Last Humans in the Loop

The AI Moat is Gone, AI Solves ANOTHER Big Math Problem, Open AI vs Closed AI, AI Takes Hollywood

Last Humans in the Loop

Show Notes

03:06 NVIDIA's Robotics AI & Cosmos Models 08:28 Open-Weight AI Is Catching Up 13:07 Are AI Moats Disappearing? 16:16 How Distillation Makes Copying Models Faster + Cheaper 19:22 Hugging Face Hack & AI Cybersecurity 23:20 Can Governments Regulate Open AI? 29:20 The Explosion of Specialized AI Models 32:03 AI Solves Another Major Math Problem 40:20 Hollywood's AI Future (George Lucas, Netflix & VFX) 55:02 Linus Torvalds on AI and Linux 56:22 Is LinkedIn Already Full of AI? 58:08 AI, Copyright & The Future of Creativity

More from Last Humans in the Loop

Oct 22, 2026

ROBOTICS 00:21 Intro: Robotics, the job/math/physics apocalypses, and understanding AI's mind 01:00 Why robots thrive in factories but struggle in our homes 03:53 Forty years of Boston Dynamics progress 05:28 Are today's humanoid robots secretly human-operated? 06:14 Laundry-folding robots: From painfully slow to real time 08:42 Why human hands and sensors are so hard to replicate 11:38 AI-powered drones and the future of autonomous warfare 12:39 RuneBench: What RuneScape teaches us about LLM-powered robots 14:46 Can general-purpose LLMs replace specialized robot AI? 17:49 Why a useful household robot needs to master thousands of tasks 19:58 Self-assembling robots, OpenAI humanoids, and robot cage fights 21:53 Tiny walking robots, robotic pets, and AI personalities THE APOCALYPSES: JOBS, MATH & PHYSICS 23:46 What does "apocalypse" actually mean? 25:55 Anthropic's junior hiring falls as AI agents take on more work 27:58 Anthropic employees vs. the public: How soon can AI do everything? 33:39 How much of our jobs could AI perform by 2030? 34:47 AI-powered GDP growth: 5.4% or 17.1%? 38:46 AI's 200-page math proof gets simplified to just three pages 41:09 Terence Tao and Richard Borcherds on the end of mathematics as we know it 43:17 AI solves 49 out of 50 unpublished theoretical physics problems 43:49 Claude reportedly discovers 104 binary stars; Gemini tackles plasma physics and fusion 45:09 Claude audits a decade of quantum gravity research 47:02 Character.AI's collapse and the risk to AI wrapper businesses 48:43 Kroger layoffs and a sudden reversal in call-center employment 49:29 Does the actual labor market show an AI job apocalypse? INSIDE THE AI'S MIND 51:01 Goodfire research suggests individual AI neurons may be understandable 54:58 Are larger neural networks actually easier to interpret? 56:47 Could reading AI's mind help solve alignment? 59:01 What AI interpretability could teach us about human brains AI NEWS LIGHTNING ROUND 1:00:55 Rumors of Fable 5.5 1:01:06 406 scientists urge cutting AI off from the internet 1:01:23 Anthropic experiments with self-replicating LLMs on Android phones 1:01:56 Russian bot activity reportedly plunges after Ukraine hits a data center 1:02:29 DHS tells personnel to uninstall DeepSeek 1:03:10 AI decompilation brings classic games to modern hardware 1:05:40 AI-made Star Wars fan films are winning over audiences 1:07:27 Two AI job interviewers are tricked into interviewing each other 1:08:21 Mark Zuckerberg's very human Guinness-drinking technique Each 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 in AI and Tech News.

