Claude’s Cycles
Don Knuth, Stanford Computer Science Department
(28 February 2026; revised 02 March 2026)

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/claude-cycles.pdf

#computerScience #algorithms #AI

@maxpool - it's interesting how the general public, or at least the "left", talks a lot about the failures of systems like Claude, while some mathematicians and computer scientists like @tao and Knuth are using these systems to solve problems. I've been using Claude to learn math and create interactive web pages, thus avoiding the need to learn how to write html code that does computations and creates graphs or sounds.

I think what you get out of these systems depends a lot on what you put in.

@johncarlosbaez

I agree. You must learn to use them productively. These systems are full of harms and misuse, and also benefits and good uses.

I think the societal impact will get very bad before it get good. The quick buck comes from causing or ignoring harms.

https://infosec.exchange/@k3ym0/116161635202253362