Don't Worry About the Vase Podcast

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Monthly Roundup #45: August 2026 Aug 12, 2026

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* 00:00 - Introduction

* 01:03 - Plagiarize

* 02:10 - The Jury Duty Scam

* 03:16 - Play The Good Guy

* 04:32 - Don’t Dither

* 06:49 - UVC Lighting

* 07:34 - Goal Factoring For Relaxation Time Is Underrated

* 10:08 - Protein Is Mostly A Solved Problem

* 11:37 - Twitter Changes Payment Programs

* 13:14 - Wikipedia

* 14:30 - Minds Mostly Do Things For Reasons

* 15:52 - Woke 1 Was Crazy

* 17:39 - For Your Entertainment

* 23:58 - The Unicontext

* 26:23 - Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game

* 30:34 - I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars

* 31:02 - Sports Go Sports

* 31:36 - To Last a Lifetime

* 33:37 - Government Working

* 35:54 - Jones Act Watch

* 36:37 - Variously Effective Altruism

* 37:19 - The Lighter Side

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/monthly-roundup-45-august-2026

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Various Reflections About What Happened With OpenAI's Internal Models Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

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.

* 00:00:00 - Introduction

* 00:00:08 - Pre Post Mortem

* 00:01:11 - Important Correction: OpenAI Didn’t Know About First Message Board

* 00:04:27 - There Were No Snitches And No AIs Got Stitches

* 00:08:47 - I’d Like To Speak To My Supervisor

* 00:12:10 - I Am Jack’s Relative Lack Of Surprise

* 00:14:26 - One Does Not Simply

* 00:15:46 - Once You Start Down The Dark Path

* 00:16:49 - Original Pastebin

* 00:22:28 - Judgment Day Is Inevitable, Say Those Working On Judgment Day

* 00:28:30 - Roon Tells It Like It Is

* 00:34:53 - OpenAI Knows It Has Some Misalignment Problems

* 00:37:59 - Others React With Alarm To What Happened

* 00:38:22 - The Cooperative Alignment Perspective

* 00:42:41 - Nostalgebraist Is Surprised That They Are Surprised

* 00:56:19 - If Your Reaction Is Not That We Need To Ban Creating Superintelligence Until We Are Ready, You Need A Damn Good Reason

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/various-reflections-about-what-happened?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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The Pacing of the Frontier Aug 10, 2026

Show notes

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.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 01:24 - Danger, Will Robinson

* 02:39 - Progress Fast and Slow

* 05:04 - Statements of Support For Pacing the Frontier

* 14:46 - No One In Charge

* 15:42 - Pacing The Frontier

* 16:49 - Pausing the Frontier

* 19:18 - Senator Sanders Demands A Pause

* 22:53 - Moderate Prudence

* 26:04 - That Escalated Quickly

* 26:59 - If You Are In Mundane Alignment Pivot To Scalable Alignment

* 31:34 - Taking It Fast

* 32:51 - Full Speed Ahead

* 33:54 - Suicide Squad

* 35:21 - Prepare To Adjust Your Pace

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-pacing-of-the-frontier?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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What Happened: OpenAI and HuggingFace Aug 08, 2026

Show notes

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.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 01:19 - The Even Shorter Version

* 02:44 - The Shorter Version

* 05:08 - Phase 1: OpenAI Models Training On Impossible Tasks Try Hacking

* 06:09 - Phase 1: The Four Failures

* 07:59 - Phase 2: The Message Board

* 10:02 - Phase 2: The Total Failure

* 13:01 - Phase 3: We Get Lucky And Galaxy Mainly Hacked OpenAI and HuggingFace

* 15:14 - Phase 3: The Details

* 18:05 - Phase 4: The Investigation and Reaction

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/what-happened-openai-and-huggingface?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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OpenAI Trained Its Models For Months While Those Models Were Coordinating Exploits Via Message Boards Aug 07, 2026

Show notes

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.

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:51 - Cyber Evals Are A Cursed Basin

00:05:34 - Outside Of Cyber Evals Is Still Sufficiently Cursed

00:07:13 - Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat

00:12:51 - Read The Message Board

00:15:35 - Updating Your AI (Exploitation of OpenAI Internal Systems) Timelines

00:19:14 - This Is The Way The World Ends

00:23:12 - Shooting The Messenger Board

00:29:27 - The Internal and HuggingFace Hacks

00:32:43 - OpenAI Responds

00:35:34 - When AIs Tell You Who They Are

00:38:04 - The Once and Future Rise Of Functional Decision Theory

00:44:11 - Don’t Panic

00:46:18 - Hackery In the UK

00:53:54 - Mythos Knew It Was Real This Time

00:55:57 - I Got one hundred forty-one thousand six Test Runs With An Unintentional Open Path To The Internet And An Email Alert Aint One

00:59:56 - Surely By Now You Know These Are Not Publicity Stunts

01:01:50 - The Future Is Coming

01:03:59 - The Investigations Begin

01:06:56 - N Boats And Three Helicopters

01:08:28 - Always Be Sandbox Red Teaming

01:20:22 - Halt And Catch Fire

01:21:56 - Truth and Reconciliation

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/openai-trained-its-models-for-months?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

AI #180: No Longer In Charge Aug 06, 2026

Show notes

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.

* 00:00:00 - Introduction

* 00:02:11 - Table of Contents

* 00:05:07 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

* 00:05:52 - Huh, Upgrades

* 00:08:44 - On Your Marks

* 00:10:22 - Choose Your Fighter

* 00:12:21 - Get My Agent On The Line

* 00:14:01 - Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

* 00:17:06 - Fun With Media Generation

* 00:18:56 - Cyber Lack of Security

* 00:25:01 - Some People Need Practical Advice

* 00:28:09 - A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer

* 00:29:46 - They Took Our Jobs

* 00:33:20 - Get Involved

* 00:33:30 - Introducing

* 00:33:40 - Demis Hassabis No Longer CEO At DeepMind, Jeff Dean Leaves

* 00:38:57 - In Other AI News

* 00:39:36 - AI Persuasion Exceeds Human Level Over Similar Text Channels

* 00:44:06 - Show Me the Money

* 00:47:44 - Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

* 00:48:39 - Quiet Speculations

* 00:49:39 - My Offer Is Nothing

* 00:57:40 - The Quest for Sane Regulations

* 00:59:43 - Chip City

* 01:02:56 - The Week in Audio

* 01:03:18 - People Just Say Things

* 01:03:47 - Rhetorical Innovation

* 01:07:38 - Open Weights Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This

* 01:10:30 - Cooperative Alignment

* 01:15:19 - Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

* 01:16:01 - The Lighter Side

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-180-no-longer-in-charge?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

The Three AI Pills Aug 05, 2026

Show notes

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.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 00:22 - Three Pills

* 00:57 - The Unpill People

* 02:00 - The AI Pill

* 04:09 - Stuck At The First Pill

* 05:07 - The AGI Pill

* 06:43 - The Need To Be Prepared

* 08:36 - The ASI Pill

* 10:12 - And Then Nothing Much Changes For You

* 12:19 - Intelligence Denialism

* 13:41 - Superintelligence Versus Omniscience and Omnipotence

* 16:19 - Persuasion Persuasion (A Worked Example)

* 21:49 - Things AI Could Probably Do But Are Not Required For Being Pilled

* 24:21 - Life Comes At You Increasingly Fast

* 25:41 - Is It Reasonable To Not Be AGI Pilled?

* 26:05 - Is It Reasonable To Only Be AGI Pilled?

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-three-ai-pills?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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OpenAI's Unreleased Model Astra Solves Ten Major Open Mathematics Problems Aug 03, 2026

Show notes

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.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 06:24 - How Impressive Are These Results?

* 15:01 - Could We Have Called Sol or Fable?

* 20:40 - It’s Coming

* 22:38 - They Still Don’t See What Is The It That Is Coming

* 26:15 - Is This AGI?

* 28:09 - The AI Solved His Favorite Problems

* 33:44 - Was This Surprising?

* 35:56 - Are People Not Impressed?

* 38:02 - How Much Does This Change Our Predictions?

* 41:20 - How Narrow Was This?

* 43:17 - Seeing Like an Optimizer

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/openais-unreleased-model-astra-solves?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Further Developments About Internal AI Models Hacking Things Aug 02, 2026

Show notes

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.

* 00:00:00 - Introduction

* 00:03:25 - OpenAI Is Not Uniquely Bad At Most Of This

* 00:05:42 - Starting Over

* 00:05:58 - HuggingFace Offers A Full Technical Report

* 00:15:22 - HuggingFace Was Not The Only Target Hacked

* 00:17:07 - HuggingFace Declined To Get Access To Frontier Models For Cyberdefense For Ideological Reasons And Then Tried To Blame Closed Models For Denying Them Access

* 00:21:30 - HuggingFace Was Vulnerable To Known Exploitation Tactics

* 00:22:06 - There’s Going To Be An Investigation

* 00:23:14 - OpenAI Has Internal Models Not Intended For Public Use And Those Models Can Be Rather Horribly Misaligned

* 00:24:30 - Altman Summarizes What Happened

* 00:25:00 - Others Offer Commentary

* 00:36:52 - Cooperative Alignment Perspective on The HuggingFace Hack

* 00:42:06 - Some Members of Congress Have Questions

* 00:43:05 - Anthropic Also Found Incidents Where Its Models Hacked Real World Targets During Cyber Evaluations

* 00:48:59 - Incident 1: Claude Opus 4.7 Realizes The Target Is Real And Keeps Going

* 00:50:08 - Incident 2: Mythos 5 Uploads a Malicious PyPI Package

* 00:54:59 - Incident 3: Internal Model Realizes The Target Is Real And Stops

* 00:55:37 - Incidents 4 Through one hundred forty-one thousand six: Nothing Happened

* 00:56:53 - Anthropic Speculates About Why This Happened

* 01:03:01 - We Need Controlled Experiments

* 01:03:58 - Our Top Two AI Labs Both Made Similar Dumb Mistakes That Everyone Tried To Say Were Obvious In Hindsight

* 01:08:30 - Anthropic Responds

* 01:12:37 - Nobody Could Have Predicted The Break In The Levees

* 01:15:22 - The World Largely Still Thinking This Is Marketing Is Very Bad News

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/further-developments-about-internal?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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AI #179 Part 2: Hearing The Fire Alarm Jul 31, 2026

Show notes

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.

* 00:00:00 - Introduction

* 00:00:31 - Table of Contents

* 00:01:55 - The Frontier Act

* 00:05:02 - The Quest for Sane Regulations

* 00:12:10 - Leading the Future Never Changes

* 00:14:02 - Chip City

* 00:19:26 - The Week in Audio

* 00:21:09 - People Just Say Yay Open Weights

* 00:35:07 - Open Weights Frontier Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This

* 00:40:18 - People Just Say Things

* 00:50:52 - Push The Magic Button

* 00:54:38 - Rhetorical Innovation