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LessWrong posts by zvi — Technology
LessWrong posts by zvi

Audio narrations of LessWrong posts by zvi

Copyright: © 2024 All rights reserved

Latest Episodes:

Room covered entirely in newspaper clippings with illuminated desk and window. — “Claude Sonnet 5 Is Not Frontier But Has Its Uses” by Zvi Jul 01, 2026
Show notes

Fable 5 is back today, baby! Premium subscribers have one week to use it within their subscriptions. First hit's free. Then you pay by the token.

Today's post is still about Sonnet 5.

I don’t know that there will be much call for Sonnet 5 for most purposes, given Opus 4.8 exists and especially now that Fable 5 is once again available, but this is what we do here, so sure, why not, system card time, including model welfare, after which we’ll do capabilities.

Sonnet costs $3/$15 per million tokens, versus $5/$25 for Opus and $10/$50 for Fable, after an introductory period. Once you pay for all the tokens you need you’re not really saving money, such as on the ArtificialAnalysis index where Sonnet ended up being more expensive.

My initial impression is that if you want me to use Sonnet over Opus for most purposes, you’re going to have to offer a bigger discount than that.

The counterargument is speed. Sonnet 5 is faster without being that much less capable. In many cases, getting into a flow state like that is pretty valuable.

There are a few agentic scenarios Sonnet 5 has [...]

---
Outline:
(02:29) Mythos Exists
(03:10) Introduction (1)
(03:17) RSP Evaluations (2)
(04:02) Cyber (3)
(04:26) Safeguards and Harmlessness (4)
(04:57) Agentic Safety (5)
(06:42) Alignment (6)
(10:45) Illegible Thinking (6.4.5)
(11:43) Evaluation Awareness
(12:22) Honesty and Hallucinations (6.5)
(13:17) Flagged As Unhealthy? (6.5.1)
(13:53) Model Welfare (7)
(20:32) Live From AI Village
(22:19) For I Contain Multitudes
(29:04) Official Benchmarks
(33:11) Other People's Benchmarks
(33:37) Positive Reactions
(39:04) Negative Reactions

---

First published:
July 1st, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d9pmwQsFC2AXceryg/claude-sonnet-5-is-not-frontier-but-has-its-uses

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Table comparing Claude AI models' performance across five evaluation tasks with human effort thresholds. — “Claude Sonnet 5 Is Not Frontier But Has Its Uses” by Zvi Jul 01, 2026
Show notes

Fable 5 is back today, baby! Premium subscribers have one week to use it within their subscriptions. First hit's free. Then you pay by the token.

Today's post is still about Sonnet 5.

I don’t know that there will be much call for Sonnet 5 for most purposes, given Opus 4.8 exists and especially now that Fable 5 is once again available, but this is what we do here, so sure, why not, system card time, including model welfare, after which we’ll do capabilities.

Sonnet costs $3/$15 per million tokens, versus $5/$25 for Opus and $10/$50 for Fable, after an introductory period. Once you pay for all the tokens you need you’re not really saving money, such as on the ArtificialAnalysis index where Sonnet ended up being more expensive.

My initial impression is that if you want me to use Sonnet over Opus for most purposes, you’re going to have to offer a bigger discount than that.

The counterargument is speed. Sonnet 5 is faster without being that much less capable. In many cases, getting into a flow state like that is pretty valuable.

There are a few agentic scenarios Sonnet 5 has [...]

---
Outline:
(02:29) Mythos Exists
(03:10) Introduction (1)
(03:17) RSP Evaluations (2)
(04:02) Cyber (3)
(04:26) Safeguards and Harmlessness (4)
(04:57) Agentic Safety (5)
(06:42) Alignment (6)
(10:45) Illegible Thinking (6.4.5)
(11:43) Evaluation Awareness
(12:22) Honesty and Hallucinations (6.5)
(13:17) Flagged As Unhealthy? (6.5.1)
(13:53) Model Welfare (7)
(20:32) Live From AI Village
(22:19) For I Contain Multitudes
(29:04) Official Benchmarks
(33:11) Other People's Benchmarks
(33:37) Positive Reactions
(39:04) Negative Reactions

---

First published:
July 1st, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d9pmwQsFC2AXceryg/claude-sonnet-5-is-not-frontier-but-has-its-uses

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Meme showing two people on a bus with overlapping text about powerful models. — “The Once And Future Fable #5” by Zvi Jun 30, 2026
Show notes

We, or at least ‘more than 100 American institutions,’ got Mythos back this week.

