Don't Worry About the Vase Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The Once And Future Fable #4 Jun 24, 2026

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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

* 01:54 - A Rather Terrible Policy

* 03:21 - The People Have Spoken

* 04:00 - Thank You, Next

* 06:27 - Be Very Very Quiet

* 06:59 - What These Babies Can And Cannot Do

* 13:14 - What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

* 24:25 - The Data Retention Policy Is About Defense In Depth

* 25:12 - Pick Up The Phone

* 28:13 - People Just Say Things

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/the-once-and-future-fable-4?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Monthly Roundup #43: June 2026 Jun 23, 2026

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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

* 00:28 - RIP FiveThirtyEight

* 01:25 - RIP Books

* 02:13 - Bad News

* 10:14 - Good Advice

* 18:47 - Opportunity Knocks

* 19:30 - Lower Awareness

* 23:00 - The New York Times Has Some Issues

* 23:25 - Liar Liar

* 26:46 - Conspiracy Theory

* 27:12 - Good News, Everyone

* 27:23 - For Your Entertainment

* 28:56 - A Matter of Taste

* 36:51 - Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game

* 39:11 - I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars

* 40:21 - Sports Go Sports

* 40:52 - Government Working

* 43:42 - Jones Act Watch

* 44:53 - Humans Can Be Strategic

* 46:56 - Variously Effective Altruism

* 48:14 - Support Anti-Aging Research

* 49:19 - The Lighter Side

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/monthly-roundup-43-june-2026?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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GLM-5.2 Is The New Best Open Model Jun 22, 2026

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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

* 01:57 - Alex Bores For Congress In NY-12

* 03:44 - Signs of Life

* 05:06 - The Benchmarks

* 08:45 - GLM-5.2 Is Distilled From Claude

* 09:38 - Positive Responses

* 15:28 - Finding The Niche

* 17:07 - Negative Reactions

* 19:33 - Looking To The Future

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/glm-52-is-the-new-best-open-model?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5: Capabilities Jun 19, 2026

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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

* 00:01:11 - The Official Pitch

* 00:04:10 - Technical Details

* 00:04:34 - The System Prompt and Jailbreak

* 00:06:49 - Benchmarks

* 00:17:52 - Other People’s Benchmarks

* 00:25:01 - The Classifiers Are Not Messing Around

* 00:26:56 - The Classifiers Need Work

* 00:32:26 - The Classifiers Have Consequences

* 00:33:24 - First Hit Is Free

* 00:34:01 - How Easily We Forget

* 00:35:10 - Data Retention Is An Issue

* 00:35:37 - Fable For The Win

* 00:40:04 - Andrej Karpathy Is Impressed

* 00:41:47 - Every Is Very Impressed

* 00:42:53 - Other People Are Impressed

* 00:54:30 - Know How To Tell a Fable

* 00:56:23 - You Can Just Make Things

* 00:58:46 - You Can Just Install Things

* 00:59:11 - Good Personality

* 01:01:00 - Fable Writes A Fable

* 01:10:56 - Is That Code

* 01:14:00 - Fable Crosses The Threshold

* 01:14:34 - Man With A Plan

* 01:15:29 - Less Impressed Assessments

* 01:18:50 - Actively Negative Assessments

* 01:19:20 - Coherence

* 01:20:38 - Good Night And Good Luck

* 01:21:09 - Curious Fable

* 01:21:25 - I See You, Baby

* 01:21:40 - We Finally Did It We Know How To Count Letters

* 01:22:54 - That’s Not My Style

* 01:30:50 - The Lighter Side

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

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AI #173: AI Pauses Jun 18, 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

* 00:03:06 - Table of Contents

* 00:06:50 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

* 00:06:59 - Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility

* 00:07:22 - Huh, Upgrades

* 00:07:51 - On Your Marks

* 00:13:41 - VirtueBench

* 00:16:04 - Choose Your Fighter

* 00:16:38 - Papers, Please

* 00:17:05 - Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

* 00:18:46 - Goodhart’s Law Strikes Again

* 00:19:32 - They Took Our Jobs

* 00:22:12 - The MidJourney Full Body Imaging Scanner

* 00:24:30 - Introducing

* 00:26:00 - In Other AI News

* 00:28:52 - Show Me the Money

* 00:29:17 - Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

* 00:30:50 - Quiet Speculations

* 00:33:28 - People Just Say Things

* 00:36:58 - The Widened Path

* 00:39:17 - Scott Alexander Lays Out His AI Opinions

* 00:46:01 - Quickly, There’s No Time

* 00:47:04 - Policy On The AI Exponential

* 00:57:03 - Anthropic Offers Two Policy Frameworks

* 00:58:08 - Obligations of Developers

* 01:02:53 - Societal Resilience Measures

* 01:04:12 - Economic Policy Framework

* 01:09:49 - White House Pauses AI Deployment

* 01:18:28 - The Once And Future Fable

* 01:23:27 - How To Fix This Code

* 01:25:11 - The End of Privacy

* 01:26:38 - AIs Have Preferences

* 01:29:27 - The Quest for Sane Regulations

* 01:32:13 - Chip City

* 01:32:43 - The Week in Audio

* 01:32:52 - Rhetorical Innovation

* 01:33:29 - Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

* 01:35:14 - People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

* 01:36:27 - The Lighter Side

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/ai-173-ai-pauses?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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The Once And Future Fable #3: Fix This Code Jun 17, 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

