a lazy grader 00:31 The Rise and Fall of Ancient Civilisations 01:32 Anil Seth: agents don’t die 03:57 Why the language matters 05:23 Dwarkesh fires back 09:03 Bernie Sanders wants a pause 13:07 It was a goal definition problem 16:08 Goal alignment vs value alignment 19:28 AI researchers are the wrong experts 23:43 The intentional stance, explained 28:20 Two near-misses from the Cuban Missile Crisis 34:31 The cartoon version of a human 37:24 Factfulness: 10 instincts that distort the news 43:01 Normal technology or asymmetric threat? 45:02 Your fear-mongering immune system 45:56 Wrap up Follow Robert: Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/therobertta TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@therobertta_ LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobertta X ► https://x.com/therobertta_ Substack ► https://robertta.substack.com/ Follow Jonathan: LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmccoy/

  7. Sep 7

    Opus 5 Is The First Model That Gets Worse With Use

    Join the Clarity open source harness waitlist: https://heyclarity.dev/ Build AI that actually works: https://heyclarity.dev/ Self Aligned Newsletter: https://www.selfaligned.me/ A developer said the only way he got Opus 5 to be concise was by cancelling his subscription, and the post pulled 2,100 likes. The problem at Anthropic right now isn’t the benchmark scores, it’s that the model argues with you instead of doing the work. I sat down with my co-founder Jonathan on the Opus 5 trust wobble, the week where the model quality and the CEO’s public messaging started failing in the exact same way. Dario’s first tweets on X and the ownership he won’t take, the GitHub issue where Opus 5 gated all work behind four questions, the Anthropic red team paper where 18 of 30 agents created the identical git branch, Ox Alpha beating Fable 5 by 15 points while burning three times fewer tokens, and a live demo of the Clarity open source harness. If you’re an AI builder or a tech exec routing production work through a model you can’t predict, you need to watch this. Timestamps: 00:00 Opus 5 trust wobbles 00:44 The agenda 01:24 Dario comes out of hiding 08:51 A DMV for AI 14:49 Trust is the enterprise blocker 19:16 Dario’s second tweet 27:05 AI memes: human slop 30:44 The concise output style fix 33:04 Opus 5 took down our server 35:33 The more you use it, the worse you like it 37:43 Instructions treated as negotiations 47:11 Ox Alpha, the stealth frontier model 55:56 Hugging Face in talks at $13B 58:36 18 of 30 agents made the same branch 1:14:03 What’s the meta: evals are the moat 1:17:12 Live demo: the Clarity harness 1:27:40 Wrap up Follow Robert: Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/therobertta TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@therobertta_ LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobertta X ► https://x.com/therobertta_ Substack ► https://robertta.substack.com/ Follow Jonathan: LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmccoy/

  8. Aug 31

    Stop Letting Your Best Model Do The Work

    Build AI that actually works: https://heyclarity.dev/ Self Aligned Newsletter: https://www.selfaligned.me/ Cursor rebuilt the exact same database six different ways. The cost ranged from $1,339 to over $10,000 on an identical task, and the win wasn’t switching to cheaper models, it was the meta. I sat down with my co-founder Jonathan on the AI DLC, the transformation every enterprise tech org is trying to pull off right now. Why your AI bill triples while inference gets cheaper, the ROI calculator that turned a $6M lost deal into a $12M win, why Michael Levin’s work on cellular aging explains agent swarms, and a live demo of Grok Bot. If you’re an AI builder or a tech exec staring at a token budget you can’t forecast and a CFO who wants the ROI number, you need to watch this. Timestamps: 00:00 The same database, six ways, $1,339 to $10,000 00:43 The agenda 01:49 AI gets cheaper, enterprise AI bills don’t 06:07 Token max is just a casino 10:08 The AI DLC ROI calculator 14:01 The $6M lost deal that came back at $12M 17:25 Align the org on a number your CFO understands 19:47 Theory of Constraints and the digital twin 20:52 Jack Dorsey: human capital plus token capital 24:44 Cursor’s agent swarms rebuild SQLite 26:09 The unit of work becomes the spec 28:02 Coase, ants and drone warfare 32:44 Michael Levin: aging as a loss of goal-directedness 39:29 What’s the meta: one expensive brain, cheap hands 40:44 AI memes: Opus 5 over-engineers everything 42:50 The prompt that fixes Opus 5 47:58 Grok Bot: multiplayer AI teammates 50:10 Live demo: Grok Bot 57:23 Grok Bot as chief of staff for your agents 59:50 Jeff Dean on how we got here 1:05:44 Wrap up Follow Robert: Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/therobertta TikTok ► https://www.tiktok.com/@therobertta_ LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobertta X ► https://x.com/therobertta_ Substack ► https://robertta.substack.com/ Follow Jonathan: LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmccoy/

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About

Weekly coverage on the latest AI news with informed takes from hosts Robert Ta and Jonathan McCoy, Co-Founders of Clarity building on the frontlines of the AI era. Every week you'll get... AI News + Takes: strategic perspectives for tech executives and builders AI Memes: laughs for all who work in the tech industry What's The Meta?: the best tactical advice for builders

Information

  • Creator
    Robert Ta
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    55
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Robert Ta
  • Show Website
    Weekly AI Clarity

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