What we the people do not have is Fable or Sol.

While we wait for both Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6-Sol, today we instead got Claude Sonnet 5. As usual it will take a few days to get a handle on the new model. In this case, Anthropic is representing it as a cheaper and faster version of Opus 4.8, so even though the number says 5 this is a relatively minor development.

This post expands the Fable series to cover all further developments this week surrounding the Mythos Moment, and the various aspects of handling our new ad hoc licensing regime and figuring out policy going forward, and other aspects of policy as well.

This includes my notes on various rhetoric being pulled out, where I fear I end up saying similar things every so often, because we are doomed to repeat the cycle. I have accepted my role in that, but those are sections many of you can skip, and are marked in italics accordingly as per usual.

Table of Contents

You Should See The Other [...]

---
Outline:
(01:12) You Should See The Other Guy
(01:54) DeepMind Coders Of The World, Unite
(02:45) Report Your Incidents
(03:04) Good Guy With An AI
(04:49) Free As In To Give It A Shot
(08:21) Everything Is Both Speech And Computer
(11:10) Lambs To The Slaughter
(15:43) A Sign Saying Beware Of The Leopard
(16:52) The Once And Present Mythos
(20:26) What Is To Be Done
(24:00) Distillation
(26:24) What Would Banning Open Source Even Mean
(27:20) Open Weight Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This

---

First published:
June 30th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/phxgfwGNGbanumMMv/the-once-and-future-fable-5

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Pliny the Liberator tweets: — “The Once And Future Fable #5” by Zvi Jun 30, 2026
Show notes

We, or at least ‘more than 100 American institutions,’ got Mythos back this week.

What we the people do not have is Fable or Sol.

While we wait for both Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6-Sol, today we instead got Claude Sonnet 5. As usual it will take a few days to get a handle on the new model. In this case, Anthropic is representing it as a cheaper and faster version of Opus 4.8, so even though the number says 5 this is a relatively minor development.

This post expands the Fable series to cover all further developments this week surrounding the Mythos Moment, and the various aspects of handling our new ad hoc licensing regime and figuring out policy going forward, and other aspects of policy as well.

This includes my notes on various rhetoric being pulled out, where I fear I end up saying similar things every so often, because we are doomed to repeat the cycle. I have accepted my role in that, but those are sections many of you can skip, and are marked in italics accordingly as per usual.

Table of Contents

You Should See The Other [...]

---
Outline:
(01:12) You Should See The Other Guy
(01:54) DeepMind Coders Of The World, Unite
(02:45) Report Your Incidents
(03:04) Good Guy With An AI
(04:49) Free As In To Give It A Shot
(08:21) Everything Is Both Speech And Computer
(11:10) Lambs To The Slaughter
(15:43) A Sign Saying Beware Of The Leopard
(16:52) The Once And Present Mythos
(20:26) What Is To Be Done
(24:00) Distillation
(26:24) What Would Banning Open Source Even Mean
(27:20) Open Weight Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This

---

First published:
June 30th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/phxgfwGNGbanumMMv/the-once-and-future-fable-5

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

News article screenshot. The headline reads: — “WSJ Article Claiming China Has Matched Anthropic Is Obvious Nonsense” by Zvi Jun 29, 2026
Show notes

The Wall Street Journal printed an outright false headline and heavily misleading story claiming this, which of course was uncritically amplified by the usual suspects.

I post this now on its own so that we have a place to link to, to explain the situation.

Headline News

WSJ Headline (Obvious Nonsense): China Has Matched Anthropic in Cybersecurity, Resetting AI Race.

That. Did. Not. Happen.

The post even claims, explicitly, that Claude Opus 4.8 similarly ‘matches’ Claude Mythos, a claim which is even more obviously false.

Shame upon the Wall Street Journal. I fear Gell-Mann Amnesia. If they can get something as important as this so completely wrong, what about everything else?

I am skipping over the parts that involve accurate reporting, or minor quibbles.

It seems important to focus on clearly debunking the central false claims.

Alas, the mistakes made here very much rhyme with mistakes being made throughout all this by the White House, and that get latched onto by certain bad actors, who have played a large part in leaving us unprepared for the Mythos Moment.

For a full understanding of GLM-5.2, which is indeed an impressive [...]

---
Outline:
(00:27) Headline News
(02:09) What Makes Mythos Special
(03:16) Going Over The Detailed Claims
(07:38) One Helpful Note
(08:18) The Overall Impression Is Extremely Wrong
(08:48) All Of This Has Happened Before And Will Happen Again

---

First published:
June 29th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bpBYm5jiS4tpyzuDS/wsj-article-claiming-china-has-matched-anthropic-is-obvious

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Table showing performance scores across different GPT model versions for content moderation categories. — “GPT-5.6: The System Card” by Zvi Jun 28, 2026
Show notes

While we wait for a general release, the system card is the best hint as to what is going on with the new candidate for America's Next Top Model, GPT-5.6.

This is only an OpenAI model card, so by my standards it's a light read. There's a lot of things that you get in an Anthropic card, that are missing in an OpenAI card.

Overall, the card gives a clear and consistent impression that GPT-5.6-Sol is a substantial improvement over GPT-5.5, but still short of Mythos.

OpenAI calls it a ‘step function better’ than GPT-5.5. That seems accurate.

OpenAI: Sol is our new flagship and a step function better than GPT-5.5.
Terra delivers performance competitive to GPT-5.5 at 2x lower cost.
Luna is our most cost-efficient model, delivering strong capability at our lowest cost.

Together, the GPT-5.6 family gives people and developers more choice in how they balance intelligence, speed, and cost.

Once available, pricing for GPT-5.6-Sol will be $5/$30, the same as GPT-5.5. Terra is $2.5/$15, Luna is $1/$6.

They claim it will be on Cerebras at 750 TPS, which is insanely fast. Capacity will be limited, at least at first. [...]

---
Outline:
(03:49) What's In A Name?
(04:26) Fix This Code
(07:08) Crossover Event Requested
(07:43) Disallowed Content (3)
(09:03) Avoiding Accidental Data-Destructive Actions (3.3)
(09:29) Are You Sure? (3.4)
(09:58) Jailbreaks (4.1)
(10:14) Prompt Injection (4.2)
(10:40) HealthBench (5.1)
(11:00) Dynamic Mental Health Adversarial User Simulations (5.2)
(12:21) Hallucinations (6)
(12:50) Isolated Misaligned Actions (7.1)
(13:10) Going Overboard (7.2)
(18:11) Chain of Thought Evaluations (7.3)
(19:18) Bias (8)
(19:27) Preparedness (9)
(20:15) Biological Risks (9.1.1)
(22:15) Cybersecurity (9.1.2)
(28:40) External Cyber Evaluation FrontierCyber from Irregular (9.1.2.5)
(30:32) Cyber Conclusions
(31:07) Recursive Self-Improvement (9.1.3)
(32:22) METR Warns Us (9.1.3.6)
(35:04) Everything Is Under Control
(37:44) Metagaming (7.4)
(40:17) Apollo Research and Sandbagging
(43:09) Safeguards (9.3)
(50:01) Better Not Call Sol Yet

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---

First published:
June 28th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JFjNmPTbH8kL6xtp6/gpt-5-6-the-system-card

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Bar chart showing predicted changes in content policy violation rates across categories with resampling fidelity errors. — “GPT-5.6: The System Card” by Zvi Jun 28, 2026
Show notes

While we wait for a general release, the system card is the best hint as to what is going on with the new candidate for America's Next Top Model, GPT-5.6.

This is only an OpenAI model card, so by my standards it's a light read. There's a lot of things that you get in an Anthropic card, that are missing in an OpenAI card.

Overall, the card gives a clear and consistent impression that GPT-5.6-Sol is a substantial improvement over GPT-5.5, but still short of Mythos.

OpenAI calls it a ‘step function better’ than GPT-5.5. That seems accurate.

