Reading notes#
Notes and digests from reading all 391 posts of Maynard’s Substack in 32 chronological batches.
Files#
| File | Words | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| B01 digest: 2014-11-23 to 2018-08-22 (18 posts) | 1,153 | This batch is the pre-Substack foundation. Most of it is Conversation op-eds and 2020 Science posts, later migrated. Several carry Substack dates months earlier than their true publication (see B01.md), so the… |
| B01 notes: 18 posts, 2014-11-23 to 2018-08-22 | 6,178 | Batch scope: early material carried over to the Substack from The Conversation (most posts) and from Andrew’s older blog 2020 Science (2020science.org). All 18 posts were read in full. No Modem Futura podcast posts fall… |
| B02 digest: 2018-08-26 to 2018-11-15 (17 posts) | 1,235 | This batch is almost entirely the launch run for Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies (November 2018). Sixteen of the 17 posts are chapter excerpts, a self-Q&A or a spin-off essay. The… |
| Batch B02: notes (2018-08-26 to 2018-11-15, 17 posts) | 5,798 | None. Every post in this batch touches his core themes. The 2018-10-18 Inferno excerpt is the thinnest, and it is rated medium only for its framing ideas. |
| B03 digest: November 2018 to June 2019 (14 posts) | 1,195 | 1. Risk needs rethinking, not just applying: risk innovation, threat to value and orphan risks. The 2018-12-13 post sets out a three-part toolkit from the ASU Risk Innovation Lab: - Risk innovation: “we need parallel… |
| B03 reading notes: 14 posts, 2018-11-25 to 2019-06-12 | 5,695 | Batch context. This is the Medium-era archive, carried over to Substack, from the months after Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies came out (Mango, November 2018). Several posts are… |
| B04 digest: July 2019 to July 2020 | 1,201 | The batch has eight posts. All are medium or high relevance, and none is a Modem Futura podcast post. Four are adapted from his earlier work: - chapters 3 and 4 of Films from the Future - a 2018 Astrobiology article - a… |
| Batch B04 notes: 2019-07-23 to 2020-07-30 (8 posts) | 3,700 | All eight posts were read in full. None is a Modem Futura podcast post; the batch has no AI-generated text. Provenance problems here come from co-authorship (two posts) and from posts adapted from his earlier books and… |
| B05 digest: August 2020 to February 2021 | 1,205 | All the text is his own. There is no AI-generated, guest or co-written material. The FFTF excerpts record what he thought in 2017–18, reaffirmed in 2020–21 by his choice to reissue them. Chronologically this batch comes… |
| B05 reading notes: 2020-08-28 to 2021-02-25 (13 posts) | 5,227 | Batch context: this is the Medium-era (“Edge of Innovation”) material carried over to the Substack. Most original posts were first published on the ASU College of Global Futures Dean’s Blog, where Maynard was then… |
| B06 digest (2021-03-28 to 2022-12-13, 13 posts) | 1,214 | This batch covers the period from the pandemic to the release of ChatGPT. It captures Maynard at a hinge point. His established identity as a nanomaterial risk scientist and a scholar of responsible innovation through… |
| Batch B06 notes (13 posts, 2021-03-28 to 2022-12-13) | 4,910 | All 13 posts were read in full. This batch has no Modem Futura podcast posts. The 2021-05-28 post announces his Future Rising podcast, which is a different show. Most of these posts started on Medium (the slugs carry… |
| B07 digest — January to April 2023 (8 posts) | 1,225 | This batch marks the start of The Future of Being Human as a Substack. It contains two ChatGPT experiments from the Medium period (January and March 2023), the Substack launch note, and a burst of short, fast pieces… |
| B07 — reading notes (2023-01-31 to 2023-04-12, 8 posts) | 4,328 | Batch context: this batch covers his move from Medium to Substack. The first two posts are ChatGPT experiments from the Medium period (later carried over to the Substack archive). The April 2023 posts are his first… |
| B08 digest: 2023-04-14 to 2023-05-12 | 1,182 | This batch covers four weeks in spring 2023. ChatGPT was about five months old, and the Future of Life Institute “pause” letter had just come out. Maynard answers the moment largely by going back to his own earlier work… |
| B08 notes: 2023-04-14 to 2023-05-12 (12 posts) | 5,107 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B08. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. |
| B09 digest: 2023-05-15 to 2023-07-21 | 1,149 | This batch has eighteen posts from mid-2023, when AI governance moved from talk to institutions. Maynard responds almost in real time to a run of events: |
| B09 notes: 2023-05-15 to 2023-07-21 (18 posts) | 7,045 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B09. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. |
| B10 digest: 2023-07-25 to 2023-09-01 (18 posts) | 1,202 | Late summer 2023. Maynard has just taught his first ChatGPT course, term is about to start, and he is serialising audio readings of Films from the Future as The Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future (episodes 4–9; only his… |
| B10 notes: 2023-07-25 to 2023-09-01 (18 posts) | 6,709 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B10. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. |
