Don't Worry About the Vase Podcast

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  AI #187: Coming Into Play 24.09.2026 2ชม. 1นาที

  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 58นาที

  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 56นาที

  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 52นาที

  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 29นาที

  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 42นาที

  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 53นาที

  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 1ชม. 54นาที

  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 50นาที

  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 41นาที

  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 1ชม. 16นาที

  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 34นาที

  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
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  GPT-6-Astra Can Do Ambitious Things 12.09.2026 1ชม. 9นาที

  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 Wieldinghttps://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
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  Jacob Coxon Warns of Human Extinction and Triggers a Preference Cascade 11.09.2026 1ชม. 19นาที

  Jacob Coxon’s resignation set off a wave of public warnings about AI from esearchers, politicians and other observers. Zvi examines why this warning broke through, what researchers say they believe, and the choices facing people inside and outside the frontier labs.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* 01:21 - Jacob Coxon Resigns From Anthropic In Protest And Sounds The Alarm* 05:37 - Mainstream Media Finally Pays Attention* 06:34 - Preference Cascade at Anthropic* 09:56 - Preference Cascade at OpenAI* 12:56 - Preference Cascade at Google* 14:03 - Hashtag Not All Members of Technical Staff* 14:42 - Why a Preference Cascade Now?* 20:13 - This Is What Many Anthropic and OpenAI Employees Actually Believe* 23:17 - To Quit Or Not To Quit* 30:12 - Quiet Quitting Is A Dominated Option* 31:26 - When You Quit, Very Serious People Understand What That Means* 37:40 - Jacob Coxon Believes Existential Risk Is High That Is Why He Quit* 39:51 - Evan Hubinger Believes Existential Risk Is High That Is Why He Stays* 43:13 - Anthropic and OpenAI Have Commercial Incentives To Downplay Existential Risks, Not Advertise Them* 49:03 - What Do We Do Now?* 51:01 - OK, But How Exactly Would AI Kill Everyone?* 59:48 - Best Start Believing In Science Fiction Stories Because You Are In One* 01:04:16 - Literal Extinction Is Not Much Harder Than Loss of Control* 01:05:30 - Conspiracytown Is Always Hiring* 01:17:37 - Now You See Ithttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/jacob-coxon-warns-of-human-extinction?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 #185: Preference Cascade 10.09.2026 2ชม.

  A week of accelerating AI capabilities, security revelations, and shifting public positions. Zvi surveys the latest models, the debate over oversight, the economics of AI adoption, and the increasingly strange world of autonomous agents.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* 04:40 Table of Contents* 08:10 Language Models Offer Mundane Utility* 08:56 Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility* 10:04 Huh, Upgrades* 11:40 How To Tell a Fable* 12:50 On Your Marks* 13:03 Deepfake Town and Botpocalypse Soon* 17:10 Levels of Friction* 21:20 Cyber Lack of Security* 27:24 A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer* 28:50 They Took Our Jobs* 32:38 Anthropic Offers Economic Scenarios* 37:52 Get Involved* 40:39 Introducing* 41:27 In Other AI News* 41:54 Show Me the Money* 42:05 Quiet Speculations* 46:14 The Quest for Sane Regulations* 47:35 The OpenAI Policy and Lobbying Department* 53:52 Greetings From the Department of War* 55:07 Hugging The Face* 01:01:49 Hugging the Question* 01:06:03 The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act* 01:13:15 Chip City* 01:14:35 The Week in Audio* 01:14:54 People Just Say Things* 01:20:13 Pause A I Global Disendorsed Pause A I US* 01:21:59 Paul Christiano Joins Board of OpenAI Foundation* 01:27:14 Rhetorical Innovation* 01:36:07 Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult* 01:38:54 Cooperative Alignment* 01:47:46 Drive to Survive* 01:50:10 People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone* 01:51:53 Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone* 01:54:11 The Lighter Side* 01:59:14 Outrohttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-185-preference-cascade?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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  GPT-6 Astra: The System Card, Alignment and What Comes Next 10.09.2026 1ชม. 11นาที

  What does it mean to call an AI model aligned? Zvi examines GPT-6 Astra’s system card, its growing capabilities, and the evidence behind OpenAI’s safety claims, with reactions from alignment researchers and external evaluators.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* 04:06 OpenAI’s Safety Claims About Astra (1)* 08:14 Preparedness Capabilities Assessment (10)* 08:39 Biological and Chemical Capability is High* 10:07 Cybersecurity Capability is Critical* 16:39 AI Self-Improvement Capabilities (10.1.3)* 18:15 Astra Is Highly Verbally Eval Aware (from 8.6)* 19:54 Safe Mundane Completions (4.1)* 23:22 Jailbreaks (5.1)* 25:12 Prompt Injection (5.2)* 26:54 Health (6)* 27:56 Hallucinations (7)* 28:38 Alignment (8)* 29:41 Obeying Restrictions (8.2)* 32:51 That’s Worse, You Do Get How That’s Worse, Right?* 34:20 OpenAI Does Not Understand Why This Is Worse* 38:28 The Alternative Explanation Is Also Worse* 46:20 Metagaming (8.7)* 49:12 Alignment Faking (8.7)* 50:47 Don’t Lie to the User (8.3)* 51:44 Misalignment in Realistic Work Environments (8.4)* 53:10 Unintended Agent-to-Agent Communication (8.5)* 54:47 The Three Obviously Monitored Temptations of Astra* 56:38 Severe Issues In Simulated Traffic Are Down By Half* 59:09 UK AISI External Evaluations (8.8)* 01:03:02 Sabotaging Safety Work* 01:03:31 What About The July 19 Attacks?* 01:04:53 Apollo Research External Evaluations (8.8.1)* 01:05:53 The Alignment Verdict* 01:08:03 It Depends What You Mean By Alignment* 01:10:05 Outrohttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/gpt-6-astra-the-system-card-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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  Astra Is Hard to Monitor 08.09.2026 1ชม. 23นาที

