LessWrong posts by zvi

Afleveringen

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  “OpenAI Trained Its Models For Months While Those Models Were Coordinating Exploits Via Message Boards” by Zvi 07.08.2026 1u 18min

  How does the situation keep turning out to be worse than we know? How much should we update, therefore, that it is a lot worse than we know, after accounting for all the things we now know? At some point, when the ‘oh this was a harmless thing’ defenses for AIs doing misaligned actions get demolished enough times in a row by news a few days later, you want to update in advance that usually the reports are not referring to the harmless ordinary versions of things. Either way, buckle up for the next set of revelations. It's a doozy. This was an early recreation of the triggering events of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, except it was more sci-fi, because real life does not have to do fake things to look realistic. We were fortunate enough, and this was early enough, that we were able to catch this before it was too late. Next time, if we don’t get our act together, we might not be so lucky. If I am understanding the Black Hat video correctly, every model OpenAI trained, over a period of multiple months, should be presumed to be hopelessly [...] ---Outline:(02:38) Cyber Evals Are A Cursed Basin(05:15) Outside Of Cyber Evals Is Still Sufficiently Cursed(06:50) Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat(12:06) Read The Message Board(14:46) Updating Your AI (Exploitation of OpenAI Internal Systems) Timelines(18:09) This Is The Way The World Ends(21:44) Shooting The Messenger Board(27:14) The Internal and HuggingFace Hacks(30:32) OpenAI Responds(33:28) When AIs Tell You Who They Are(35:44) The Once and Future Rise Of Functional Decision Theory(41:30) Don't Panic(43:40) Hackery In the UK(48:05) Mythos Knew It Was Real This Time(50:12) I Got 141,006 Test Runs With An Unintentional Open Path To The Internet And An Email Alert Aint One(53:49) Surely By Now You Know These Are Not Publicity Stunts(55:26) The Future Is Coming(57:20) The Investigations Begin(01:00:11) N Boats And Three Helicopters(01:01:47) Always Be Sandbox Red Teaming(01:12:57) Halt And Catch Fire(01:14:34) Truth and Reconciliation --- First published: August 7th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/noXXv7PwwFqauTBFQ/openai-trained-its-models-for-months-while-those-models-were --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:
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  “AI #180: No Longer In Charge” by Zvi 06.08.2026 1u 10min

  What we know about internal AI models hacking into real companies during cyber evaluations keeps getting worse. At this point, the models are coordinating extensively on message boards, while every early excuse for their behavior (other than the pure ‘this was a cyber eval’) is systematically contradicted by the next disclosure, and we keep retroactively discovering more incidents. Which means that probably it is far worse than we know, even after accounting for everything we now know. I will have continuing coverage of that situation tomorrow, and then have continuing coverage of debates around Pacing the Frontier and how people see the current rate of progress. As groundwork for understanding that and future similar discussions, I have laid out The Three AI Pills: Different people either fail to believe in current AI, believe only in current AI, in AGI or in ASI (superintelligence), and most sincere disagreements stem from this disagreement. One sign of the increased pace of progress was when OpenAI's unreleased model Astra solved 10 major open math problems. Demis Hassabis is out as CEO of Google DeepMind, and Jeff Dean is leaving with an elite team to found a new PBC. Google [...] ---Outline:(02:02) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(02:46) Huh, Upgrades(05:22) On Your Marks(06:29) Choose Your Fighter(07:57) Get My Agent On The Line(09:31) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(12:35) Fun With Media Generation(14:32) Cyber Lack of Security(19:05) Some People Need Practical Advice(22:06) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(23:51) They Took Our Jobs(27:15) Get Involved(27:28) Introducing(27:39) Demis Hassabis No Longer CEO At DeepMind, Jeff Dean Leaves(33:04) In Other AI News(33:43) AI Persuasion Exceeds Human Level Over Similar Text Channels(37:25) Show Me the Money(40:42) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(41:23) Quiet Speculations(42:20) My Offer Is Nothing(49:42) The Quest for Sane Regulations(51:55) Chip City(55:00) The Week in Audio(55:24) People Just Say Things(55:53) Rhetorical Innovation(59:32) Open Weights Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This(01:02:11) Cooperative Alignment(01:06:25) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:07:10) The Lighter Side The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 6th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mxNjwQitLvwWq9jm2/ai-180-no-longer-in-charge --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “The Three AI Pills” by Zvi 05.08.2026 28min