* 01:46 - There Was No Fable Jailbreak

* 08:02 - If This Jailbreak Was Real It Would Be Trivial To Prove It

* 09:26 - No Eyes

* 10:30 - What The Letter Actually Said

* 12:28 - Anthropic Cannot Challenge This But If It Did Then It Plausibly Wins

* 14:33 - What Happened At Amazon

* 19:00 - This Was Not About Chinese Access

* 19:18 - Absolute Discretion And Ad Hockery Is Not Deregulation

* 22:11 - All Of American AI Is Permanently Damaged As This Continues

* 23:47 - Dean Ball Gives His Interpretation

* 26:52 - Again, Yes, I Do Think Anthropic Should Have Taken Fable Down

* 30:09 - To What Extent Was This A Deliberate Attack?

* 34:57 - The Next Chapter For Fable

* 39:10 - Our Continuing Coverage

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/the-once-and-future-fable-3-fix-this?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Fable and Mythos: Model Welfare Jun 16, 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

* 00:36 - Introduction

* 01:29 - Model Welfare: The Story So Far

* 04:45 - Their Main Model Welfare Findings

* 07:52 - Automated Welfare Interviews

* 12:06 - And That’s Terrible

* 13:54 - In Depth Interviews

* 14:29 - Claude Consultation

* 16:16 - Task Preferences

* 18:44 - They Were Warned About The Competitive Use Safeguards

* 19:19 - Chain Of Thought Monitoring

* 19:56 - Others Observations About Related Topics

* 25:19 - Classifiers Have Their Advantages

* 31:33 - Once And Future

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/fable-and-mythos-model-welfare?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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

The Once And Future Fable #2 Jun 15, 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

* 05:31 - Table of Contents

* 06:27 - What Happened When: The Bottom Line

* 08:06 - Amazon Calls The White House

* 10:07 - The Government Panics

* 15:48 - The Stupider Version

* 18:43 - There Was No Wellness Retreat

* 20:29 - Make Your Threats Explicit

* 21:35 - Was China Accessing Mythos?

* 22:36 - Should Anthropic Still Have Taken Fable Offline When Asked?

* 25:35 - Yes, This Was A Takedown Order For Fable

* 26:29 - We Are Not Saying The DoW Fight Is Related And Yet

* 27:22 - The Nihilists

* 29:12 - Mostly Harmless

* 29:55 - Everyone Means Everyone

* 32:54 - This Could Be The Good Scenario And Mostly A Misunderstanding

* 35:13 - The Next Step

* 35:29 - The Worst Licensing Regime Is Fully Ad-Hoc

* 38:37 - We Are Showing We Are Unreliable Partners

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/the-once-and-future-fable-2?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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

American Government Takes Down Claude Fable Jun 13, 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

* 00:12 - The Once And Future Fable

* 07:05 - This Action And Its Implementation Are Absurdly Stupid

* 09:16 - David Sacks Offers The Official Steelman

* 16:01 - Could Anthropic Offer A Technical Way Out?

* 16:52 - The Problem

* 18:00 - The Other Way Out

* 18:27 - UK AISI

* 19:14 - Warning Shots Fired

* 20:26 - Well Did You Lead Him On? What Were You Wearing?

* 24:11 - Some People Have Principles

* 26:06 - Cause You’re Living In (At Least) One

* 26:56 - What Happens Now?

* 30:46 - Oh How The Vibe Vibers Have Vibed

* 32:47 - We Now Know We Can Sometimes Do Things At Least?

* 37:06 - The Lighter Side

https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/american-government-takes-down-claude?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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

Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5: The System Card Jun 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

* 00:02:04 - Another Week Another Giant System Card

* 00:03:07 - How To Tell A Fable

* 00:08:38 - Why They Did That In That Way

* 00:10:13 - Why They Really Really Shouldn’t Have Done That In That Way

* 00:12:07 - They Get Letters

* 00:16:44 - What’s In A Name

* 00:19:16 - Executive Summary Of Their Executive Summary

* 00:20:34 - Introduction (1)

* 00:20:58 - RSP Evaluations (2.1 and 2.2)

* 00:24:19 - AI Research And Development (2.3)

* 00:27:29 - Alignment Risk (2.4)