Don't Worry About the Vase Podcast

Zvi Mowshowitz on the week Donald Trump declared AI existential risk a hoax: what Trump actually said and what it may mean, why Jensen Huang’s attacks on whistleblowers are not credible, the cynical theories about why lab leaders warn of danger, the New York Post’s campaign against METR, how other Republicans, David Sacks, the FTC, OpenAI’s policy team and China are reacting, and what a serious approach to competing with China would actually look like.
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* 00:00 - Introduction
* 00:40 - Hold Your Fire
* 01:30 - If You Don’t Like the Weather
* 02:24 - Trump Does Not Take Kindly
* 05:01 - Trump Goes Full ‘Hoax’
* 06:18 - This Is Not About Data Centers, Mr. President
* 07:33 - I Am The Hoax Buster, I Am The Hoax Buster, I Am The Walrus
* 09:42 - Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Is a Lying Liar
* 13:16 - Trump Quietly Draws Key Distinction
* 14:18 - Calling For Pacing the Frontier Is Bad For AI Stock Prices
* 18:04 - People On The Internet Sometimes Lie
* 18:49 - Origins of Cynicism
* 20:52 - Ineffective Egoism
* 23:42 - The McCarthyist Faction Attacks METR
* 31:23 - Other Key Republicans React
* 35:55 - David Sacks Stops Being Plausibly Constructive
* 36:46 - Federal Trade Commission Chooses Danger
* 37:46 - Chris Lehane Heel Face Turn
* 39:55 - A Matter of Trust
* 41:05 - China Calls It Fearmongering
* 42:24 - Pick Up The Phone
* 47:04 - If You Want To Beat China So Badly You Should Act Like It
* 48:15 - Never Go Full Hoax
* 49:17 - Trump Uses AI For Things
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/trump-goes-full-hoax-on-ai-existential?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web


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Anthropic’s threat report catalogues how bad actors tried to use Claude for cyber attacks, influence operations, surveillance, weapons work, biological research, scams and industrial-scale distillation, and how most of them failed. Zvi reads the report as mostly good news, with one big exception: the Chinese labs caught quietly routing their own users’ queries to Claude, and what that revelation might mean for US-China relations.
The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening.
* 00:00 - Introduction
* 02:02 - Breaking Unrelated News
* 03:14 - How To Not Tell a Fable
* 03:45 - Bad Dudes Tend To Be Relatively Unsophisticated
* 05:23 - Particular Bad Dudes
* 07:53 - Influence Operations
* 12:29 - Surveillance Operations
* 14:35 - Conventional Weapons
* 16:30 - Biological Misuse
* 17:47 - Scams and Fraud
* 18:56 - Illicit Fraudulent Distillation
* 30:58 - What You Gonna Do About It, Punk?
* 32:57 - Good News, Everyone
* 33:39 - A Very Different Read of The Report
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-bad-guy-with-an-ai-named-claude?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web


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Zvi examines Dario Amodei’s call to pace the AI frontier, the responses from other industry leaders, and the practical challenges of independent evaluation and coordination. What would meaningful pacing look like, and how would we know it was happening?
The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening.

* 00:00 - Introduction
* 02:11 - Pacing Does Not Mean Pausing
* 03:53 - Dario’s First Proposal: Embedded Evaluators
* 11:19 - Dario’s Second Proposal: Democratic Coordination
* 14:48 - Dario’s Third Proposal: Global Coordination
* 17:17 - Why Pace Now?
* 19:11 - Sam Altman Agrees and Commits to Embedded Evaluators
* 24:16 - OpenAI Will Not IPO This Year
* 25:32 - Elon Musk Agrees
* 28:17 - Demis Hassabis Agrees
* 28:49 - Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Agrees And Talks His Book
* 30:50 - Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust Is On Board
* 31:48 - General Online Reactions
* 33:32 - Mainstream Press Coverage
* 36:22 - OpenAI Researcher Explains What The Labs See And It’s a Rocket Ship
* 44:59 - Consider the Alternative
* 46:27 - It’s Totalitarianism, Joe
* 51:44 - Yes We’re The Baddies How Did You Know?
* 53:03 - Sometimes People On the Internet Just Lie
* 54:27 - David Sacks Groks The Situation
* 55:21 - David Sacks Says Go Ahead
* 57:01 - Lies and Confusions About Who Previously Claimed What
* 01:01:23 - House Speaker Mike Johnson Wants To Lock Everyone In a Room
* 01:06:14 - Donald Trump is Not Tired of Winning
* 01:10:58 - We Must Avoid Polarization on AI at (Almost) All Costs
* 01:11:33 - How Will We Know If They Actually Paced?
* 01:14:46 - The Real Frontier Is Internal Models At Top Labs

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/we-must-pace-the-frontier


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Zvi examines a claimed mathematical breakthrough, the dispute over credit, and what the episode reveals about the pace of AI research.
The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening.
* 00:00 - Introduction
* 00:27 - The Real Story Is The New Model That Is Better Than Astra
* 01:38 - Setting the Stage
* 03:29 - I Heard a Rumor
* 04:17 - Our Price Cheap
* 05:48 - An Accusation Is Made
* 10:48 - How Did You Get That Idea?
* 12:36 - OpenAI Almost Certainly Did Not Misappropriate User Data
* 14:13 - Our Top Labs Cannot Get Along Even On A Feel-Good Math Story
* 15:29 - What Next?
* 16:10 - The Mathematicians Are Not Happy
* 20:42 - OpenAI’s New Model Was A Step Change Above Astra Four Days Into Training
* 22:49 - OpenAI Research Progress Is Accelerating Due To OpenAI Research Progress
* 30:17 - Quantifying OpenAI’s Pause
* 30:49 - This Is the Way the World Ends
* 31:25 - Quickly, There’s No Time
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/brand-new-ai-solves-a-millennium


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Zvi examines GPT-6 Astra’s capabilities through benchmarks, ambitious projects and early user reports, and considers how it compares with Claude Fable 5.1 in everyday use.
The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening.
* 00:00 - Introduction
* 02:23 - Meanwhile
* 04:24 - The Official Pitch
* 10:07 - Our Price Cheap
* 11:06 - Unnecessary Overstatement
* 12:54 - Paced Rollout
* 13:28 - Official Benchmarks
* 19:38 - Other People’s Benchmarks
* 27:58 - Thinking, Fast Without Slow
* 31:32 - How Dare You, Sir
* 33:47 - PoetryBench
* 34:54 - In three D
* 36:06 - Time to Think
* 36:43 - I’m Putting Together a Team
* 37:46 - Reviews and Essays
* 38:22 - Computer Use
* 39:25 - Positive Reactions
* 46:53 - AGI
* 50:28 - Astra Can Do The Math
* 53:30 - Astra Can Code
* 55:28 - I Came to (Change the) Game
* 58:23 - Astra Does Other Cool Things
* 59:07 - Astra Never Quits Except When It Does
* 01:00:50 - Negative Reactions
* 01:02:49 - Stop It With the Hedging
* 01:03:56 - Personality Clash
* 01:04:56 - Revealed Preference
* 01:06:34 - Dual Wielding
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/gpt-6-astra-can-do-ambitious-things?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web


Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe