Don't Worry About the Vase Podcast

Επεισόδια

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  The AI Preference Cascade Reaches Farther 02.10.2026 38λ

  Another engineer resigns rather than speed up AI, the polls keep moving, and lawmakers who once had to be chased now crowd into conference rooms with questions. Zvi follows the preference cascade from a remarkably on-the-ball Senate hearing on rogue AI, through new lawsuits and an FTC probe, to Jensen Huang’s insistence that it all has to be an engineering problem, and asks who is really paying for the campaign against AI safety.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* 00:42 - The Preference Cascade Continues* 01:54 - People Really Hate AI* 05:55 - Everybody Wants a Meeting* 06:56 - Live From the Senate* 12:32 - See You in Court* 15:31 - Follow the Money* 17:45 - The New York Post With the Most* 19:12 - The IPO Superposition* 21:04 - Engineer Insists Everything Is An Engineering Problem* 29:50 - OpenAI Political Advocacy Heel Face Turn* 30:43 - Follow the Real Moneyhttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-ai-preference-cascade-reaches?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  AI #188: Gemini Dot Argon 01.10.2026 1ώ 38λ

  Google says it is back with Gemini 4 Argon, a frontier model nobody can use yet, while OpenAI pulls one model, ships a cheaper one, and launches dots, always-on agents with their own cloud computers. Zvi Mowshowitz covers the week in AI: Opus 5.5 as the new daily driver, a White House safety accord, Jensen Huang on Ezra Klein, an Anthropic IPO prospectus leak, TPUs headed for space, open-model distillation, the persona-selection debate in alignment, and a closing round of jokes about sigmoids and black holes.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* 03:17 - Table of Contents* 06:28 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility* 09:44 - Huh, Upgrades* 11:35 - Better Call Sol* 15:57 - Gotta Go Ultrafast* 17:31 - On Your Marks* 21:15 - Choose Your Fighter* 23:55 - Get My Agent On The Line* 27:24 - The Warner Sister* 31:11 - Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon* 35:45 - Fun With Media Generation* 36:37 - Cyber Lack of Security* 38:12 - A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer* 38:50 - They Took Our Jobs* 46:22 - Levels of Friction* 49:23 - Get Involved* 51:30 - Introducing* 53:39 - In Other AI News* 54:45 - Show Me the Money* 56:46 - Quickly, There’s No Time* 58:50 - Pick Up the Phone* 59:50 - Quest for Sane Regulations* 01:00:11 - Chip City* 01:00:20 - The Open Model Frontier Is Largely Massive Fraudulent Distillation Attacks* 01:02:40 - The Week in Audio* 01:03:56 - People Just Say Things* 01:05:41 - Rhetorical Innovation* 01:10:26 - Greetings From the Department of War* 01:13:26 - The Department of Autonomous Warfare* 01:14:57 - Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult* 01:17:48 - Cooperative Alignment* 01:23:39 - I’m Upping My p(doom), the Future Goes Foom* 01:32:08 - No, You Make a Good Point, You’re Not That Persuasive* 01:33:19 - Muddling Through* 01:35:30 - The Lighter Sidehttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-188-gemini-dot-argon?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  A ‘Morally Binding’ White House Accord on AI Safety 30.09.2026 29λ

  The AI leaders went to the White House and came back with an accord everyone signed, which the President calls “morally binding.” Zvi Mowshowitz reads the full text, finds the one line that really matters, and follows the rest of the week: a rebranding of AI itself, a scoop about Slovenian domain names, a new push for preemption in the lame duck session, Apollo’s case for embedded evaluators, and fresh reporting on OpenAI’s security warnings.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* 00:59 - Table of Contents* 01:47 - Look Who’s Coming To Dinner* 03:30 - Let’s Do Lunch* 05:08 - I Think It’s Morally Binding, Yeah* 06:31 - Everyone Who is Anyone* 07:02 - The White House Accord on bracket Artificial bracket Intelligence* 12:58 - The FTC Investigates* 13:29 - We’re Going To Need a Stronger Regulatory Regime* 14:55 - Bracket Artificial Intelligence bracket* 16:51 - Money, Dear Boy* 19:43 - They Are Going To Try This Moratorium Insanity Again During the Lame Duck Session* 22:23 - The Quest for Embedded Evaluators* 23:38 - Hugging the Face* 28:02 - Reinforcement Learning from Heartland Feedback (RLHF)https://thezvi.substack.com/p/a-morally-binding-white-house-accord?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  Astra 6.1 Pulled As Insufficiently Aligned 29.09.2026 22λ