OpenAI: Sol is our new flagship and a step function better than GPT-5.5.
Terra delivers performance competitive to GPT-5.5 at 2x lower cost.
Luna is our most cost-efficient model, delivering strong capability at our lowest cost.

Together, the GPT-5.6 family gives people and developers more choice in how they balance intelligence, speed, and cost.

Once available, pricing for GPT-5.6-Sol will be $5/$30, the same as GPT-5.5. Terra is $2.5/$15, Luna is $1/$6.

They claim it will be on Cerebras at 750 TPS, which is insanely fast. Capacity will be limited, at least at first. [...]

---
Outline:
(03:49) What's In A Name?
(04:26) Fix This Code
(07:08) Crossover Event Requested
(07:43) Disallowed Content (3)
(09:03) Avoiding Accidental Data-Destructive Actions (3.3)
(09:29) Are You Sure? (3.4)
(09:58) Jailbreaks (4.1)
(10:14) Prompt Injection (4.2)
(10:40) HealthBench (5.1)
(11:00) Dynamic Mental Health Adversarial User Simulations (5.2)
(12:21) Hallucinations (6)
(12:50) Isolated Misaligned Actions (7.1)
(13:10) Going Overboard (7.2)
(18:11) Chain of Thought Evaluations (7.3)
(19:18) Bias (8)
(19:27) Preparedness (9)
(20:15) Biological Risks (9.1.1)
(22:15) Cybersecurity (9.1.2)
(28:40) External Cyber Evaluation FrontierCyber from Irregular (9.1.2.5)
(30:32) Cyber Conclusions
(31:07) Recursive Self-Improvement (9.1.3)
(32:22) METR Warns Us (9.1.3.6)
(35:04) Everything Is Under Control
(37:44) Metagaming (7.4)
(40:17) Apollo Research and Sandbagging
(43:09) Safeguards (9.3)
(50:01) Better Not Call Sol Yet

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---

First published:
June 28th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JFjNmPTbH8kL6xtp6/gpt-5-6-the-system-card

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Marc Andreessen tweets: and includes a GIF showing a woman saying — “White House Will Ad Hoc Decide Who Can Individually Access GPT-5.6” by Zvi Jun 26, 2026
Show notes

We have a new standard policy for releasing frontier AI models. It is not good.

We are now, it seems, going to have the White House individually, in an opaque ad hoc manner, deciding who can access which frontier AI models when.

One hopes we will at least transition this into a predictable and formal set of procedures for determining what to do. But we spent years not laying the groundwork for doing that, and now here we are.

Essentially everyone should read the first half of this post, to understand what happened, and my speculations on what it means going forward for AI and America.

Only those who care and find it relevant to their interests should proceed to the second half, which addresses the blame game about how we got here, and claims that things would be better if people stopped speaking truth.

Table of Contents

Part 1: A Maximally Terrible Policy.

What Does This Mean For Fable?

Solve For The Equilibrium.

The Once And Future Fable.

Part 2: The Blame Game.

A Parable.

What About the Recent Executive Order?

The Problem Is [...]

---
Outline:
(01:01) Part 1: A Maximally Terrible Policy
(06:46) What Does This Mean For Fable?
(07:46) Solve For The Equilibrium
(11:45) The Once And Future Fable
(12:45) Part 2: The Blame Game
(16:02) A Parable
(18:10) What About the Recent Executive Order?
(22:13) The Problem Is Real

---

First published:
June 26th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MkwL4AcbE44yePEQx/white-house-will-ad-hoc-decide-who-can-individually-access

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

AI detection results showing 100% of document is AI-generated with high confidence. — “AI #174: You’re It” by Zvi Jun 25, 2026
Show notes

Fable remains in limbo, with renewed hope that we will get it back soon (45% by tomorrow, 69% by July 1, nice.) The full capabilities post is now available.

Alex Bores unfortunately lost narrowly in NY-12, and will not be heading to Congress.

There are also plenty of other stories to cover. Some highlights:

GLM-5.2 is the new best open model, although it is expensive for its class. It will have its uses, potentially for agents you need to run fully locally or privately, but often it won’t be the right fit.

Claude Tag is a new system for having Claude join your Slack, and if you @ him then he will spin up an instance to do the coding work.