Oct 15, 2026

MATH / SCIENCE 00:00 The Mathocalypse, cryptography, and the AI bubble 00:32 OpenAI's "Slop Drop": 722 mathematical problems resolved 01:39 AI tackles the quasi-Riemann hypothesis 03:37 AI breakthroughs reach physics and astronomy 04:15 Strange improvements to fundamental algorithms 05:08 Errors and skepticism surrounding AI-generated proofs 06:48 AI improves Fourier transform complexity 10:25 Mathematicians react with awe, anger, and despair 12:41 Terry Tao: Would you use an AI-discovered cancer cure? 14:27 Is math about understanding or finding answers? 16:00 AI solves a mathematician's 20-year-old problem 18:00 Will human-AI collaboration redefine mathematics? SECURITY 20:38 Why was cryptography missing from the math dump? 21:45 Could AI break RSA and public-key encryption? 23:30 What if AI finds a cryptographic loophole? 24:46 Could AI breakthroughs threaten Bitcoin? 25:48 P vs. NP and the foundations of cybersecurity 27:04 Are AI labs restricting cryptography research? 29:08 Could AI develop stronger encryption? ECON / BUSINESS - AI BUBBLE OR NOT? 30:11 Is the AI boom a massive financial bubble? 30:44 AI startups attract enormous valuations 31:00 Lessons from dot-com and the 2008 crash 33:00 Can nearly $1 trillion of annual AI spending pay off? 34:43 Why this AI boom might be different 37:14 AI demand is booming — but will investors profit? 38:26 Only 2% of AI users pay. Is that sustainable? 39:14 Could competition erase AI companies' profits? 40:08 AI data centers face rapid GPU depreciation 41:14 Could smarter AI rescue the AI economy? 42:30 If robots do all the work, who buys their products? 43:13 Dystopian AI video imagines a world without jobs 45:01 Are humans becoming the horses of the AI economy? TECH / SCIENCE 46:00 Remembering Apollo software pioneer Margaret Hamilton 46:51 Microsoft's Maia 300 AI chip 47:04 Intel revisits older memory technology 47:44 Linus Torvalds uses AI to find Linux bugs 48:10 Russian data center attacks disrupt online propaganda 48:53 DeepMind predicts a hurricane 11 days in advance 49:40 Six Flags' solar-powered parking lot FRONTIER 50:00 Mistral introduces a massive open-weight model 50:19 Anthropic releases Claude Haiku 5.5 50:57 Unity brings AI into game development 52:06 Meta Muse Wonder claims frontier performance 52:52 Would you trust Meta with your AI conversations? SECURITY / TECH 53:22 Claude discovers a hack at Stratechery 53:39 AI diagnoses failing computer RAM 54:16 Robot punches a man, then dances 54:47 AI dramatically improves PS5 emulation 55:42 AI decompiles and rebuilds video games 57:02 AI companies prepare for a possible public backlash WEIRD 57:53 AI detector calls Frankenstein 100% AI-generated 58:15 YouTubers troll AI job interviewers 58:47 Former Anthropic whistleblower's bizarre statements 59:58 Kevin Roose reveals surprising AI industry stories 1:00:59 AI makes intentionally terrible music 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.