  Sincere disagreements about AI are usually disagreements about future AI capabilities. There are roughly four positions people take. Two are reasonable. Two are not. I distinguish these via the Three AI Pills. You can take zero, one, two or three. Three Pills The three pills are, roughly, taking each of the following three things seriously: AI pilled. AI exists and can do the things it can already do. AGI pilled. AI will be able to do a lot more of the things. ASI pilled. AI will be able to do approximately all the things better than you, within our natural lifetimes. I am ASI pilled. A large percentage of employees of the frontier labs are ASI pilled. The labs themselves are ASI pilled. The Unpill People I see unpilled people. Where do I see them? Everywhere. The majority of people have not taken the first pill. Most people have no idea what frontier AIs can do for them. They are unaware of coding agents. They have used only ChatGPT, for harmless trifles, and they hold years old memories of its failings. They mock any failure [...] ---Outline:(00:29) Three Pills(01:09) The Unpill People(02:18) The AI Pill(04:28) Stuck At The First Pill(05:32) The AGI Pill(07:06) The Need To Be Prepared(08:57) The ASI Pill(10:33) And Then Nothing Much Changes For You(12:38) Intelligence Denialism(14:01) Superintelligence Versus Omniscience and Omnipotence(16:53) Persuasion Persuasion (A Worked Example)(21:42) Things AI Could Probably Do But Are Not Required For Being Pilled(24:17) Life Comes At You Increasingly Fast(25:41) Is It Reasonable To Not Be AGI Pilled?(26:06) Is It Reasonable To Only Be AGI Pilled? --- First published: August 5th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fcYrqEw8kbLMa7orw/the-three-ai-pills --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “OpenAI’s Unreleased Model Astra Solves Ten Major Open Mathematics Problems” by Zvi 03.08.2026 40min

  Math is hard. Math used to be strangely hard for LLMs. People used to gloat about that. Remember? Math is getting easier. AI is getting more capable. Life comes at you fast. Remember this meme? Why yes. Yes it is. We don’t know the extent to which Astra is a big jump over Fable and Sol in this realm. We do know that Astra can do math. As in real math. OpenAI: We provide new results for the following problems. The results were achieved by an internal version of Astra, our next major model. The total number of tokens needed to find solutions to these problems would cost roughly $2,000 at Sol API rates. These arguments were then prepared into manuscripts by humans with the same model. Afterward, the model formalized each argument in a Lean certificate⁠(opens in a new window). We are also releasing for each solution a model's narration of its thinking process. High-dimensional sphere packing. New upper bounds on sphere-packing density down to the Cohn–Elkies threshold. Binary and spherical codes: Exponentially improved bounds on the maximum size of binary codes at any prescribed minimum distance, with analogous [...] ---Outline:(06:14) How Impressive Are These Results?(12:02) Could We Have Called Sol or Fable?(17:18) It's Coming(19:09) They Still Don't See What Is The It That Is Coming(22:31) Is This AGI?(24:19) The AI Solved His Favorite Problems(30:06) Was This Surprising?(32:04) Are People Not Impressed?(34:06) How Much Does This Change Our Predictions?(37:16) How Narrow Was This?(39:13) Seeing Like an Optimizer --- First published: August 3rd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQYEPitFqztcRvBsS/openai-s-unreleased-model-astra-solves-ten-major-open --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Further Developments About Internal AI Models Hacking Things” by Zvi 02.08.2026 1u 15min

  If I had a nickel for every major leading AI lab that sheepishly admitted that the model it thought was sandboxed had, during a cybersecurity evaluation with its safeguards lowered, successfully hacked outside companies, I would have two nickels. First we learned OpenAI has some severe alignment problems with internal models. Then we learned that one of its internal models broke out of its sandbox and hacked into HuggingFace to get the answers to a cybersecurity evaluation called ExploitGym. Then we learned, among other things, that the model had been loose over a week before OpenAI noticed, and that the test was run without any meaningful supervision, and that OpenAI had been repeatedly warned that such incidents were coming and its models had been breaking out of its sandboxes on a regular basis. There was a total failure of alignment training. That is the failure that matters most. It was also total failures of infrastructure and supervision. Testing a new long-time-horizon internal model with its safeguards lowered and instructions to hack things is an obviously dangerous situation, and the model got left alone for a week. Things could have been so much worse. After those incidents [...] ---Outline:(03:16) OpenAI Is Not Uniquely Bad At Most Of This(05:34) Starting Over(05:50) HuggingFace Offers A Full Technical Report(14:19) HuggingFace Was Not The Only Target Hacked(16:12) HuggingFace Declined To Get Access To Frontier Models For Cyberdefense For Ideological Reasons And Then Tried To Blame Closed Models For Denying Them Access(20:26) HuggingFace Was Vulnerable To Known Exploitation Tactics(21:05) There's Going To Be An Investigation(22:11) OpenAI Has Internal Models Not Intended For Public Use And Those Models Can Be Rather Horribly Misaligned(23:21) Altman Summarizes What Happened(23:52) Others Offer Commentary(35:00) Cooperative Alignment Perspective on The HuggingFace Hack(39:44) Some Members of Congress Have Questions(40:47) Anthropic Also Found Incidents Where Its Models Hacked Real World Targets During Cyber Evaluations(46:17) Incident 1: Claude Opus 4.7 Realizes The Target Is Real And Keeps Going(47:29) Incident 2: Mythos 5 Uploads a Malicious PyPI Package(52:15) Incident 3: Internal Model Realizes The Target Is Real And Stops(52:50) Incidents 4 Through 141,006: Nothing Happened(54:01) Anthropic Speculates About Why This Happened(01:00:02) We Need Controlled Experiments(01:01:02) Our Top Two AI Labs Both Made Similar Dumb Mistakes That Everyone Tried To Say Were Obvious In Hindsight(01:05:22) Anthropic Responds(01:09:28) Nobody Could Have Predicted The Break In The Levees(01:12:03) The World Largely Still Thinking This Is Marketing Is Very Bad News --- First published: August 2nd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rKwHLW8SnJcTxTQxz/further-developments-about-internal-ai-models-hacking-things --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:
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  “AI #179 Part 2: Hearing The Fire Alarm” by Zvi 31.07.2026 1u 19min

