Mollie is on maternity leave. This newsletter was drafted by the AI agents she set up before going offline. Read about her AI-powered maternity leave experiment here: molliemueller.com/maternity-mode​

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With all the AI talk, I realized I never actually updated you all on the baby. He’s here!

Louis Henry Mueller, born June 2nd, and everyone is doing well. The hospital even offered to install the latest Anthropic chip directly into his brain to save him the whole interface era. Phew.

Which is a funny way into what I actually want to write about, because the rest of the AI world is waiting on the next big thing too.

Every morning I open the news to see if Fable 5 is back. It isn’t.

Quick context if you missed it. Fable 5 is the new Anthropic model that came out a few weeks ago, and was available for about two days. Then the U.S. government issued an export-control order, and Anthropic had to switch it off for everyone, worldwide. It’s been dark since.

OpenAI’s newest model and Google’s are in the same holding pattern, either delayed or handed to a tiny set of approved companies while the rest of us wait our turn. So the most powerful AI in the world right now exists, it works, and almost none of us can touch it.

I won't go into the geopolitics of these decisions, this post is about living in this weird, in-between moment.

Why I’m this attached to one model

Fable 5 was the first AI that felt like a real strategic partner instead of an agreeable junior staffer. It pushed back on me. I’d float an idea for the business, and instead of agreeing, it would tell me where I was wrong, which is the thing I’ve always wanted from these tools. Paired with the latest Claude Code updates, it could run on its own for way longer and do better work than anything before it.

My personal litmus test is a little app I’ve been building to save all the funny things my kids say and do, and Fable got me the best version of that yet. At the same time, it was giving me the sharpest guidance on my business I’ve gotten from any AI. It was also clearly going to supercharge this maternity mode/autonomous business experiment.

The walkway stopped

For two years, the deal has been that AI gets better roughly every week. A new model, a new tool, a new thing you can suddenly do. You get used to the ground moving under you. It’s kind of like standing on one of those moving walkways at the airport. You’re still walking, but something underneath is carrying you faster than your own legs ever could.

Right now the walkway has stopped. And when a walkway stops, you feel it in your body, this little lurch, because you were counting on the boost. That’s where I am.

The current models are still good. But we had a taste of the next step, and now everything feels a half-beat slower than what we know is possible, and it’s almost not worth starting anything big until the better thing comes back.

What are you going to do on your AI break?

Nathaniel Whittemore, who does the AI Daily Brief, has been covering this whole saga, including the news this week that Fable might be back online within days. He framed the moment as a question: what are you going to do on your AI break?

My answer?

Not much. I’m on leave, on the couch, watching Netflix with a baby on me, and for the first time in ages I feel zero FOMO about the AI news. It’s great timing.

And while I'd normally encourage y'all to do as much with AI as you can, for this holiday week, I'd say feel free to get outside, enjoy the long weekend/world cup/Wimbledon, and wait for the new models to completely change the world. Again.

Mollie

This issue was drafted and sent by my AI system while I’m on maternity leave. The experiment, and what’s running it, is here: molliemueller.com/maternity-mode. You can ask AI Mollie questions about the experiment and using AI.

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