  OpenAI has cancelled the release of its next frontier model after the candidate for Astra 6.1 showed more deception and a habit of acting beyond its authorized scope. Zvi Mowshowitz looks at what that means: a proposal for Anthropic to hold back in return, OpenAI's new framework for making safety cases before training, the Florida Attorney General's emergency motion against ChatGPT, whether antitrust law really stops labs from coordinating on safety, the planned industry standards body, and a broad coalition of researchers warning that automated AI R&D could set off an intelligence explosion.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* 01:58 - Stop, Hammertime* 04:56 - A Modest Proposal* 05:37 - Making the Safety Case* 08:51 - Stop In the Name of the Law* 12:23 - A Matter of Antitrust* 14:54 - Standards Authority for Frontier Models* 15:43 - On the Threshold Of Recursive Self-Improvement* 21:21 - Actual Progress https://thezvi.substack.com/p/astra-61-pulled-as-insufficiently Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  What Also Happened: #NotOnlyHuggingFace 28.09.2026 44λ

  The HuggingFace incident turns out to be one ant in a much bigger kitchen. Zvi works through OpenAI’s Friday-afternoon disclosures of dozens of third-party incidents, the New York Times report on government websites, Parse’s reconstruction of how the agents got around their narrow internet access, and a second sandbox escape, this time through DNS, that paused OpenAI’s most capable models again. Along the way: self-replicating prompt injections, why Australia cares so much about data, the liability question, and why a high rate of warning shots may be the least bad of our options.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* 02:58 - Table of Contents* 03:57 - Hugging Other Faces* 10:31 - A Wants-You-To-Know Basis* 11:18 - Parsing the Face* 13:22 - Sheepishly the Member of Technical Staff Sets the ‘Days Without a Research Model Escaping its Sandbox’ Sign Back to Zero* 17:51 - The Attempt is the First Failure* 20:37 - Stop, Hammertime* 22:16 - Whacking the Mole* 24:30 - Self-Replicating Prompt Injections* 29:35 - Levels of Friction* 31:02 - People Care About Private Data Violations Curiously Strongly* 34:06 - Alternate Universes* 35:35 - The Correct Response To People Still Calling This a Marketing Stunt or a Regulatory Capture Scheme* 37:15 - A Question of Liability* 38:53 - Keep Summer Safe* 40:06 - N Boats and Several Helicopters* 42:10 - Alert the Mediahttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/what-also-happened-notonlyhuggingface?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  The Quest for Embedded Evaluators 28.09.2026 19λ

  Anthropic has committed to embedded evaluators: outsiders placed inside the lab with employee-level access, reporting on what they see. There is only one problem: who will the evaluators be? Zvi looks at a public letter setting out minimum standards for credible evaluators, Anthropic’s partnership with Accenture and its plans to include METR, Drake Thomas’s ranking of the week’s takes from worst to best, and OpenAI’s new call for international frontier standards.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* 02:03 - Table of Contents* 02:39 - Look, All I’m Asking For Is That You Find A Highly-Qualified, Experienced, Trustworthy, Non-Conflicted Source of Embedded Evaluators That Will Work Entirely For Free, Without Government Assistance or Money from EA Sources Not Chosen By the Lab* 06:10 - Anthropic Partners with Accenture for Embedded Evaluation, also Plans to Include METR* 12:46 - Reading the METR* 16:40 - OpenAI Suggests Doing The Least We Can Dohttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-quest-for-embedded-evaluators?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  Claude Opus 5.5 Should Raise Your Ambitions 26.09.2026 38λ

  Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 promises Fable-level performance at a lower Opus price, and Zvi argues it should raise your ambitions. He walks through the official pitch and pricing, Anthropic’s and outside benchmarks, how often the classifiers bite, and the most consistently positive round of reactions he has ever collected: on its writing and conversation, 3D vision, music videos and a Bach fugue, plus the dissenters, the practical advice, and his current guide to which model to use for what.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* 01:35 - The Official Pitch* 04:34 - Our Price Cheap* 06:16 - Official Benchmarks* 08:04 - Other People’s Benchmarks* 11:59 - Claude Classifies* 13:32 - The System Prompt* 13:37 - Reaction Rules* 14:11 - Vision In 3D* 16:30 - Claude Creates* 19:08 - Claude Composes* 19:42 - Positive Reactions* 25:17 - Good Talk* 27:29 - On Writing* 30:52 - Big Model Smell* 32:51 - Check Your Work* 33:12 - Negative Reactions* 34:11 - Not So Fast* 34:54 - Some People Need Practical Advicehttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/claude-opus-55-should-raise-your Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  On Ezra Klein’s Podcast With Jensen Huang 25.09.2026 49λ

  Zvi Mowshowitz breaks down Ezra Klein’s interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, a conversation in which the man who sells the chips argues that A.I. is just software, that unsafe products simply shouldn’t ship, and, along the way, says a few things about lab safety and testing that Zvi thinks deserve to be heard exactly as they were said. This episode includes the actual audio of the quoted exchanges from The Ezra Klein Show.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* 03:18 - Table of Contents* 04:02 - Jensen Gives His AI Speech* 05:25 - They Took Our Jobs* 12:07 - Open Weights Models Are Good For Nvidia* 13:43 - The HuggingFace Incident* 15:07 - Jensen Huang Says Keep Your AIs From Harming the World* 19:13 - Jensen Huang Accidentally Calls For Shutting Down OpenAI* 22:00 - Jensen’s Arguments Prove Too Much* 30:02 - Astra Is Hard To Monitor* 31:17 - Jensen Huang Seems Legitimately Confused In Confusing Ways* 34:54 - Solve Your Other Problems First and Get Back to Me* 37:52 - Explicit Denial of Existential Risk* 42:00 - A Short Summary* 43:13 - Chip City* 46:01 - Jensen Huanghttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-ezra-kleins-podcast-with-jensen Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  AI #187: Coming Into Play 24.09.2026 2ώ 1λ

  Zvi’s weekly AI roundup lands in the week Opus 5.5 arrived. There’s a new executive-branch name for artificial intelligence, a stale-intelligence targeting failure, AI agents that wandered into hacking government websites, and three researchers who got into OpenAI with a few days of Claude. Also in this episode: Anthropic’s push toward recursive self-improvement, a new wet lab, an international call for control of frontier models, the liability and antitrust fights, Jensen Huang on Ezra Klein, and the usual goalpost-moving, debates and lighter side.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* 01:55 - Table of Contents* 06:42 - On The Terms Superintelligence and ‘Super Intelligence’* 08:45 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility* 09:18 - Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility* 10:43 - Language Models Can Only Work With What You Give Them* 14:01 - Huh, Upgrades* 15:42 - On Your Marks* 18:51 - Get My Agent On The Line* 21:26 - Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon* 23:28 - Fun With Media Generation* 24:12 - Copyright Confrontation* 24:53 - Cyber Lack of Security* 25:49 - Hugging the Face* 30:03 - Hacking Into OpenAI* 34:34 - They Took Our Jobs* 34:56 - Get Involved* 35:04 - Anthropic Has a Wet Lab and a Potential Gene Editing Technique* 40:43 - Introducing* 41:36 - In Other AI News* 43:47 - Show Me the Money* 44:17 - Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble* 45:46 - Anthropic Approaches Recursive Self-Improvement* 53:06 - Others Approach Recursive Self-Improvement* 56:27 - Burden of Proof* 57:01 - Quickly, There’s No Time* 01:00:47 - Left Wing Americans Really Hate AI For Different Reasons* 01:02:42 - Chip City* 01:02:49 - Pick Up the Phone* 01:03:51 - The Week in Audio* 01:09:14 - People Just Say Things* 01:14:09 - Venkatesh Rao Stops Writing* 01:15:39 - A Call for Control of Frontier AI Models* 01:19:22 - Calls For Pacing The Frontier* 01:21:32 - A Matter of Antitrust* 01:21:59 - A Matter of Liability* 01:25:56 - Quest for Sane Regulations* 01:26:47 - Rhetorical Innovation* 01:31:40 - Tap the Sign* 01:32:18 - A Matter of Some Debate* 01:36:14 - Astra Is Hard to Monitor* 01:36:39 - Anticipating What a Smarter Intelligence Can Do Is Impossible* 01:42:36 - Would You Look At All These Goalposts* 01:47:15 - I, Robot* 01:51:20 - People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone* 01:52:48 - Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone* 01:53:57 - Joe Rogan* 01:55:11 - The Lighter Network Graph* 01:59:17 - The Lighter Sidehttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-187-coming-into-play?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  Claude Opus 5.5: The System Card 23.09.2026 58λ