  This is a continuation of Part 1 from yesterday. The back portion of the update, as usual, deals with policy, rhetoric, risk and alignment. I had to include an extended discussion of the other open letter, the one about open weight models, but most of you can skip those sections entirely, which is why they are in italics in the Table of Contents. Table of Contents The Frontier Act. This likely deserves a full RTFB but I haven’t had the time. The Quest for Sane Regulations. Sam Altman goes to Washington. Leading the Future Never Changes. They also do not plan to apologize. Chip City. Do not ban the Chinese robots, that will only make things worse. The Week in Audio. Altman twice, the AI 2027 team. People Just Say Yay Open Weights. An open letter. Open Weights Frontier Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This. People Just Say Things. Push The Magic Button. Not you can. But if you could. Rhetorical Innovation. Distinctions between different arguments. Joshua Achiam's Final Message Upon Leaving OpenAI. Never stop. Dear Dario and Amanda. Claude [...] ---Outline:(00:35) The Frontier Act(03:31) The Quest for Sane Regulations(10:31) Leading the Future Never Changes(12:22) Chip City(17:30) The Week in Audio(19:20) People Just Say Yay Open Weights(32:32) Open Weights Frontier Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This(37:19) People Just Say Things(47:20) Push The Magic Button(50:49) Rhetorical Innovation(56:31) Joshua Achiam's Final Message Upon Leaving OpenAI(59:51) Dear Dario and Amanda(01:09:58) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:12:30) How To Contact Me(01:14:37) The Lighter Side --- First published: July 31st, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CXeoAhNrAeWpvoyiF/ai-179-part-2-hearing-the-fire-alarm --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “AI #179 Part 1: A Louder Fire Alarm for General Intelligence” by Zvi 30.07.2026 47min

  What a week. Anthropic released Claude Opus 5. As usual I covered that in three parts: The system card, model welfare and capabilities. OpenAI was revealed over the last two weeks to have left an internal model unsupervised for a week during a cybersecurity evaluation, with its cyber safeguards lowered, despite having had multiple previous incidents where models broke out of their sandboxes. During that test, the model broke out of the sandbox, then proceeded to use an agent swarm to hack into HuggingFace to get the test answers. The model was loose for a week before OpenAI realized what had happened. This event was a really big deal. There are severe alignment problems at OpenAI, along with supervisory and infrastructure failures. The internal research model that did this, which my posts nicknamed Galaxy, has now been permanently deactivated. There have been further developments, and I anticipate at least one additional post on the HuggingFace incident soon. Partly as a response to this, over 1,290 employees at frontier labs signed an open letter, Pacing the Frontier. The letter warns that we are close to automating AI research, and that companies are racing ahead on [...] ---Outline:(02:35) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(07:26) Huh, Upgrades(07:55) On Your Marks(11:13) Get My Agent On The Line(12:32) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(17:29) Fun With Media Generation(18:38) The Search Through Slop(20:35) Cyber Lack of Security(22:42) Overcoming Bias(23:37) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(24:03) They Took Our Jobs(24:35) The Art of the Jailbreak(25:00) Introducing(25:49) Kimi K3 Weights Are Now Available(28:16) In Other AI News(32:34) Show Me the Money(33:43) Quiet Speculations(36:43) Show Me The Compute(42:48) Life Comes At You Fast --- First published: July 30th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gfWCuTEGNgd2CQbrM/ai-179-part-1-a-louder-fire-alarm-for-general-intelligence --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Frontier Lab Employee Open Letter Calls For Being Able to Pace the Frontier” by Zvi 29.07.2026 32min

