The Verified Number of the Week
Every week, we take the most widely repeated AI number, go back to the primary source — the study, the press release, the regulatory filing — and publish the gap between what the source says and what the web made of it. The number is almost always accurate. The story, rarely.
Next issue: Tuesday.
Australian police report 9 errors across 1.4 million faces
We redid the maths.
November 3, 2026
Australian police report 9 errors across 1.4 million faces
We redid the maths.
October 27, 2026
Anthropic lost $80 billion in six months
Its cash tells a different story.
October 20, 2026
Open models handle 71.5% of tokens at Vercel
We read the methodology behind the number.
October 13, 2026
AI Will Only Take 5% of Jobs, According to a Nobel Laureate?
We went and read the calculation.
October 6, 2026
Speaking French to an AI Costs 31% More Tokens
We ran the measurement ourselves.
September 29, 2026
AI Makes a Genetics Discovery in Record Time
A breakthrough, or a lucky break?
September 22, 2026
How a 93% from an OpenAI lawsuit became a marketing stat
We tracked the number from outlet to outlet.
September 15, 2026
Seven in 10 Americans oppose a data center in their area
We opened the poll.
September 8, 2026
Astra's 100% security score rests on 41 already-known bugs
We opened the figures in the technical report.
September 1, 2026
The 2% data center water figure comes from a report to Congress
We went and checked the source.
August 25, 2026
Has American Anxiety About AI Changed Since 2023?
Pew has asked Americans the same question every year since 2021. Six waves, six numbers.
August 18, 2026
45% of Workers Skip AI Checks? The Report Says 60%
The report and the press release come from the same firm. On the exact same question, they don't show the same number, and only one of the two made it into the news in France.
August 11, 2026
What the Blind Test on AI-Written Fiction Actually Shows
1.54 versus 0.97, on a scale that runs from minus three to plus three. Both scores are positive, and nobody could reliably tell which story came from a machine.
August 3, 2026
AI Writes Half Your Code? Nobody Actually Measured That
This week's most-shared AI number didn't come from a code repository. It came from a survey asking developers what they believe.
July 28, 2026
Nvidia's $100 Billion in OpenAI Became $30 Billion
Nvidia said it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI. The actual commitment is $30 billion. Nobody lied, and nobody ever went back to fix the headline.
July 21, 2026
The Verified Number: Golf, Data Centers, and Water
American golf courses use 4.6 times more water than every data center in the country combined. That number checks out. But it stacks today against tomorrow, and the water you can see against the water nobody's counting.
July 14, 2026
Number of the Week: AI and Older Workers
First installment of our new weekly column. Six headlines, one study. Senior programmers are leaving jobs more than before, but still less than painters. What AI is eroding is not a career. It is a premium.
Our method is public. The number is accurate until proven otherwise: what we check is the story. And if the source confirms the coverage, there is no issue.
Read the method →