Dean Ball is joining OpenAI to work on policy. We don’t see eye to eye on everything, but this is a huge upgrade over their existing alternatives.

The debate over the MidJourney scanner continues.

Table of Contents

Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. You know what it is for.

Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Hiring French Qwants.

Huh, Upgrades. Claude Code supports artifacts.

[...]

---
Outline:
(01:12) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(02:58) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility
(03:13) Huh, Upgrades
(03:38) On Your Marks
(04:36) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(11:20) Fun With Media Generation
(12:20) Cyber Lack of Security
(14:49) Overcoming Bias
(15:52) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
(18:14) They Took Our Jobs
(19:48) Get Involved
(21:54) Introducing
(22:12) Claude Tag
(31:46) In Other AI News
(33:20) More On GLM-5.2
(35:17) ChatGPT Health
(37:04) Middle Of The Journey
(51:04) New Medical Diagnostic Just Dropped
(54:05) Google on AI Control
(01:02:12) The Once And Future Fable
(01:04:17) Fable: The First Lawsuit
(01:05:12) Dean Ball Joins OpenAI
(01:09:03) Show Me the Money
(01:09:18) Quiet Speculations
(01:12:00) Alex Bores Loses In NY-12 By 4%
(01:22:28) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(01:24:49) Chip City
(01:28:33) The Week in Audio
(01:29:21) People Just Say Things
(01:30:19) Rhetorical Innovation
(01:36:32) There Are Two Pills
(01:37:55) Who Evals The Evals
(01:39:02) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(01:43:17) Cooperative Alignment
(01:44:22) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:45:59) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:48:08) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
June 25th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MfdaizeH8z8civPHe/ai-174-you-re-it

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

News article screenshot. The headline reads: Read the winning entry of the 2026 Harper's Bazaar Short Story Competition — “AI #174: You’re It” by Zvi Jun 25, 2026
Show notes

Fable remains in limbo, with renewed hope that we will get it back soon (45% by tomorrow, 69% by July 1, nice.) The full capabilities post is now available.

Alex Bores unfortunately lost narrowly in NY-12, and will not be heading to Congress.

There are also plenty of other stories to cover. Some highlights:

GLM-5.2 is the new best open model, although it is expensive for its class. It will have its uses, potentially for agents you need to run fully locally or privately, but often it won’t be the right fit.

Claude Tag is a new system for having Claude join your Slack, and if you @ him then he will spin up an instance to do the coding work.

Dean Ball is joining OpenAI to work on policy. We don’t see eye to eye on everything, but this is a huge upgrade over their existing alternatives.

The debate over the MidJourney scanner continues.

Table of Contents

Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. You know what it is for.

Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Hiring French Qwants.

Huh, Upgrades. Claude Code supports artifacts.

[...]

---
Outline:
(01:12) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(02:58) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility
(03:13) Huh, Upgrades
(03:38) On Your Marks
(04:36) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(11:20) Fun With Media Generation
(12:20) Cyber Lack of Security
(14:49) Overcoming Bias
(15:52) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
(18:14) They Took Our Jobs
(19:48) Get Involved
(21:54) Introducing
(22:12) Claude Tag
(31:46) In Other AI News
(33:20) More On GLM-5.2
(35:17) ChatGPT Health
(37:04) Middle Of The Journey
(51:04) New Medical Diagnostic Just Dropped
(54:05) Google on AI Control
(01:02:12) The Once And Future Fable
(01:04:17) Fable: The First Lawsuit
(01:05:12) Dean Ball Joins OpenAI
(01:09:03) Show Me the Money
(01:09:18) Quiet Speculations
(01:12:00) Alex Bores Loses In NY-12 By 4%
(01:22:28) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(01:24:49) Chip City
(01:28:33) The Week in Audio
(01:29:21) People Just Say Things
(01:30:19) Rhetorical Innovation
(01:36:32) There Are Two Pills
(01:37:55) Who Evals The Evals
(01:39:02) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(01:43:17) Cooperative Alignment
(01:44:22) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:45:59) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:48:08) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
June 25th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MfdaizeH8z8civPHe/ai-174-you-re-it

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Table comparing old and new usage-credit messaging for Fable 5 feature across software versions. — “The Once And Future Fable #4” by Zvi Jun 24, 2026
Show notes

It does look good, actually.