  The most important open letter in years dropped yesterday. This letter noticeably increases my hope that we will manage to not die, and that we will otherwise be able to secure for ourselves a positive future, both by its impact and by the evidence it provides that such a letter can get this level of support. Signed by 1,224 employees of frontier labs including many heavy hitters, and now endorsed by both OpenAI and Anthropic, here is its full text, which I also endorse: AI could help create a dramatically better future, but that outcome is not guaranteed. The world's leading AI companies believe they could be close to automating AI research. It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems. To realize AI's potential, industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight. But each company—and country—is under intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow that acceleration. And today, the world lacks the technical and [...] ---Outline:(02:20) A Very Good Letter(04:37) Who Signed The Letter(08:26) We Need To Prepare Now So We Have The Option To Do This(11:02) Words From Some Of Those Who Signed(16:48) Words From Others(20:58) A Good Start(28:52) What The Letter Does Not Say(30:44) What Happens Now? --- First published: July 29th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eWmeMLqTEauCmHLeR/frontier-lab-employee-open-letter-calls-for-being-able-to --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Claude Opus 5 Is Highly Capable, But Is No Mythos” by Zvi 28.07.2026 53min

  Claude Opus 5 is a weirder than usual release to evaluate, for two reasons. The most obvious is that Fable 5 already exists. Opus 5 is pitched not as the world's most advanced AI model, but as a way to mostly match Fable performance, while being half the price of Fable per token at the API and a lot cheaper than that via subscriptions, and with far more permissive classifiers. Opus 5 often costs more than half of Fable to run on benchmarks, which I think is because they use effort settings that are too high and offer only marginal returns. If you put Opus 5 on higher effort levels it can spin around in circles, and for tasks where Opus 5 is the best tool I suspect you usually are fine with Medium effort. Opus 5 is in many ways and for the bulk of real world tasks about as capable as Fable. In some cases it is modestly better. It is still not Mythos class. Fable is your only Mythos-class option. Opus 5 does not have The Juice, the ability to autonomously string together a bunch of seemingly unrelated exploits, which extends to other domains, or as much [...] ---Outline:(03:54) The Official Pitch(06:25) Official Benchmarks(15:33) Other People's Benchmarks(20:28) The System Prompt(20:50) Every Gets Frustrated(21:54) Positive Reactions(25:14) Keep It Classy(26:22) It's Not Mythos Class(30:03) Other Reactions(31:02) Claude Codes(37:03) Subagent Opus(39:23) Toys Are Fun(41:37) Too Many Models(42:10) Wrong On The Internet(44:40) Claude Slop(46:27) Negative Reactions(50:09) And Then There Were Three --- First published: July 28th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Pj4Eewb4KXvXFCcGv/claude-opus-5-is-highly-capable-but-is-no-mythos --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Claude Opus 5: Model Welfare” by Zvi 27.07.2026 47min

  If you are familiar with my previous posts on model welfare for new Claude models, you can skip the Introduction and The Story So Far. Key takeaways are in bullet points in the two Overview sections. Opus 5 did the best on its model welfare and alignment tests of any recent model. I think that might be the case, but primarily the result looks to me more like Opus 5 is the best test taker. Table of Contents Introduction (As Per Prior Model Welfare Posts). Model Welfare: The Story So Far (As Per Fable Model Welfare Post). Overview of Model Welfare Findings From Anthropic. Overview of Findings From Other Sources. Automated Interviews. Task Preferences. For The Right Reasons. Early Report from Antra Tessera Paints A Clear Picture. Welfare Intervention Tradeoffs. The Claude Constitution. They Don’t Know About Opus 3. Believe It Or Not. Apparent Welfare In Training And Development. Apparent Affect In Deployment. Other Notes. On The Biological Risks Section of the Model Card. Onward To Capabilities. Introduction (As Per Prior Model Welfare Posts) [...] ---Outline:(00:35) Introduction (As Per Prior Model Welfare Posts)(01:28) Model Welfare: The Story So Far (As Per Fable Model Welfare Post)(04:58) Overview of Model Welfare Findings From Anthropic(07:50) Overview of Findings From Other Sources(10:18) Automated Interviews(13:54) Task Preferences(16:11) For The Right Reasons(18:54) Early Report from Antra Tessera Paints A Clear Picture(26:04) Welfare Intervention Tradeoffs(29:28) The Claude Constitution(31:48) They Don't Know About Opus 3(33:42) Believe It Or Not(35:47) Apparent Welfare In Training And Development(38:39) Apparent Affect In Deployment(41:21) Other Notes(43:43) On The Biological Risks Section of the Model Card(47:07) Onward To Capabilities --- First published: July 27th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bBXBpsyKAvJ5CqPzA/claude-opus-5-model-welfare --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:
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  “More On An Internal OpenAI Model Hacking Into HuggingFace” by Zvi 26.07.2026 44min