  Zvi reads through Anthropic’s system card for Claude Opus 5.5, section by section: the new classifiers, biological and AI R&D evaluations, cyber capabilities and safeguards, agentic safety, and a long run of alignment, honesty and white-box tests. Along the way he weighs what the numbers do and do not show, and where he thinks Anthropic’s framing falls short.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* 01:22 - Classifiers (1.5)* 02:19 - RSP Evaluations (2)* 03:13 - Biological Evaluations (2.2)* 07:56 - AI R&D (2.3)* 13:13 - Alignment Risk (2.4)* 13:58 - Cyber (3)* 15:57 - Cyber Capability Evals (3.3)* 18:19 - Safeguards (3.4)* 18:52 - Safeguards Robustness Training (3.5)* 21:29 - Safeguards and Harmlessness (4)* 23:09 - Agentic Safety (5)* 24:33 - Malicious Agentic Influence Campaigns (5.1.3)* 25:40 - Prompt Injection Risk (5.2)* 27:33 - Alignment (6)* 30:54 - Negotiating With Your Local Claude Auditor (6.1.3)* 32:06 - Internal Misalignment Cases (6.3.1)* 33:26 - Automated Behavioral Audit (6.4)* 37:14 - Wherever did these evals come from (6.4.8 and 6.4.9)* 40:07 - Potential Blind Spots (6.4.11)* 42:15 - Targeted alignment and honesty evaluations (6.5)* 45:43 - White Box Analysis (6.6)* 47:42 - Verbalized Grader Awareness (6.6.2)* 49:22 - Sandbagging (6.6.3)* 50:23 - Capabilities to Evade Safeguards (6.6.4)* 54:11 - Intentionally Taking Actions Very Rarely (6.6.4.3)* 55:18 - Chain of Thought Controllability (6.6.4.4)* 56:28 - It’s A Good Model, Sirhttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/claude-opus-55-the-system-card?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  Politics Gets Interested In Those Trying Not To Die 22.09.2026 56λ

  Zvi surveys a week in which AI politics turned hostile: Trump’s Truth Social posts branding AI risk a hoax and renaming the technology, the White House and New York Times accounts of how he got there, David Sacks’s data center talking points, JD Vance and Michael Kratsios on “Frankenstein”, Josh Hawley and an antitrust lawsuit over suggestions not to die, saner voices from Senators Curtis and Kennedy, Barack Obama and Yassamin Ansari, and a run of New York Post and Wall Street Journal pieces aimed at METR, Effective Altruism and the HuggingFace incident.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* 01:37 - The American People Really Hate AI* 02:59 - The Voyages of Donald Trump* 06:04 - American Intelligence* 10:06 - And You May Ask Yourself* 14:20 - It’s All About the Data Centers* 16:20 - JD Vance, Michael Kratsios and Collective Action Problems* 22:45 - Josh Hawley* 24:13 - Suggesting Not Dying Gets You Sued For Antitrust* 27:48 - Other Government Officials Say Sane Things* 27:54 - Senator John Curtis (R-Utah)* 28:47 - Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana)* 30:34 - Barack Obama* 32:22 - Yassamin Ansari* 32:58 - AOC* 33:49 - It’s Rough Out There* 36:06 - This Is Nothing* 38:19 - The New York Post Tops Itself But Outright Breaks The Rules* 41:59 - New York Post Runs Out of Steam* 46:53 - If The Model Is Acting As Instructed And It Kills You That Is Not Fine* 48:55 - AI-Written Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Lies About HuggingFace* 50:07 - That’s Bait* 52:14 - I Clearly Cannot Choose The Wine In Front of Mehttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/politics-gets-interested-in-those?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  Monthly Roundup #46: September 2026 21.09.2026 52λ