After the odds had dropped quite a bit, they’re looking good again, with a 60% chance of restoration by July 1 and 88% by July 31, in the wake of groundwork looking like it is being laid in various places:

leo: BREAKING: Claude Code v2.1.190 introduces several string changes that hint at preparations for a Fable 5 return, with it being permanently included in subscriptions with weekly usage.

The string “You’ve used your Fable 5 usage for this week” has been added, and “purchased separately from your plan” has been removed

leo: UPDATE: Fable 5 has now reportedly also reappeared in Amazon Bedrock

If the update is based purely on the above info I would treat the new odds as overconfident. These moves seem reasonable to make even if you have no confidence in the restoration, in order to be ready if that moment arrives.

This also suggests a potential permanent quota for Fable for subscribers. Even a modest amount is a big game here, since even a modest allocation means you can use it for non-coding tasks or minor coding tasks within the subscription.

With that [...]

---
Outline:
(01:42) A Rather Terrible Policy
(03:14) The People Have Spoken
(03:59) Thank You, Next
(06:35) Be Very Very Quiet
(07:18) What These Babies Can And Cannot Do
(13:54) What's The Worst That Could Happen?
(25:09) The Data Retention Policy Is About Defense In Depth
(25:51) Pick Up The Phone
(28:49) People Just Say Things

---

First published:
June 24th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xJMngE34AfwGWvKLx/the-once-and-future-fable-4

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
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Alex Tabarrok tweets: — “The Once And Future Fable #4” by Zvi Jun 24, 2026
Show notes

It does look good, actually.

After the odds had dropped quite a bit, they’re looking good again, with a 60% chance of restoration by July 1 and 88% by July 31, in the wake of groundwork looking like it is being laid in various places:

leo: BREAKING: Claude Code v2.1.190 introduces several string changes that hint at preparations for a Fable 5 return, with it being permanently included in subscriptions with weekly usage.

The string “You’ve used your Fable 5 usage for this week” has been added, and “purchased separately from your plan” has been removed

leo: UPDATE: Fable 5 has now reportedly also reappeared in Amazon Bedrock

If the update is based purely on the above info I would treat the new odds as overconfident. These moves seem reasonable to make even if you have no confidence in the restoration, in order to be ready if that moment arrives.

This also suggests a potential permanent quota for Fable for subscribers. Even a modest amount is a big game here, since even a modest allocation means you can use it for non-coding tasks or minor coding tasks within the subscription.

With that [...]

---
Outline:
(01:42) A Rather Terrible Policy
(03:14) The People Have Spoken
(03:59) Thank You, Next
(06:35) Be Very Very Quiet
(07:18) What These Babies Can And Cannot Do
(13:54) What's The Worst That Could Happen?
(25:09) The Data Retention Policy Is About Defense In Depth
(25:51) Pick Up The Phone
(28:49) People Just Say Things

---

First published:
June 24th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xJMngE34AfwGWvKLx/the-once-and-future-fable-4

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Three-panel illustration showing child pouring water between containers in science experiment. — “Monthly Roundup #43: June 2026” by Zvi Jun 23, 2026
Show notes

Your monthly hit of all the things that are fit to print without a better place to live.

Today is election day here in New York City, so again a reminder that if you are a registered Democrat and live in NY-12 today is the final day to vote for Alex Bores for Congress, and as per my argument yesterday that this matters a lot for ensuring we have a sensible Congressional response to AI.

RIP FiveThirtyEight

ABC and Disney completely take down FiveThirtyEight and all its articles, after telling Nate Silver they would refuse to sell it to him at any price because Nate had criticized their management of the brand. Nate Silver took this opportunity to reminisce and tell some stories about the old website, and the reasons the path of not seeking revenue and working with an entity too big to care ultimately doomed them.

‘What a bunch of assholes,’ indeed. I can grudgingly accept this sort of thing when it maximizes profits and the amount is meaningful, but this is different.

Jack: This sort of digital arson is so frustrating. Pretty sure Dante had a place in mind for rights-holders [...]

