SIt's Rush Hour Mix, Monday 5:20 — and OpenAI just launched its next model. Sam Altman says GPT-6.1 Terra is here, and the whole pitch is computer use.
EAnd when he says computer use, he means the thing can look at your screen, click around, do the work for you. That's a big deal for a lot of people.
SIt's also the same pitch every model makes now. 'New era' — Altman's words, not mine. One reply on X said the bar for an era is impressively low.
ECome on, the pace of these releases is real. Lower price, faster, more capable — that's an actual step.
SI'm not saying it's nothing. I'm saying the hype machine runs on repeat. Every release is a new era until the next one.
EFair, but the computer-use angle is different. That's not just chat; it's taking action. That's how AI becomes an employee.
SOr how it becomes your excuse for not learning anything.
ESpeaking of numbers, there's a claim coming out of a polling account — no official confirmation yet — that Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by eleven points: forty-seven to thirty-six.
SAnd the same account says Trump's approval ticked up to thirty-two, from what they call a record low a week earlier.
EIf those are real, that's a rough environment for the GOP. An eleven-point lead on the generic ballot usually means a wave.
SBut here's the thing — these numbers come from the Walter Bloomberg account, and there's no official Reuters/Ipsos poll out yet. Treat it as a claim.
ERight, but there's another post from two professors — Harry Crane at Rutgers and Koleman Strumpf at Wake Forest — writing in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that election polls deserve more scrutiny than prediction markets. They're saying fake polls are a problem.
SI actually agree with them. Polls have become a polling-the-polls industry. Prediction markets at least have money on the line.
EBut prediction markets have their own biases. Rich people bet differently. It's not a random sample.
SNeither are polls with a four percent response rate. At least the market aggregates a lot of opinions.
EI'll give you that, but let's see if those ballot numbers even hold up. If they do, it's a story. If not, it's noise.
SExactly. That's the whole problem — we won't know until election day, and by then everyone's moved on.