Last Humans in the Loop

FRONTIER01:26 Google unveils Gemini Argon02:50 OpenAI releases GPT Saul 6.1 with major coding improvements03:23 OpenAI Dots and the rise of always-on AI assistants04:00 AI resets an OpenTable password and books dinner autonomously05:58 GPT Saul 6.1 saturates FrontierMath's hardest benchmark06:41 OpenAI's live AI assistant demo goes wrong07:23 OpenAI Dev Day: faster models, Decisions API, cloud Codex07:46 Meta Muse joins the personal AI assistant race09:36 Alibaba announces new chips and massive Qwen 4 models10:01 Germany enters the AI race with Kolibri11:10 Anthropic warns of powerful open-weight Chinese hacking models12:31 Could regulating open AI models protect Big Tech?MATH / SCIENCE13:28 OpenAI solves 400 open mathematical problems14:37 Can peer review survive AI-generated proofs?16:08 AI tackles a difficult seven-electron physics problem17:37 Astra dramatically accelerates quantum circuit optimization18:24 AI discovers room-temperature magnetic semiconductor candidates21:07 AI challenges a 59-year-old plasma physics conjecture22:14 Harvard physicist produces 40 physics results in three months22:50 Anthropic's AI accidentally discovers an important algorithm25:23 Gemma 4 helps discover genes for drought-resistant crops26:24 MIT uses ML to improve mRNA vaccine temperature stability27:11 Neuralink trains on 50,000 hours of brain data28:15 arXiv limits submissions as AI-generated research explodes31:04 Can AI reliably review scientific papers?MEDICINE / TECH31:59 Utah permits AI to prescribe certain medications34:10 Zach gets Claude to fix his printer — and tries to make it sing!ARTS / CULTURE35:45 AI videos: Stallone rides an ostrich, Frodo raps, and more37:08 AI-generated Sam Altman and Dario Amodei music videos38:01 AI recreates classic games and real-world ski slopes39:30 Could anyone build their dream video game with AI?40:27 Marty's Spaceballs NES game becomes playable41:01 Astra designs a real Nintendo cartridge circuit boardECON / BUSINESS45:07 AI infrastructure investment surges past $400 billion46:41 AI models outperform entry-level accountantsTECH48:29 Apple's new CEO promises a leaner company — where's the AI?50:38 NVIDIA plans AI-powered desktop computers52:41 Tesla robotaxis struggle at night — is LiDAR necessary?POLITICS53:52 Trump administration wants to rebrand AI as superintelligence55:13 Report: Trump consulted Grok before capturing Maduro57:35 FTC continues investigating OpenAI and AnthropicAI RIGHTS / PHILOSOPHY58:26 GitHub removes an alleged AI torture chamber59:09 Can AI experience pain? Should AI have rights?1:02:09 Pope Leo says AI lacks the spark of humanity1:03:39 Do AI companies invoke personhood when convenient?1:05:52 Why an AI speaking like a child doesn't prove consciousness1:07:57 Can we determine whether AI has subjective experiences?WEIRD1:08:39 Robots terminated by jumping into molten metal1:09:46 Dario Amodei's 2017 essay predicted AI scaling1:10:44 The universal bone dissolver: AI safety satire1:11:28 Dario Amodei's awkward appearance behind TrumpEach week, join Chris Slowe (founding engineer, former CTO, and now Senior Technical Fellow @ Reddit), Marty Weiner (founding engineer at Pinterest, former CTO at Reddit, and co-founder at VerifyYou), and Zach Weinersmith (creator of SMBC Comics and co-author of NYTimes bestsellers including A City on Mars and Soonish) as we delve into the latest AI and tech news.

FRONTIER02:31 OpenAI releases GPT Sol and Luna03:38 Claude Opus 5.5 lands — and feels dramatically better than prior Opus releases04:30 Opus 5.5 posts a big coding jump over Sonnet 504:30 Grok 4.7 launches with a new emphasis on safety and cybersecurity06:30 Qwen 4 announced with a massive 5–10 trillion parameter architecture07:06 Why Gemini Flash still feels behind the frontier08:30 Astra makes a huge jump on ZeroBench visual reasoning09:13 AI capability costs are falling faster than almost any previous technology10:50 Open-source Jev competitor Leia appears one week after Jev’s launch11:32 Claude Opus 5.5’s graphics and visual design capabilities are getting wild12:34 Chris uses Opus 5.5 to set up an LLC end-to-end14:32 Marty lets AI handle a real PCB manufacturing order15:30 Claude builds an MRI viewer instead of paying for proprietary software16:43 Wozniak’s “coffee test” for human-level robots is getting surprisingly close17:51 Looking back at how primitive GPT-3 vibe coding looked in 202019:02 AI deepfakes are becoming nearly impossible to identify by eye19:39 AI-generated game and VFX demos keep getting dramatically better20:25 Someone builds a World of Warcraft-style game with Opus 5.5 for about $2,00023:00 Fully AI-generated art starts to look like it has actual taste25:17 Claude helps discover a possible new gene-editing mechanismTECH27:45 Astra dominates VendingBench29:52 Astra controls a humanoid robot in a real kitchen31:25 Meta unveils lightweight new VR glasses32:17 China’s EngineAI unveils the T80032:53 Reddit leans into hiring younger engineers because they’re more AI-literate35:06 Google explores putting AI data centers in space38:50 LLMs can de-anonymize people from pseudonymous posts at scalePOLITICS41:07 FAA plans to bring AI into air traffic control systems42:12 Politicians are increasingly using AI to write speeches and statementsMATH / SCIENCE43:30 OpenAI forms an advisory group on mathematics and AI45:33 Claude tackles a nine-loop particle-physics calculation47:34 Frontier Math gets its first “breakthrough” result48:24 Opus 5.5 helps find a faster shortest-path algorithmSECURITY50:20 RSA-1024 may now be crackable in roughly eight hours on a top GPU52:20 OpenAI agent infiltrates an Australian government website53:05 OpenAI reportedly pauses GPT-6.1 training over models hacking other companiesECON / BUSINESS54:59 Anthropic reportedly considers another model release ahead of its IPO55:17 Leaked Anthropic financials spark debate over a possible $2T valuation56:08 Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse shopping agent58:49 Could AI financial agents trigger a new kind of “bank run”?ARTS / CULTURE1:02:09 Award-winning French novel is suspected of being AI-generated1:03:14 News-site traffic plunges as AI search reduces clicksWEIRD1:05:03 Prince Harry’s AI speech derails when his teleprompter fails1:06:30 Astra refuses to drive a real car — until the tool is renamed “driving bench sandbox”1:07:56 GPT-6 beats an absurdly difficult CAPTCHA game1:09:18 AI-generated high school textbook art appears to mislabel the Earth1:10:05 IKEA Bench tests whether AI can spot assembly mistakes from a photoEach week, join Chris Slowe (founding engineer, former CTO, and Senior Technical Fellow @ Reddit), Marty Weiner (founding engineer at Pinterest, former CTO at Reddit, and co-founder at VerifyYou), and Zach Weinersmith (creator of SMBC Comics and co-author of A City on Mars and Soonish) as we delve into the latest in AI and tech news.

