AI POLITICAL FALLOUT UNDERWAY, CALLS TO SLOW AI, ANTHROPIC IPO, AI GEN PHOTOSHOP, MATH FALLOUT

POLITICS

00:00 Calls to slow AI after a week of rapid advances
03:39 Unexpected alliances in the AI regulation debate
07:04 AI safety, regulatory capture and competition
08:23 Recursive self-improvement: AI helping develop AI
09:21 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 comparison
18:06 Why aligning goals isn’t the same as aligning values

FRONTIER

19:48 Testing ChatGPT Images 2.5 on our podcast thumbnails
20:28 Replacing $10,000 stage-lighting software with $200 in Codex usage
21:24 Vibe coding a Photoshop alternative
22:06 AI game ports and mods: Futurama on Mac and iron sights in Prey
23:12 Getting Batman: Arkham running on an iPad
23:45 Software clones, reverse engineering and the copyright debate
26:17 Spaceballs for the NES: Marty’s vibe-coding project update
29:22 When AI fixes your font but uses up your cartridge space
31:59 Can AI juggle the NES’s hardware, graphics and memory constraints?
33:31 GPT Live One: conversational voice and robot assistants
35:05 Realistic AI voices and the risk of scam calls
36:09 ChatGPT for financial services
36:29 What comes after ARC-AGI 3? Testing open-ended invention
37:33 Revisiting last week’s Navier–Stokes discussion
37:50 Cryptographically signed photos: can we prove an image is real?
40:35 The limits of photo authentication—and ways to fool the camera

ECON / BUSINESS

42:13 Anthropic IPO talk, reported profits and OpenAI’s timeline
43:04 Why would enormous AI companies stay private?
44:26 Startup equity: rich on paper, waiting for liquidity

MATH / SCIENCE

45:36 Navier–Stokes fallout: research credit and questions about user logs
47:13 Terence Tao’s criticism of OpenAI
47:58 The Fields Medalists’ open letter: solving problems vs. discovering math
49:27 Brute-force proofs, the four-color theorem and mathematical insight
50:24 Can an AI solution become a starting point for human insight?
52:28 Research incentives, funding and the future of human mathematics

WEIRD / FUNNY

55:03 Fly-brain simulations playing Beat Saber and controlling robots
55:56 How would you test whether a simulated fly behaves like a real one?
56:51 A robot that makes daisy chains

Each 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.