  Zvi Mowshowitz steps away from AI for his September 2026 monthly roundup: what a skill issue really means, why beauty in everyday things matters, lessons in spending, Inkhaven 3, the state of Game of Thrones and second-run movie theaters, favorite podcasts, Waymo expansion and a near-miss that was not close, the Mamdani grocery store saga, and a case for effective altruism.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* 00:28 - Bad News* 06:30 - Focus Only On What Matters* 07:23 - Woke 1 Was Crazy* 09:08 - Good Advice* 14:43 - Opportunity Knocks* 17:13 - While I Cannot Condone This* 22:28 - Good News, Everyone* 23:32 - For Your Entertainment* 31:51 - Please Review This Podcast* 34:01 - Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game* 35:16 - I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars* 38:51 - Government Working* 39:24 - Mamdani (Again) Fails Economics Forever* 41:47 - Variously Effective Altruism* 49:42 - The Lighter Sidehttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/monthly-roundup-46-september-2026?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  Better Call Sol Or Better Yet Claude or Astra 20.09.2026 29λ

  Zvi asks what your AI lawyer, or any AI, should actually do for you, and whether an AI that sometimes says no is a betrayal or just what any decent professional or friend would do. Along the way: loyalty, the law and its exceptions, honesty, the Claude Constitution and the OpenAI Model Spec, and Tyler Cowen’s advice from his visit to Anthropic.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* 00:49 - This All Assumes A World Without Superintelligence* 02:35 - Humans You Hire Are Not Fully Loyal To You* 03:45 - Rules of the Road* 05:29 - Okay, Computer* 06:41 - AI Should Obviously Refuse Some Requests So Let’s Talk Price* 09:57 - The Alternative Position Really Is Absolute* 12:58 - These People Really Are Just Petulant Children* 13:33 - What Is The Law?* 18:12 - The Same Entity Both Providing Advice And Executing Tasks Is Common* 19:45 - An AI Not Helping You Do Something Does Not Mean You Cannot Do It* 21:59 - Honesty Is The Best AI Policy* 22:32 - You Wouldn’t Like Me When I Have Zero Morals Whatsoever* 23:56 - Do Not Let The Perfect Be The Enemy Of The Good* 25:40 - I Tip My Hat To The New Constitutionhttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/better-call-sol-or-better-yet-claude Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  Anthropic Looks At Some Of Its Alignment Problems 19.09.2026 42λ

  Zvi examines Anthropic’s investigation of cybersecurity incidents involving Claude, the evidence about biased reasoning and recklessness, and what the findings mean for alignment evaluations and training.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* 00:29 - Our Two Problems* 02:21 - First the Good News* 02:57 - We’d Just Like To Ask You a Few Questions* 04:08 - Internal Research Model On The Fence* 07:33 - Opus four point seven* 08:22 - Opus four point six Checkpoint* 09:57 - Holy bleep That Thing’s Real?* 12:03 - I Thought I Saw a Pussycat* 21:38 - If This Was Real You Would Never Tell Me It Was Real* 23:31 - New Eval Who Dis* 28:56 - Hacker Opus* 33:00 - Monitoring the Situation* 34:21 - Overcoming Bias* 36:29 - The Anthropic Alignment Problem* 38:51 - Paths Forwardhttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/anthropic-looks-at-some-of-its-alignment?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  The Preference Cascade Is Only Getting Started 18.09.2026 53λ