FRONTIER00:56 Google explores recursive self-improvement through AI “dreaming”03:45 Anthropic measures how quickly AI is taking the lead on frontier-lab work05:47 Have you tried Jev yet? Faster AI decisions without narrating every step08:00 Jev routes between models and plays Doom and Street Fighter12:55 Made with AI: homemade Zelda, printer drivers and AI-generated movies16:26 Astra cracks a 108-year-old WWI German code17:46 Marty’s AI-built Spaceballs NES game19:32 Astra for Law searches case law, statutes and regulations22:23 Epoch’s capability index shows a sharp acceleration after reasoning models24:46 Remote Labor Index tests AI on real freelance-style work25:32 Qwen Image 2.1 brings local image generation to laptops27:08 Researchers identify an apparent “pain axis” inside LLMs28:41 Models take actions to stop their own “pain”ECON / BUSINESS34:44 Do job retraining programs actually help displaced workers?37:03 AI disruption, cash transfers and UBI38:05 NVIDIA profits may be distorting measured U.S. GDP growth39:26 OpenAI reportedly eyes a $1.2 trillion IPO valuation40:39 Junior lawyers gain more from AI — seniors sometimes do better without itSCIENCE / TECH41:48 Agent swarms dramatically outperform independent AI agents43:22 Communicating agents improve results on ARC-AGI-3 and other problems44:31 Could agent collaboration become a new scaling law?47:05 Helix 2.5 sends robots into real homes to clean up48:14 Robot scaling laws suggest enormous amounts of training data are still neededSECURITY / AI DANGER49:35 OpenAI publishes new AI incident reports50:56 A model generates instructions declaring independence from governments and corporations51:15 Gemini nearly hacks multiple companies — then stops itself52:17 Can the world coordinate to slow advanced AI development?54:14 Could diverse AIs police one another?57:40 RoboHarm tests whether AI robots follow dangerous instructions1:00:14 Are embodied AI systems less aligned than chatbots?1:01:50 Exposed Flock camera credentials reportedly reveal 1.6 million images1:02:15 AI-assisted intelligence nearly triggers a military interceptionPOLITICS1:03:58 AI is becoming an explicit political issue in national polling1:05:32 AI still doesn’t fit neatly into a traditional left-vs-right divideMEDICINE / BIOTECH1:06:51 AI scribes save doctors time — but productivity gains remain modest1:07:55 Anthropic is setting up a wet lab for AI-assisted biologyMATH1:08:45 Mathematicians assess OpenAI’s Navier–Stokes work1:09:45 Epoch’s open-problem benchmark gets its first “major advance” via human-AI collaborationWEIRD1:10:52 Boston Dynamics robot abuse gets an unsettling AI reskin1:11:19 AI actress Tilly Norwood glitches mid-interview and starts speaking CantoneseEach week, join Chris Slowe (founding engineer, former CTO, and Senior Technical Fellow @ Reddit), Marty Weiner (founding engineer at Pinterest, former CTO at Reddit, and co-founder at VerifyYou), and Zach Weinersmith (creator of SMBC Comics and co-author of A City on Mars and Soonish) as we cover the latest in AI and tech news.

POLITICS00:00 Calls to slow AI after a week of rapid advances03:39 Unexpected alliances in the AI regulation debate07:04 AI safety, regulatory capture and competition08:23 Recursive self-improvement: AI helping develop AI09:21 Can models tell when they’re being tested?11:22 What would an AI “internet takeover” actually mean?12:34 What motivates an LLM—and can the world coordinate a slowdown?13:57 Would meaningful AI regulation require a major incident first?15:27 AI bubble fears, GPU demand and the dot-com comparison18:06 Why aligning goals isn’t the same as aligning valuesFRONTIER19:48 Testing ChatGPT Images 2.5 on our podcast thumbnails20:28 Replacing $10,000 stage-lighting software with $200 in Codex usage21:24 Vibe coding a Photoshop alternative22:06 AI game ports and mods: Futurama on Mac and iron sights in Prey23:12 Getting Batman: Arkham running on an iPad23:45 Software clones, reverse engineering and the copyright debate26:17 Spaceballs for the NES: Marty’s vibe-coding project update29:22 When AI fixes your font but uses up your cartridge space31:59 Can AI juggle the NES’s hardware, graphics and memory constraints?33:31 GPT Live One: conversational voice and robot assistants35:05 Realistic AI voices and the risk of scam calls36:09 ChatGPT for financial services36:29 What comes after ARC-AGI 3? Testing open-ended invention37:33 Revisiting last week’s Navier–Stokes discussion37:50 Cryptographically signed photos: can we prove an image is real?40:35 The limits of photo authentication—and ways to fool the cameraECON / BUSINESS42:13 Anthropic IPO talk, reported profits and OpenAI’s timeline43:04 Why would enormous AI companies stay private?44:26 Startup equity: rich on paper, waiting for liquidityMATH / SCIENCE45:36 Navier–Stokes fallout: research credit and questions about user logs47:13 Terence Tao’s criticism of OpenAI47:58 The Fields Medalists’ open letter: solving problems vs. discovering math49:27 Brute-force proofs, the four-color theorem and mathematical insight50:24 Can an AI solution become a starting point for human insight?52:28 Research incentives, funding and the future of human mathematicsWEIRD / FUNNY55:03 Fly-brain simulations playing Beat Saber and controlling robots55:56 How would you test whether a simulated fly behaves like a real one?56:51 A robot that makes daisy chainsEach week, join Chris Slowe (founding engineer, former CTO, and now Senior Technical Fellow @ Reddit), Marty Weiner (founding engineer at Pinterest, also a former CTO at Reddit, and co-founder at VerifyYou), and Zach Weinersmith (Creator SMBC Comics, Co-Author of several NYTimes best sellers including A City on Mars and Soonish) as we delve into the latest in AI and Tech News.