  OpenAI says its new GPT-6 Astra is highly capable, its most aligned model yet, and harder to monitor. Zvi digs into that second claim: what the system card’s monitorability evaluations actually show, the internet’s alarm over Astra’s recurrent-depth architecture, and what it would take to stop a race to the bottom on chain-of-thought monitoring.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.* 00:00:00 Introduction* 00:03:35 Monitorability is Defense in Depth That Is Already Flailing* 00:06:00 OpenAI Is Counting On Monitorability* 00:07:45 How They Tested For Monitorability* 00:09:44 Non-Adversarial Monitorability (9.1)* 00:12:37 Astra Shortens Its CoT When It Knows It Is Being Monitored And Is Doing Something Bad* 00:14:05 Sandbagging Task Kind of Passes, Kind of Fails (9.2.2.3)* 00:15:46 OpenAI Does Not Believe It Could Catch Sandbagging* 00:16:48 OAI-Repo Sabotage v2* 00:23:10 The Secret Police Do Not Make Your Notebook Useless* 00:24:29 CoT Controllability Is Up (9.2.1)* 00:29:36 Astra Cannot Make Itself More Monitorable On Demand* 00:30:04 Steganographic Chain of Thought May Be Within Reach* 00:34:18 Astra Cannot Yet Sneak Math Side Tasks Past CoT Monitors (9.2.2.4)* 00:35:33 UK AISI Monitorability Assessment (9.3)* 00:39:38 Monitorability Declines Seem Unlikely To Be Only Capability Gains* 00:45:02 Part 2: Recurrent Depth* 00:48:44 The Immune System Responds* 00:55:23 Ryan Greenblatt Explains How Bad This Could Be* 00:59:39 Only Law Can Prevent Extinction* 01:03:31 OpenAI Calls On Us to Avoid Racing to the Bottom* 01:10:31 Thinking Fast and Slow, Also Small and Large* 01:18:12 Talking Price* 01:19:35 Conclusion: If The House Burns Down, Halt and Catch Fire* 01:22:16 Outrohttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/astra-is-hard-to-monitor?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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  An Alien Mind: Jakub Pachocki Warns Us 07.09.2026 30นาที

  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* 00:36 - An Excellent Warning* 05:42 - Branches of the Tech Tree* 06:49 - Universally Better Is Not Required* 08:03 - Alignment To What and To Whom* 12:00 - Monitorability* 14:39 - The Case For Not Stopping* 15:14 - Pacing the Next Frontier* 18:35 - Mea Culpa Cascade* 23:11 - The Calls Are Coming From Inside the House* 26:03 - Actions Speak Louderhttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/an-alien-mind-jakub-pachocki-warns?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=webI have also done a voice conversion of the post discussed in this post. https://askwhocastsai.substack.com/p/an-alien-mind-by-jakub-pachocki-chief?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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  OpenAI and the Wiki Incident 06.09.2026 32นาที

  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* 02:35 - I Don’t Think They Know About First Message Board* 03:26 - The New Extended Timeline* 04:32 - The Researchers Explain What Happened This Time* 13:08 - They Also Don’t Know About All These Other Message Boards* 15:06 - OpenAI Knew and Did Not Tell Us* 17:42 - OpenAI Tries To Downplay the ‘Wiki Incident’* 22:08 - This Was a Cover-Up* 23:49 - Schelling Points and Last Ditch Efforts* 27:31 - Can We Finally Dispose Of The ‘You Told It To Hack’ Narrative?* 29:20 - So Much And Yet So Littlehttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/openai-and-the-wiki-incident?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 Mythos 5.1 and Fable 5.1: Capabilities 05.09.2026 42นาที

  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* 02:22 - The Official Pitch* 04:34 - Our Price Cheap* 06:06 - Zero Data Retention and Reduced Safeguards* 07:37 - Official Benchmarks* 15:04 - Other People’s Benchmarks* 18:23 - The System Prompt* 18:29 - The Blurb Pitches* 20:33 - The Every Review Is In and It’s Very Good* 23:56 - Positive Reactions* 34:01 - Our Price Cheap But Only Per Token* 38:26 - Negative Reactions* 39:46 - Early Whispers* 40:03 - Weapon of Choicehttps://thezvi.substack.com/p/claude-mythos-51-and-fable-51-capabilities?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe