Chasing the Karpathy Peak: researcher maps AI productivity's slop cliff
anshulkundaje · x · 2026-10-28
AI researcher Thomas Jiralerspong's confessional blog post maps the "AI Productivity Mountain": a curve from Autocomplete Alley through Vibecoding Valley to the mythical Karpathy Peak—followed by the Slop Cliff and a "Pit of Psychosis." Drawing on his own experience using AI for AI research, he argues useful output is non-monotonic in AI usage: over-delegating long agentic runs and bulk generation tank quality. He describes who's most at risk of becoming a "slopaholic" and how to avoid or recover.
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