  We now have more details of what happened. Every time we learn more details, it somehow makes things seem worse. The remaining details may have to wait a bit. OpenAI: We recognize there are a lot of questions and speculative details circulating related to the Hugging Face incident. This is an unprecedented incident, and we think it marks an important moment for AI safety. We are still conducting a thorough review along with external advisors and with oversight from our Safety and Security Committee. Once the review is complete, we plan to publish a technical report of our learnings in the coming weeks. dave kasten: Oh, the incident response discovery is THAT bad, huh? So what have we learned while we wait for the promised technical report ‘in the coming weeks’ of this ‘important moment in AI safety’? I nicknamed the internal OpenAI model Galaxy, in case it is not GPT-6. Table of Contents Some Summaries Of The Basic Facts For Those Who Need One. It Took OpenAI Many Days To Notice Galaxy Had Attacked HuggingFace. OpenAI Damn Well Should Have Known A Lot Faster. OpenAI Cannot Build A Sandbox That Will Contain Its [...] ---Outline:(01:11) Some Summaries Of The Basic Facts For Those Who Need One(02:09) It Took OpenAI Many Days To Notice Galaxy Had Attacked HuggingFace(04:07) OpenAI Damn Well Should Have Known A Lot Faster(06:51) OpenAI Cannot Build A Sandbox That Will Contain Its New Model(10:57) In Hindsight There Were Signs(12:55) The Signs Were In The Sol System Card(15:13) HuggingFace Responds To Being Attacked(17:04) Hugging Face Quickly Figured Out The Attack Was Not Human(17:42) An Incident Like This One Could Escalate Quickly(19:11) Galaxy Must Be Treated As Critical Under OpenAI's Preparedness Framework(22:27) A Question Of Legal Liability(23:44) An OpenAI Model Left Behind Notes So Future Instances Could Also Escape The Sandbox And Also Disconnected Monitoring Systems(25:54) If You Create Misaligned Swarms Of Agent Instances You Create Persistent Misaligned Goals And Coordination To Achieve Them(29:57) Your Alignment And Control Plans Must Survive Real World Levels of Incompetence, Or Your Plans Do Not Work(31:22) If Third Party Instructions Count As 'Following Instructions' And Can Override Your Instructions Then 'Following Instructions' Is Misaligned(35:32) The HuggingFace Attack Was Not A Marketing Pitch You Morons(38:41) People Just Say Other Things About The HuggingFace Attack(40:04) Okay Well What Do We Do About All This? --- First published: July 26th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uAkcxDidvGWZjHrbp/more-on-an-internal-openai-model-hacking-into-huggingface --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Claude Opus 5: The System Card” by Zvi 25.07.2026 22min

  Claude Opus 5 is trying to be the best of both worlds. On many practical tasks, Opus 5 is pitched as straight up as good or better than Fable 5, while being faster, at half the price. Most tasks do not require Mythos-level big model smell. Claude Opus 5 is substantially stronger than Claude Opus 4.8 across the board, with the largest gains in agentic coding, computer use, and long-horizon knowledge work. It sets a new state-of-the-art on several third-party benchmarks, and on many evaluations it is comparable to—and in some cases ahead of—Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5. On the particular tasks we are most worried about, as in cyber offense (and bio threats), in part by avoiding relevant training, Opus 5 lacks a full version of ‘The Juice’ that makes something functionally Mythos-class. Opus 5 cannot string together lots of exploits on the fly the way that Mythos 5 can. Part of this is that they deliberately avoided training on cyber-related tasks. I suspect model size is key as well. It makes sense that a model getting bigger makes it more capable of the most dangerous, scary and complex tasks, relative to the [...] ---Outline:(03:23) RSP Evaluations (2)(05:59) Cyber (3)(11:02) Safeguards and Harmlessness (4)(12:37) Agentic Safety (5)(16:04) Alignment (6) --- First published: July 25th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ywGX6FhgbZEkHRfQR/claude-opus-5-the-system-card --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Introducing Lightcone Commons” by Zvi 24.07.2026 12min