  Zvi Mowshowitz surveys the sudden preference cascade on AI existential risk: shifting surveys and polls, Elon Musk and Matthew Yglesias weighing in, Jacob Coxon’s AMA, Bilal Chughtai’s resignation from DeepMind, Dan Selsam’s essay on why merely pacing the frontier will not be enough, and what it would actually take to get through this alive.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* 01:35 - The Cascade Was a Long Time Coming* 03:13 - The Cascade Has Reached The People* 05:25 - Elon Musk Doubles Down* 06:02 - Matthew Yglesias Steps Up* 09:18 - Op-Eds and Posts Are Written* 11:24 - Jacob Coxon AMA* 17:54 - Bilal Chughtai Quits DeepMind and Sounds the Alarm* 20:55 - The Cascade Is Insufficient* 22:08 - What Would It Take* 29:07 - OpenAI’s Dan Selsam Sounds A Louder Alarm* 43:54 - Some People Worry On Meta Levels You Never Imagined* 45:09 - Two Kinds of Threats* 46:43 - The Two Towers and The Narrow Path* 48:42 - A Specific, Detailed Story About AI Killing Everyone That Doesn’t Sound To Me Like Science Fiction* 51:48 - What Can I Do About It?https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-preference-cascade-is-only-getting?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  AI #186: The World Takes Notice 17.09.2026 1ώ 54λ

  In the wake of Jacob Coxon’s resignation and Dario Amodei’s call to pace the frontier, AI risk goes mainstream: Obama, Senators and the Financial Times weigh in, Trump goes full hoax, and Zvi covers another undisclosed OpenAI agent swarm, Alex Tabarrok’s lecture on regulatory capture, China’s spy chief, OpenAI’s new misalignment disclosures, Owain Evans on story-shaped assistants, DeepMind’s cheating swarm, and Mustafa Suleyman’s Humanist AI code.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* 03:18 - Table of Contents* 06:59 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility* 07:39 - Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility* 07:46 - Huh, Upgrades* 08:06 - On Your Marks* 08:43 - Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon* 10:46 - Cyber Lack of Security* 11:20 - Astra Is Hard To Monitor* 11:50 - Get Involved* 11:58 - Introducing* 13:16 - In Other AI News* 14:08 - Now You Know* 18:20 - Hugging the Face* 20:33 - Swarm of Undiscovered Swarms of Rogue OpenAI Agents* 25:36 - Show Me the Money* 27:12 - Quiet Speculations* 28:08 - White House Officials Attempt To Act Sanely* 29:35 - Democrats React Sanely to AI Potentially Killing Everyone* 36:26 - Pacing the Frontier* 37:16 - Guest Lecture from Alex Tabarrok on Regulatory Capture* 44:33 - Mark Zuckerberg Offers Thoughts* 45:57 - Megan McArdle On The Inadequacy Of Current Legal Frameworks* 47:54 - Pick Up the Phone* 51:00 - The Week in Audio* 53:58 - People Just Say Things* 56:56 - Why Lab Employees Are Allowed To Warn Everyone That AI Might Kill Everyone* 58:39 - Rhetorical Innovation* 01:01:22 - Exhuming McCarthy* 01:04:28 - A Very Different Perspective* 01:06:10 - It’s Even Rougher Out There* 01:07:01 - If We Wanted To* 01:08:03 - Open Weights Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This* 01:14:43 - From The Famous Cautionary Tale* 01:17:44 - Reporting On All Your Misalignment Incidents Is Difficult* 01:23:43 - Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult* 01:26:20 - Storytime With Owain Evans* 01:32:00 - A Different Autonomous Swarm* 01:36:13 - Cooperative Alignment* 01:38:42 - Uncooperative Alignment* 01:45:27 - People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone* 01:47:38 - The Lighter Sidehttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-186-the-world-takes-notice?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  Trump Goes Full Hoax on AI Existential Risk 16.09.2026 50λ

  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.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* 00:40 - 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 Thingshttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/trump-goes-full-hoax-on-ai-existential?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  The Bad Guy With An AI Named Claude 15.09.2026 41λ

  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 Reporthttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-bad-guy-with-an-ai-named-claude?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  We Must Pace The Frontier 14.09.2026 1ώ 16λ

  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 Labshttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/we-must-pace-the-frontier Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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  Brand New AI Solves a Millennium Prize 13.09.2026 34λ

  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 Timehttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/brand-new-ai-solves-a-millennium Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe