Don't Worry About the Vase Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Childhood and Education #20: Phones and Screens Jul 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

* 00:21 - Table of Contents

* 00:45 - EdTech

* 07:16 - NonEdTech

* 08:42 - Do Not Ban Social Media Outright

* 13:43 - Some Modern Kids Media Is Pretty Great

* 15:31 - Ban Phones In Schools (1)

* 18:51 - Your Offer Is Acceptable

* 23:25 - Ban Phones In Schools (2)

* 24:46 - Screen Time

* 27:19 - Inappropriate Content

* 30:26 - Now Here’s The Deal

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/childhood-and-education-20-phones?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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No Space Like J-Space Jul 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 - Introduction

* 00:20 - Through A Different Lens

* 01:59 - Establishing J-Space As A Global Workspace

* 05:56 - Are You Pondering What I’m Pondering?

* 10:08 - Assistant J

* 11:05 - The Power Of Virtuous Thinking

* 19:23 - High Praise

* 24:58 - Everyone Remains Confused About Consciousness

* 34:31 - Further Research

* 38:35 - Don’t Think

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/no-space-like-j-space?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Fable #6: The Return of the King Jul 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

03:11 - The Blip

09:57 - The White House Explanation

12:01 - Everything Remains Ad Hoc

12:33 - Take What You Can Get

13:59 - The Problem Is Real

14:56 - GLM-5.2 Being Frontier Remains Obvious Nonsense

18:11 - Mythos Might Be Smarter Than You Are

21:08 - Let The Record Reflect

22:41 - Stationary Bandits

26:58 - Use This Window Well

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/fable-6-the-return-of-the-king?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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AI #175: The Fable Continues Jul 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

* 00:01:01 - Table of Contents

* 00:04:04 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

* 00:05:23 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility You May Not Want

* 00:07:00 - Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility

* 00:08:28 - Huh, Upgrades

* 00:08:59 - On Your Marks

* 00:12:35 - Get My Agent On The Line

* 00:17:37 - Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

* 00:18:06 - Cyber Lack of Security

* 00:19:23 - On Writing

* 00:24:51 - You Drive Me Crazy

* 00:28:04 - They Took Our Jobs

* 00:34:22 - Get Involved

* 00:34:47 - Introducing

* 00:35:08 - In Other AI News

* 00:36:49 - Show Me the Money

* 00:37:16 - Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

* 00:40:14 - Quiet Speculations

* 00:44:41 - Glorious AI Future

* 00:48:51 - Three Pills

* 00:50:11 - The Anthropic Economic Indexas

* 00:52:58 - Leader Of The PAC

* 00:54:14 - Theory Of The AI Firm

* 00:55:23 - Chip City

* 00:56:46 - The Week in Audio

* 00:59:28 - People Really Hate AI

* 01:03:16 - Rhetorical Innovation

* 01:07:12 - The First Rule Of Functional Decision Theory Is

* 01:10:36 - Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

* 01:13:44 - Names Have Power

* 01:14:33 - Cooperative Alignment

* 01:22:41 - People Just Say Things

* 01:24:11 - Escape From The Permanent Underclass

* 01:37:24 - Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

* 01:38:42 - The Lighter Side

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/ai-175-the-fable-continues?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Claude Sonnet 5 Is Not Frontier But Has Its Uses Jul 01, 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

* 02:32 - Mythos Exists

* 03:13 - Introduction (1)

* 03:17 - RSP Evaluations (2)

* 04:20 - Cyber (3)

* 04:43 - Safeguards and Harmlessness (4)

* 05:35 - Agentic Safety (5)

* 08:31 - Alignment (6)

* 14:12 - Illegible Thinking (6.4.5)

* 15:19 - Evaluation Awareness

* 15:59 - Honesty and Hallucinations (6.5)

* 17:14 - Flagged As Unhealthy? (6.5.1)

* 17:47 - Model Welfare (7)

* 26:21 - Live From AI Village

* 28:12 - For I Contain Multitudes

* 34:40 - Official Benchmarks

* 40:17 - Other People’s Benchmarks

* 40:42 - Positive Reactions

* 45:39 - Negative Reactions

* 49:33 - A Short Sonnet

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/claude-sonnet-5-is-not-frontier-but?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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The Once And Future Fable #5 Jul 01, 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

* 01:12 - Table of Contents

* 02:24 - You Should See The Other Guy

* 03:03 - DeepMind Coders Of The World, Unite

* 03:59 - Report Your Incidents

* 04:19 - Good Guy With An AI

* 06:03 - Free As In To Give It A Shot

* 09:32 - Everything Is Both Speech And Computer

* 12:30 - Lambs To The Slaughter

* 17:27 - A Sign Saying Beware Of The Leopard

* 18:34 - The Once And Present Mythos

* 21:59 - What Is To Be Done

* 25:45 - Distillation

* 28:24 - What Would Banning Open Source Even Mean

* 29:24 - Open Weight Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/the-once-and-future-fable-5?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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WSJ Article Claiming China Has Matched Anthropic Is Obvious Nonsense Jun 29, 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

* 00:23 - Headline News

* 02:03 - What Makes Mythos Special

* 03:17 - Going Over The Detailed Claims

* 07:44 - One Helpful Note

* 08:23 - The Overall Impression Is Extremely Wrong

* 08:55 - All Of This Has Happened Before And Will Happen Again

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/wsj-article-claiming-china-has-matched?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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GPT-5.6: The System Card Jun 28, 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

* 00:03:39 - What’s In A Name?

* 00:04:14 - Fix This Code

* 00:07:04 - Crossover Event Requested

* 00:07:38 - Disallowed Content (3)

* 00:09:57 - Avoiding Accidental Data-Destructive Actions (3.3)

* 00:10:46 - Are You Sure? (3.4)

* 00:11:23 - Jailbreaks (4.1)

* 00:11:38 - Prompt Injection (4.2)

* 00:12:25 - HealthBench (5.1)

* 00:13:08 - Dynamic Mental Health Adversarial User Simulations (5.2)

* 00:15:02 - Hallucinations (6)

* 00:15:29 - Isolated Misaligned Actions (7.1)

* 00:15:48 - Going Overboard (7.2)

* 00:21:26 - Chain of Thought Evaluations (7.3)

* 00:22:38 - Bias (8)

* 00:22:43 - Preparedness (9)

* 00:23:35 - Biological Risks (9.1.1)

* 00:25:37 - Cybersecurity (9.1.2)

* 00:33:13 - External Cyber Evaluation FrontierCyber from Irregular (9.1.2.5)

* 00:35:15 - Cyber Conclusions

* 00:35:52 - Recursive Self-Improvement (9.1.3)

* 00:37:26 - METR Warns Us (9.1.3.6)

* 00:40:00 - Everything Is Under Control

* 00:42:38 - Metagaming (7.4)

* 00:46:06 - Apollo Research and Sandbagging

* 00:49:04 - Safeguards (9.3)

* 00:56:55 - Better Not Call Sol Yet

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/gpt-56-the-system-card?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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White House Will Ad Hoc Decide Who Can Individually Access GPT-5.6 Jun 26, 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

* 01:01 - Part 1: A Maximally Terrible Policy

* 06:55 - What Does This Mean For Fable?

* 08:33 - Solve For The Equilibrium

* 12:39 - The Once And Future Fable

* 13:35 - Part 2: The Blame Game

* 16:48 - A Parable

* 18:59 - What About the Recent Executive Order?

* 23:09 - The Problem Is Real

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/white-house-will-ad-hoc-decide-who?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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AI #174: You're It Jun 25, 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

* 00:01:07 - Table of Contents

* 00:04:36 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

* 00:06:14 - Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility

* 00:06:28 - Huh, Upgrades

* 00:06:51 - On Your Marks

* 00:07:45 - Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

* 00:14:53 - Fun With Media Generation

* 00:15:47 - Cyber Lack of Security

* 00:18:25 - Overcoming Bias

* 00:19:28 - A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer

* 00:22:01 - They Took Our Jobs

* 00:23:44 - Get Involved

* 00:25:55 - Introducing

* 00:26:08 - Claude Tag

* 00:36:03 - In Other AI News

* 00:37:37 - More On GLM-5.2

* 00:39:27 - ChatGPT Health

* 00:41:10 - Middle Of The Journey

* 00:55:44 - New Medical Diagnostic Just Dropped

* 00:58:38 - Google on AI Control

* 01:08:05 - The Once And Future Fable

* 01:10:10 - Fable: The First Lawsuit

* 01:11:07 - Dean Ball Joins OpenAI

* 01:14:59 - Show Me the Money

* 01:15:13 - Quiet Speculations

* 01:18:09 - Alex Bores Loses In NY-12 By 4%

* 01:30:04 - The Quest for Sane Regulations

* 01:32:30 - Chip City

* 01:36:12 - The Week in Audio

* 01:36:58 - People Just Say Things

* 01:38:01 - Rhetorical Innovation

* 01:43:47 - There Are Two Pills

* 01:44:59 - Who Evals The Evals

* 01:46:10 - Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

* 01:51:01 - Cooperative Alignment

* 01:52:01 - People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

* 01:53:32 - Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

* 01:55:42 - The Lighter Side

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/ai-174-youre-it?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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