| B11 digest: 2023-09-04 to 2023-10-20 | 1,206 | This batch covers seven weeks in autumn 2023. About a third of the posts are wrappers for the last five episodes of The Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future, in which he reads chapters of Films from the Future (2018). The… |
| B11 notes: 2023-09-04 to 2023-10-20 (18 posts) | 5,677 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B11. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. |
| B12 digest: 2023-10-24 to 2023-12-01 | 1,187 | This batch covers five weeks in autumn 2023: the Biden Executive Order on AI, the Bletchley Park summit, OpenAI’s custom GPTs, the Cruise robotaxi crisis, Sam Altman’s firing and return, and ChatGPT’s first anniversary.… |
| B12 notes: 2023-10-24 to 2023-12-01 (17 posts) | 6,086 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B12. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his typos and curly punctuation. |
| B13 digest: 2023-12-03 to 2024-02-05 | 1,211 | Fifteen posts from the ten weeks around the turn of 2024, mostly reactions to documents or events: the Pope’s World Day of Peace message, the UN AI Advisory Body’s interim report, the WEF Global Risks Report and Davos,… |
| B13 notes: 2023-12-03 to 2024-02-05 (15 posts) | 7,059 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B13. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. |
| B14 digest: 2024-02-11 to 2024-04-14 | 1,205 | Nine weeks in early 2024: Sora, Gemini’s image failure, Neuralink’s first patient, a burned Waymo, Orchid’s embryo screening, the Apple Vision Pro. Maynard answers as Director of ASU’s Future of Being Human initiative… |
| B14 notes: 2024-02-11 to 2024-04-14 (18 posts) | 6,500 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B14. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. |
| B15 digest: 2024-04-16 to 2024-06-23 (16 posts) | 1,134 | Ten weeks in spring and early summer 2024, driven by several events: FHI’s closure, DeepMind’s Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants, GPT-4o, the Johansson voice row, and Safe Superintelligence Inc. Most of the posts are… |
| B15 notes: 2024-04-16 to 2024-06-23 (16 posts) | 7,153 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B15. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation; asterisks mark his italics. |
| B16 digest: 2024-06-25 to 2024-08-18 | 1,206 | Fifteen posts from summer 2024, unified by the frame of advanced technology transitions. Two posts come out of his preparation for an IEEE keynote in Bali, “A New Science of Navigating Advanced Technology Transitions”: |
| B16 notes: 2024-06-25 to 2024-08-18 (15 posts) | 7,164 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B16. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. (The Dune post contains invisible soft… |
| B17 digest: 2024-08-21 to 2024-09-25 | 1,215 | Ten posts from the start of the 2024–25 academic year, almost all his own prose, and no Modem Futura episode posts. The main non-authorial material: - AI outputs: o1 and GPT-4o transcripts (09-13), NotebookLM audio, and… |
| B17 notes: 2024-08-21 to 2024-09-25 (10 posts) | 5,636 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B17. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. Asterisks inside quotes mark his own italics. |
| B18 digest: 2024-09-28 (1 post) | 1,184 | One very long post, “ChatGPT as Author Part 1: The Story” (2024-09-28, chatgpt-as-author-part-1-the-story). It runs to about 15,900 words, but almost all of that is not his. - Not his (about 14,000 words): the novella… |
| B18 notes: 2024-09-28 (1 post) | 1,860 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack post in batch B18. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. Quotes from his prompts to ChatGPT keep the… |
| B19 digest: 2024-09-29 to 2024-11-03 | 1,163 | Five weeks in autumn 2024: Altman’s “Intelligence Age”, the Hopfield–Hinton Nobel, Amodei’s “Machines of Loving Grace”, the Character.AI teen suicide case, and a PNAS study on covert AI face manipulation. The podcast… |
| B19 notes: 2024-09-29 to 2024-11-03 (9 posts) | 5,388 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B19. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his typos and curly punctuation. |
| B20 digest: 2024-11-06 to 2025-01-12 | 1,212 | Ten weeks from Trump’s election to mid-January 2025, covering OpenAI’s “12 days” releases, o3, and Altman’s prediction that AI agents would “join the workforce”. Five of the eighteen posts are Modem Futura podcast… |
| B20 notes: 2024-11-06 to 2025-01-12 (18 posts) | 6,486 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B20. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos, italics markers and curly punctuation. |
| B21 digest: 2025-01-14 to 2025-02-25 | 1,223 | Fourteen posts from early 2025 (Stargate, the rescinded Biden AI Executive Order, DeepSeek R1, the International AI Safety Report, Antiqua et Nova, Deep Research, Evo 2). Six posts are Modem Futura promotions and are… |
| B21 notes: 2025-01-14 to 2025-02-25 (14 posts) | 5,535 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B21. Only his own prose is treated as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation; asterisks mark his italics. |