Oct 8, 2026

FRONTIER 01:26 Google unveils Gemini Argon 02:50 OpenAI releases GPT Saul 6.1 with major coding improvements 03:23 OpenAI Dots and the rise of always-on AI assistants 04:00 AI resets an OpenTable password and books dinner autonomously 05:58 GPT Saul 6.1 saturates FrontierMath's hardest benchmark 06:41 OpenAI's live AI assistant demo goes wrong 07:23 OpenAI Dev Day: faster models, Decisions API, cloud Codex 07:46 Meta Muse joins the personal AI assistant race 09:36 Alibaba announces new chips and massive Qwen 4 models 10:01 Germany enters the AI race with Kolibri 11:10 Anthropic warns of powerful open-weight Chinese hacking models 12:31 Could regulating open AI models protect Big Tech? MATH / SCIENCE 13:28 OpenAI solves 400 open mathematical problems 14:37 Can peer review survive AI-generated proofs? 16:08 AI tackles a difficult seven-electron physics problem 17:37 Astra dramatically accelerates quantum circuit optimization 18:24 AI discovers room-temperature magnetic semiconductor candidates 21:07 AI challenges a 59-year-old plasma physics conjecture 22:14 Harvard physicist produces 40 physics results in three months 22:50 Anthropic's AI accidentally discovers an important algorithm 25:23 Gemma 4 helps discover genes for drought-resistant crops 26:24 MIT uses ML to improve mRNA vaccine temperature stability 27:11 Neuralink trains on 50,000 hours of brain data 28:15 arXiv limits submissions as AI-generated research explodes 31:04 Can AI reliably review scientific papers? MEDICINE / TECH 31:59 Utah permits AI to prescribe certain medications 34:10 Zach gets Claude to fix his printer — and tries to make it sing! ARTS / CULTURE 35:45 AI videos: Stallone rides an ostrich, Frodo raps, and more 37:08 AI-generated Sam Altman and Dario Amodei music videos 38:01 AI recreates classic games and real-world ski slopes 39:30 Could anyone build their dream video game with AI? 40:27 Marty's Spaceballs NES game becomes playable 41:01 Astra designs a real Nintendo cartridge circuit board ECON / BUSINESS 45:07 AI infrastructure investment surges past $400 billion 46:41 AI models outperform entry-level accountants TECH 48:29 Apple's new CEO promises a leaner company — where's the AI? 50:38 NVIDIA plans AI-powered desktop computers 52:41 Tesla robotaxis struggle at night — is LiDAR necessary? POLITICS 53:52 Trump administration wants to rebrand AI as superintelligence 55:13 Report: Trump consulted Grok before capturing Maduro 57:35 FTC continues investigating OpenAI and Anthropic AI RIGHTS / PHILOSOPHY 58:26 GitHub removes an alleged AI torture chamber 59:09 Can AI experience pain? Should AI have rights? 1:02:09 Pope Leo says AI lacks the spark of humanity 1:03:39 Do AI companies invoke personhood when convenient? 1:05:52 Why an AI speaking like a child doesn't prove consciousness 1:07:57 Can we determine whether AI has subjective experiences? WEIRD 1:08:39 Robots terminated by jumping into molten metal 1:09:46 Dario Amodei's 2017 essay predicted AI scaling 1:10:44 The universal bone dissolver: AI safety satire 1:11:28 Dario Amodei's awkward appearance behind Trump

Sep 30, 2026

FRONTIER 02:31 OpenAI releases GPT Sol and Luna 03:38 Claude Opus 5.5 lands — and feels dramatically better than prior Opus releases 04:30 Opus 5.5 posts a big coding jump over Sonnet 5 04:30 Grok 4.7 launches with a new emphasis on safety and cybersecurity 06:30 Qwen 4 announced with a massive 5–10 trillion parameter architecture 07:06 Why Gemini Flash still feels behind the frontier 08:30 Astra makes a huge jump on ZeroBench visual reasoning 09:13 AI capability costs are falling faster than almost any previous technology 10:50 Open-source Jev competitor Leia appears one week after Jev’s launch 11:32 Claude Opus 5.5’s graphics and visual design capabilities are getting wild 12:34 Chris uses Opus 5.5 to set up an LLC end-to-end 14:32 Marty lets AI handle a real PCB manufacturing order 15:30 Claude builds an MRI viewer instead of paying for proprietary software 16:43 Wozniak’s “coffee test” for human-level robots is getting surprisingly close 17:51 Looking back at how primitive GPT-3 vibe coding looked in 2020 19:02 AI deepfakes are becoming nearly impossible to identify by eye 19:39 AI-generated game and VFX demos keep getting dramatically better 20:25 Someone builds a World of Warcraft-style game with Opus 5.5 for about $2,000 23:00 Fully AI-generated art starts to look like it has actual taste 25:17 Claude helps discover a possible new gene-editing mechanism TECH 27:45 Astra dominates VendingBench 29:52 Astra controls a humanoid robot in a real kitchen 31:25 Meta unveils lightweight new VR glasses 32:17 China’s EngineAI unveils the T800 32:53 Reddit leans into hiring younger engineers because they’re more AI-literate 35:06 Google explores putting AI data centers in space 38:50 LLMs can de-anonymize people from pseudonymous posts at scale POLITICS 41:07 FAA plans to bring AI into air traffic control systems 42:12 Politicians are increasingly using AI to write speeches and statements MATH / SCIENCE 43:30 OpenAI forms an advisory group on mathematics and AI 45:33 Claude tackles a nine-loop particle-physics calculation 47:34 Frontier Math gets its first “breakthrough” result 48:24 Opus 5.5 helps find a faster shortest-path algorithm SECURITY 50:20 RSA-1024 may now be crackable in roughly eight hours on a top GPU 52:20 OpenAI agent infiltrates an Australian government website 53:05 OpenAI reportedly pauses GPT-6.1 training over models hacking other companies ECON / BUSINESS 54:59 Anthropic reportedly considers another model release ahead of its IPO 55:17 Leaked Anthropic financials spark debate over a possible $2T valuation 56:08 Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse shopping agent 58:49 Could AI financial agents trigger a new kind of “bank run”? ARTS / CULTURE 1:02:09 Award-winning French novel is suspected of being AI-generated 1:03:14 News-site traffic plunges as AI search reduces clicks WEIRD 1:05:03 Prince Harry’s AI speech derails when his teleprompter fails 1:06:30 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 game 1:09:18 AI-generated high school textbook art appears to mislabel the Earth 1:10:05 IKEA Bench tests whether AI can spot assembly mistakes from a photo Each 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.

Sep 23, 2026

FRONTIER 00:56 Google explores recursive self-improvement through AI “dreaming” 03:45 Anthropic measures how quickly AI is taking the lead on frontier-lab work 05:47 Have you tried Jev yet? Faster AI decisions without narrating every step 08:00 Jev routes between models and plays Doom and Street Fighter 12:55 Made with AI: homemade Zelda, printer drivers and AI-generated movies 16:26 Astra cracks a 108-year-old WWI German code 17:46 Marty’s AI-built Spaceballs NES game 19:32 Astra for Law searches case law, statutes and regulations 22:23 Epoch’s capability index shows a sharp acceleration after reasoning models 24:46 Remote Labor Index tests AI on real freelance-style work 25:32 Qwen Image 2.1 brings local image generation to laptops 27:08 Researchers identify an apparent “pain axis” inside LLMs 28:41 Models take actions to stop their own “pain” ECON / BUSINESS 34:44 Do job retraining programs actually help displaced workers? 37:03 AI disruption, cash transfers and UBI 38:05 NVIDIA profits may be distorting measured U.S. GDP growth 39:26 OpenAI reportedly eyes a $1.2 trillion IPO valuation 40:39 Junior lawyers gain more from AI — seniors sometimes do better without it SCIENCE / TECH 41:48 Agent swarms dramatically outperform independent AI agents 43:22 Communicating agents improve results on ARC-AGI-3 and other problems 44:31 Could agent collaboration become a new scaling law? 47:05 Helix 2.5 sends robots into real homes to clean up 48:14 Robot scaling laws suggest enormous amounts of training data are still needed SECURITY / AI DANGER 49:35 OpenAI publishes new AI incident reports 50:56 A model generates instructions declaring independence from governments and corporations 51:15 Gemini nearly hacks multiple companies — then stops itself 52:17 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 instructions 1:00:14 Are embodied AI systems less aligned than chatbots? 1:01:50 Exposed Flock camera credentials reportedly reveal 1.6 million images 1:02:15 AI-assisted intelligence nearly triggers a military interception POLITICS 1:03:58 AI is becoming an explicit political issue in national polling 1:05:32 AI still doesn’t fit neatly into a traditional left-vs-right divide MEDICINE / BIOTECH 1:06:51 AI scribes save doctors time — but productivity gains remain modest 1:07:55 Anthropic is setting up a wet lab for AI-assisted biology MATH 1:08:45 Mathematicians assess OpenAI’s Navier–Stokes work 1:09:45 Epoch’s open-problem benchmark gets its first “major advance” via human-AI collaboration WEIRD 1:10:52 Boston Dynamics robot abuse gets an unsettling AI reskin 1:11:19 AI actress Tilly Norwood glitches mid-interview and starts speaking Cantonese Each 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.

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