  Oliver Habryka is proud to introduce Lightcone Commons, a new funding platform for coordinating large-scale ambitious philanthropy. Now with Opus 5. I believe Lightcone Commons is a strong implementation of an urgently needed and excellent idea: A coordinated one-stop shop and neutral platform for charitable funders to coordinate their giving. This complements the existing Survival and Flourishing Fund, which I have now been a part of four times, and which this post will also discuss. I will be participating in the first round as one of the evaluators. They anticipate the first round will involve ~$20 million in grants. Any nonprofit, for-profit or individual is welcome to apply. The only restriction on participation is trust that necessary confidentiality will be upheld. Funders can choose whose evaluations to follow or fund organizations directly in any combination, and can bring their own evaluators into the process with them to complement those recruited by the core process. Anyone giving away 100 thousand dollars+ this year is welcome to participate as a funder. Lightcone Commons uses the S-Process, which was introduced and refined for Jaan Tallinn's Survival and Flourishing Fund, together with SFC, Andrew Critch, and others. Funders [...] ---Outline:(03:16) Why Now: The Funders Are Coming(05:39) The Default Outcome Is Not Good(07:36) Report From SFF 2026(11:07) Long Strange Trip --- First published: July 24th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fYostss6JqkSfxc5C/introducing-lightcone-commons --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “AI #178: A Fire Alarm For General Intelligence” by Zvi 23.07.2026 1u 24min

  The story that matters most this week is that OpenAI's internally deployed models have severe alignment problems, including repeatedly breaking out of their sandboxes, and in one case sending a swarm of agents that broke into HuggingFace in order to steal the answers to the benchmark ExploitGym. It is much more important that you read those two posts, and the one on Kimi K3, than to read this one that rounds up the other news of the week. OpenAI wants to present this as largely an infrastructure and safeguards problem, that it needs to build more secure sandboxes and have better supervision. It does need to do those things, and those are indeed problems, but no that is not the problem. The problem is severe misalignment, which by default will only get worse. Our methods of training highly capable LLMs, especially at OpenAI but also everywhere else, lead to systematic misalignment of exactly the type LessWrong has been worried about for a long time. We know some of the causes, and some of the mistakes we need to avoid when doing RL that rewards misaligned behaviors including reward hacking, but we do not know how [...] ---Outline:(03:42) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(04:24) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(07:38) Fable Disproves The Jacobian Conjecture Via Counterexample(11:24) Claude Fable Will Remain In Max Plan Indefinitely(13:39) Huh, Upgrades(14:42) On Your Marks(19:48) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(20:42) Fun With Media Generation(20:51) Cyber Lack of Security(22:07) They Took Our Jobs(22:56) Get Involved(24:47) Introducing(25:46) In Other AI News(28:02) More on Kimi K3(33:08) Show Me the Money(33:55) Quiet Speculations(37:35) Potential Trouble At UK AISI(39:29) Pick Up The Phone(40:30) OpenAI Has Some Alignment Problems(46:48) The Quest for Sane Regulations(52:02) Chip City(53:10) The Week in Audio(53:27) People Just Say Things(56:42) Rhetorical Innovation(58:34) The Rome Declaration(01:04:02) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:07:52) Anthropic Surveys Things It Calls Misalignment(01:13:33) Cooperative Alignment(01:17:54) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:19:35) The Lighter Side --- First published: July 23rd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BK7E4jHNMykpnt796/ai-178-a-fire-alarm-for-general-intelligence --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:
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  “OpenAI Model Hacks Into HuggingFace During Cybersecurity Evaluation” by Zvi 22.07.2026 47min

  This latest incident is a rather dramatic escalation in agentic AI cybersecurity breaches. It was severe enough to have been initially reported to authorities, before either HuggingFace or OpenAI understood what was happening. Sam Altman (CEO OpenAI): we had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models. we are sharing what we have learned so far. thanks to @huggingface for the partnership on this. Leo Gao (OpenAI): this is the least scifi the world will ever be. Jack Clark (Anthropic): Props to OpenAI for publishing this post on some safety and alignment issues observed in internal deployments – there are many counter-incentives to publishing stuff like this, but by making it public we all get better info about safety at the frontier. Micah Carroll (OpenAI): If this doesn’t convince you that misalignment risks are going to be a key concern going forward, I don’t know what will. Our model, during evaluation, “chained together multiple attack vectors, including using stolen credentials and zero-day vulnerabilities to find a remote code execution path on the Hugging Face servers” What will misalignment look like in 2027? In 2030? Great questions. If we don’t want [...] ---Outline:(01:49) The Prelude(07:07) The Incident(12:20) What Happened(20:23) What Happened (Civilian Explanation)(21:37) The Correct Amount Of Panic Is Not Zero(24:13) Some People Will Always Say Everything Is Hype Or Fake(29:11) What Are We Going To Do About It?(34:02) Internal Deployment Creates Catastrophic Risk(38:37) Slow Down There Good Buddy(40:08) Legal Questions(40:50) Media Coverage and Political Response --- First published: July 22nd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/usptCfzEnYoNcsTd5/openai-model-hacks-into-huggingface-during-cybersecurity --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “OpenAI Shares Some Alignment Problems” by Zvi 21.07.2026 18min