| B22 digest: 2025-03-02 to 2025-03-27 | 1,192 | Four weeks in March 2025. Deep Research has just arrived, Manus has opened early access, and DOGE is at work in Washington. Of the ten posts, four are Modem Futura episode notes and are set aside here, following the… |
| B22 notes: 2025-03-02 to 2025-03-27 (10 posts) | 5,583 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B22. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos and curly punctuation. |
| B23 digest: 2025-03-30 to 2025-04-01 (2 posts) | 1,199 | There are two posts, both about his keynote “What does the future look like?” at the 2025 Yidan Prize Conference. ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton College co-hosted the conference. |
| B23 notes: 2025-03-30 to 2025-04-01 (2 posts) | 2,756 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B23. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos, curly punctuation and italics (shown as asterisks). |
| B24 digest: 2025-04-06 to 2025-04-08 (2 posts) | 1,189 | There are two posts, and only one of them counts. |
| B24 notes: 2025-04-06 to 2025-04-08 (2 posts) | 2,486 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B24. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his typos and curly punctuation. |
| B25 digest: 2025-04-13 to 2025-05-25 | 1,201 | Spring 2025: Colossal’s “dire wolves”, US and Chinese plans for AI in schools, agentic AI (Manus), and the end of the ASU teaching year. Three of the ten posts are Modem Futura episode posts, set aside per the user’s… |
| B25 notes: 2025-04-13 to 2025-05-25 (10 posts) | 7,130 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B25. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos, curly punctuation and italics (shown as asterisks). |
| B26 digest: 2025-06-01 to 2025-08-31 (13 posts) | 1,198 | Summer 2025, about 23,500 words, mostly his own prose. Exceptions: AI outputs he published (model “lies” in the Grok post, a GPT-5 example assessment), an assessment prompt co-developed with ChatGPT, WEF-authored… |
| B26 notes: 2025-06-01 to 2025-08-31 (13 posts) | 8,195 | These are reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B26. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his typos and curly punctuation. |
| B27 digest: 2025-09-07 to 2025-11-24 (16 posts) | 1,205 | Autumn 2025. Five posts cover the launch of AI and the Art of Being Human, written with venture capitalist Jeff Abbott and in close collaboration with Claude. Alongside them is a cluster of close-to-home AI risk posts… |
| B27 notes: 2025-09-07 to 2025-11-24 (16 posts) | 7,838 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B27. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos, curly punctuation and italics (shown as asterisks). |
| B28 digest: 2025-11-24 to 2026-01-25 (12 posts) | 1,226 | The batch has two halves. - November 2025. His short story Letters from the Department of Intellectual Craft (a book chapter), serialised with an analytical Postscript. The letters are his own prose, written without AI.… |
| B28 notes: 2025-11-24 to 2026-01-25 (12 posts) | 8,030 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B28. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his original typos, curly punctuation and italics (shown as asterisks). |
| B29 digest: 2026-01-31 to 2026-05-10 (18 posts) | 1,206 | Fourteen weeks in early 2026: Moltbook, “harness engineering”, Claude Opus 4.5 to 4.7, Claude Code, Anthropic withholding Mythos Preview, ASU Atomic, and Dawkins on Claude’s consciousness. |
| B29 notes: 2026-01-31 to 2026-05-10 (18 posts) | 8,074 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B29. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his typos, italics markers and curly punctuation. |
| B30 digest: 2026-05-15 to 2026-07-10 (8 posts) | 1,225 | There are eight posts from the start of his sabbatical (announced 17 May, running to August 2027). There is one major essay, on Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas. Four posts are hands-on experiments with Anthropic’s… |
| B30 notes: 2026-05-15 to 2026-07-10 (8 posts) | 6,164 | These are reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B30. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his typos and curly punctuation. |
| B31 digest: 2026-07-16 to 2026-09-20 (9 posts) | 1,214 | Summer 2026, during his sabbatical. Four threads: his risk innovation thinking applied in scholarly form to frontier AI companies; a self-questioning experiment in AI-written scholarship; a turn toward play and… |
| B31 notes: 2026-07-16 to 2026-09-20 (9 posts) | 7,491 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B31. Only his own prose counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including his typos and curly punctuation. |
| B32 digest: 2026-09-24 (1 post) | 1,163 | One post, long and central. 2026-09-24 being-an-academic-in-an-age-of-ai is an edited transcript of his 8 September 2026 lecture at King’s College London, Paradise desecrated: Is AI destroying the university of our… |
| B32 notes: 2026-09-24 (1 post) | 4,383 | Reading notes on Andrew Maynard’s Substack posts in batch B32. Only his own prose (or his own spoken words, see Provenance) counts as evidence. Quotes are exact, including curly punctuation. |