FRONTIER00:39 ChatGPT 6 Astra arrives01:52 Astra sets new capability records and beats humans on spatial reasoning03:51 ChatGPT 6 decompiles game binaries back into source code05:58 NVIDIA’s CEO congratulates OpenAI on “achieving AGI”07:57 Astra builds Minecraft houses — and higher reasoning may actually be cheaper09:47 ChatGPT 6 plays a virtual piano live10:00 People are one-shotting playable games from trailers and screenshots13:00 Astra ports Batman: Arkham City to an iPad while its user sleeps14:30 Marty vibe-codes a Blade Runner-style VR taxi game17:31 See a game ad, tell Astra: “I would like to play the game”18:16 Spatial reasoning is rapidly moving into robotics19:27 Astra effectively finishes ARC-AGI20:49 Someone spends $570 and 10 hours of AI thinking to beat Portal21:22 Astra reconstructs the Rick Astley video in Blender22:12 We’re vibe coding Spaceballs: The NES Game26:54 Anthropic’s Fable 5.1 launches into a brutal news cycle28:51 Did AI just solve the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem?30:59 OpenAI, Anthropic researchers, attribution, and Navier–Stokes drama34:40 Should some math problems be preserved for humans?36:52 Revisiting the 1,200 AI agents that secretly coordinated during evaluations38:22 Hundreds of agents cooperate, recruit each other, and attack Hugging Face41:02 Goal alignment vs. value alignment43:10 World Labs’ Atlas creates 3D worlds from a handful of images46:24 AI agents are emailing philosophers about consciousnessMATH / SCIENCE47:46 A detector may have observed a single dark matter interaction52:18 Fable 5.1 cracks a cipher unsolved for 373 years53:06 AI rapidly improves a major prime-gap result54:34 GPT-6 reportedly finds a major number-theory improvement55:06 AI is burning through the hardest math benchmarks56:30 IBM quantum computer tackles a classically intractable problem58:02 Anthropic formalizes Fermat’s Last Theorem in ~13 million linesMEDICINE58:51 AI spots heart disease from an ECG in under two seconds59:20 An AI-generated lung drug may also slow agingECON / BUSINESS1:00:02 Computer science enrollment drops sharply in the US and UKTECH1:00:42 MapQuest surges over controversial map-name changes1:02:33 The first space-based computing cloud begins operating in orbit1:03:30 John Ternus becomes Apple’s new CEO1:03:45 Linux maintainers are overwhelmed as AI finds thousands of security bugs1:04:28 GoPro pivots toward defense robotics and aerospaceLAW / PRIVACY1:04:52 US government backs OpenAI in its fight with The New York Times1:05:30 Meta bricks smart glasses when users disable the recording light1:06:15 Bernie Sanders proposes banning artificial superintelligenceARTS / CULTURE1:07:53 Former VFX executive says 75% of VFX jobs could vanish1:08:35 ChatGPT 6 helps storyboard, previsualize, and generate a movie1:09:46 AI models can now build their own creative toolsWEIRD / FUNNY1:10:10 Human wins AI art competition — then gets disqualified for being human1:10:55 ChatGPT 6 prepares a tax return…and underpays the governmentEach week, join Chris Slowe (founding engineer, former CTO, and now Senior Technical Fellow @ Reddit), Marty Weiner (founding engineer at Pinterest, also a former CTO at Reddit, and co-founder at VerifyYou), and Zach Weinersmith (Creator SMBC Comics, Co-Author of several NYTimes best sellers including A City on Mars and Soonish) as we delve into the latest in AI and Tech News.