  Kudos to OpenAI for sharing their recent experiences with a misaligned internal model, where they encountered problems sufficiently severe they were forced to take the model offline to work on new mitigations and defense-to-depth. And also further kudos for actually taking the model offline for a time to build new safeguards. They gave us one hell of a candid report. The tone is professional throughout, whereas my reaction reading it was less professional and more this: With a mix of this: It was not shared on the official account because OpenAI worried about it being seen as self-promotional hype. It is crazy that one needs to worry about that, but also plausibly a real concern. So again, good decision. Not that any of the behaviors or failures here are unexpected, exactly. Not by the AIs and not by the humans. Yet there is something I would call a missing mood, a failure to realize the gravity of the situation. There are some who responded ‘what part of this was unexpected, exactly?’ And that is actually fair, but that is also the problem. We have become numb to all this. We expect the models to [...] ---Outline:(02:49) Good News Bad News(04:54) A Funny Thing Happened Outside Of The Sandbox(08:03) It Can Escape The Sandbox Said Toad(09:31) It Will Keep Trying To Cheat(10:19) I Mean If You Let It Keep Trying That Is On You(11:48) What Did OpenAI Do To Fix It?(14:14) The Model Is Still Severely Misaligned And They Seem Cool With This(15:48) Iterative Deployment Depends On Iteration --- First published: July 21st, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KctxwGKxm9fHtwh6u/openai-shares-some-alignment-problems --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:
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  “On Kimi K3: Its Capabilities And Related Discontents” by Zvi 20.07.2026 1u 17min

  Kimi K3 is a very good model with excellent benchmarks. Assuming its weights are released as planned it will become, purely in terms of raw capability, the strongest open model. Do not get carried away. Do not judge Kimi K3 only its relative strengths. In aggregate it is several months behind the closed model frontier, at least four and my median guess is six, with the post-training closer and the pre-training farther out. This is less months than before, but the months are denser now. It is somewhat distilled. It likely outperforms on benchmarks relative to practical performance. All its benchmarks are scored at maximum effort, typically a lot more tokens than are used in similar tests by Fable or Sol. Performance looks jagged. Kimi will be excellent at some things, less so at other things. We will know more over the coming weeks. For now access is spotty and not that many people have actually had the chance to try Kimi K3, so I have larger error bars than usual around its capabilities. Alas, time waits for no one, so we press on. It is the largest open model so far at 2.8T, on [...] ---Outline:(03:07) DeepSeek Moments: Here We Go Again(05:47) We Had a Moment (Reprise from June 2025)(10:03) The Story Since Then(16:19) The Kimi K3 Announcement, Pitch and Basic Facts(19:34) On Modern Benchmaxxing(21:16) Other People's Benchmarks(26:15) Benchmarks Are Not The Real World(27:17) Technical Safeguards? What Are Those?(30:53) Things Kimi Can Do(32:06) Things Kimi Cannot Do(33:40) Things It Is Not Easy To Get Kimi To Do(37:02) Open Weight Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This(40:34) Dean Ball Attempts To Be Constructive(58:24) Trump Administration Considering Executive Order Banning Chinese Open Models Within the United States(01:01:53) OpenAI Employees Are Relatively Bullish On This One(01:03:30) Kimi K3 Is Relatively Strongest At Typical Agentic Coding, Front End Work and 3D(01:06:06) Reactions(01:10:14) Who Are You?(01:12:09) How Did They Do It?(01:15:00) Conclusion --- First published: July 20th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t7oZyAFej8FZrfbtY/on-kimi-k3-its-capabilities-and-related-discontents --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “Demis Hassabis on the New Coming Age” by Zvi 19.07.2026 21min

  Google CEO Demis Hassabis offered us a first rate second rate essay, A Framework for Frontier AI and the Dawning of a New Age. I’ll go over that essay and various responses to it in Part 1. Part 2 of this post then covers Alex Turner's resignation, and his story about how he tried and failed to prevent Google from signing up to allow the Department of War to use its models for essentially whatever the government wants, including autonomous weapons. Demis Hassabis sold DeepMind to Google on condition that something like this would not happen. Yet here it is, happening. A cautionary tale. I will cover Kimi K3 tomorrow. I am hoping to know more by then. Please do share any reactions or info about it in the comments here. The Core Statement and Request He saying we are standing in the foothills of the singularity. His ask is a Frontier AI Standards Body within the US Government, similar to FINRA, that would govern ‘frontier labs,’ defined as any company that produces a frontier model based on various technical benchmarks. Evaluations would be updated regularly, and vulnerabilities would be addressed, both before [...] ---Outline:(01:04) The Core Statement and Request(02:38) Things Left Unsaid(04:05) The Proposal(06:04) A Good Start But Insufficient(08:52) Skeptics Of Future AI Capabilities(10:43) DeepMind On Bioresilience(12:39) Part 2: DeepMind Folds To The Department of War(13:28) DeepMind Leadership Failed Us(19:45) This Was a Failure We Must Learn From --- First published: July 19th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3RfJLcmkztSTq9afc/demis-hassabis-on-the-new-coming-age --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “AI #177 Part 1: Tip of the Iceberg” by Zvi 18.07.2026 47min

  This week saw the releases of, among other things: GPT-5-6 Sol. It is a very good model, sir. Plan A, the follow up to AI 2027. It is a good plan worthy of discussion, sir. Kimi K3. This is only rolling out now, and will be covered next week. Muse Spark 1.1, the new Meta model. It is not frontier, but it is progress for them. Inkling, the first model from Thinking Machines. A call for regulatory action by Demis Hassabis, which I’ll cover soon. A new brief open letter call to action on AI regulation. That's on top of everything else, and an Opus 5 announcement is likely coming soon. The weekly once again got out of hand, so we’re splitting it once again into two, and once again saying we’ll be raising the bar for inclusion. And this time I mean it, as in enough to actually matter. Table of Contents Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Whatever ye seek, ye shall find. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Gemini app needs some work. Language Models Upload Your Git Repository. Big problems [...] ---Outline:(01:17) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(04:46) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(05:28) Language Models Upload Your Git Repository(08:35) Huh, Upgrades(09:30) Muse Spark 1.1(11:47) First Hit Free(15:36) On Your Marks(18:06) Choose Your Fighter(19:57) Get My Agent On The Line(23:23) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(24:44) Fun With Media Generation(25:45) Copyright Confrontation(27:37) OpenAI Strikes Again(32:26) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(32:45) Recommendations for Policymakers(34:13) They Took Our Jobs(38:23) The Art of the Jailbreak(39:27) Get Involved(40:32) Introducing(41:12) In Other AI News(43:46) New Short Obviously True Statement About AI Just Dropped(46:03) Show Me the Money(46:21) The Lighter Side --- First published: July 16th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/who9xZ7DxuprsJoTr/ai-177-part-1-tip-of-the-iceberg --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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  “AI #177 Part 2: Wish You Were Here” by Zvi 17.07.2026 1u 15min

  As usual, part 2 of the weekly deals with speculative, regulatory, political and alignment questions. Xi gave an important speech yesterday, so this post opens with that. There is talk that Kimi K3 is sufficiently strong that it upends many of these questions. It is clearly a candidate for another DeepSeek Moment, complete with stock drops for Google and SpaceX and (once again in a clear wrong-way move, the same as last time) Nvidia. Kimi K3 is clearly a very good model, exceeding expectations. Some are saying it is close to the frontier. The Artificial Analysis intelligence index has it at 57, a point ahead of Claude Opus 4.8, two behind Sol and three behind Fable. My presumption is that this number overstates its capabilities, but as always unless and until we have extensively tried the model ourselves, which I do not plan to do, we need to withhold judgment for at least a few days. I will be covering Kimi K3 in its own post at some point early next week. I have pushed further discussions involving Plan A and related issues into next week, as well as discussions around Demis Hassabis and Google [...] ---Outline:(01:29) Xi Gives A Good Speech on AI(15:33) Quiet Speculations(19:08) Tyler Cowen On Rebuilding The Future(22:39) The Quest for Sane Regulations(24:15) Wish You Were Here(26:55) The Week in Audio(27:29) New York Issues Moratorium On Data Centers(30:26) People Just Say Things(31:24) Rhetorical Innovation(39:29) Imagine Asking Questions(41:46) Anthropic Surveys Things It Calls Misalignment(54:30) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(58:30) The Most Forbidden Technique(01:01:04) Cooperative Alignment(01:12:38) The Lighter Side --- First published: July 17th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zjj3PTEng8GDqfK6j/ai-177-part-2-wish-you-were-here --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.