---
Outline:
(00:33) RIP FiveThirtyEight
(01:31) RIP Books
(02:18) Bad News
(09:53) Good Advice
(18:31) Opportunity Knocks
(19:15) Lower Awareness
(22:21) The New York Times Has Some Issues
(22:47) Liar Liar
(25:51) Conspiracy Theory
(26:16) Good News, Everyone
(26:31) For Your Entertainment
(28:00) A Matter of Taste
(35:21) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game
(37:33) I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars
(38:38) Sports Go Sports
(39:09) Government Working
(42:03) Jones Act Watch
(43:02) Humans Can Be Strategic
(44:58) Variously Effective Altruism
(46:14) Support Anti-Aging Research
(47:25) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
June 23rd, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Taa4zmSNtD5S99tJT/monthly-roundup-43-june-2026

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Matrix showing relationship between worry and outcomes, with suffering levels indicated by color coding. — “Monthly Roundup #43: June 2026” by Zvi Jun 23, 2026
Show notes

Your monthly hit of all the things that are fit to print without a better place to live.

Today is election day here in New York City, so again a reminder that if you are a registered Democrat and live in NY-12 today is the final day to vote for Alex Bores for Congress, and as per my argument yesterday that this matters a lot for ensuring we have a sensible Congressional response to AI.

RIP FiveThirtyEight

ABC and Disney completely take down FiveThirtyEight and all its articles, after telling Nate Silver they would refuse to sell it to him at any price because Nate had criticized their management of the brand. Nate Silver took this opportunity to reminisce and tell some stories about the old website, and the reasons the path of not seeking revenue and working with an entity too big to care ultimately doomed them.

‘What a bunch of assholes,’ indeed. I can grudgingly accept this sort of thing when it maximizes profits and the amount is meaningful, but this is different.

Jack: This sort of digital arson is so frustrating. Pretty sure Dante had a place in mind for rights-holders [...]

---
Outline:
(00:33) RIP FiveThirtyEight
(01:31) RIP Books
(02:18) Bad News
(09:53) Good Advice
(18:31) Opportunity Knocks
(19:15) Lower Awareness
(22:21) The New York Times Has Some Issues
(22:47) Liar Liar
(25:51) Conspiracy Theory
(26:16) Good News, Everyone
(26:31) For Your Entertainment
(28:00) A Matter of Taste
(35:21) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game
(37:33) I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars
(38:38) Sports Go Sports
(39:09) Government Working
(42:03) Jones Act Watch
(43:02) Humans Can Be Strategic
(44:58) Variously Effective Altruism
(46:14) Support Anti-Aging Research
(47:25) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
June 23rd, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Taa4zmSNtD5S99tJT/monthly-roundup-43-june-2026

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Graph showing DeepSWE score versus average cost per task for various AI models. — “GLM-5.2 Is The New Best Open Model” by Zvi Jun 22, 2026
Show notes

GLM-5.2 arrived last week. It boasts excellent benchmarks and looks strong.

Benchmarks here are a de facto ceiling of how good it is, not a point estimate. Essentially all other aspects of an open model like this, beyond speed and price, will almost always be worse than the numbers suggest. Still, impressive.

It is definitely a large step up from GLM-5.1, and likely the strongest open model.

GLM-5.2 is still substantially behind the absolute frontier, although plausibly on the cost-benefit Pareto frontier. It seems closer to the frontier than previous efforts, including probably closer than DeepSeek R1 was during the DeepSeek moment.

This is the new ‘peak close behind’ moment. Its existence is a substantial updates to push back some of the ‘where are all the updates’ updates in the opposite direction over time.

Purely in terms of core tasks that GLM-5.2 is capable of doing, and ignoring missing features and its inferior generalization, and ignoring that it is distilled from Claude, and ignoring the Mythos class of models, and marking purely from date of public release, you can make a case GLM-5.2 is somewhere between 4 months and 7 months behind the frontier [...]

---
Outline:
(02:01) Alex Bores For Congress In NY-12
(03:41) Signs of Life
(05:05) The Benchmarks
(09:02) GLM-5.2 Is Distilled From Claude
(09:55) Positive Responses
(16:00) Finding The Niche
(17:30) Negative Reactions
(20:05) Looking To The Future

---

First published:
June 22nd, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reXkwJbB8GYdeuvDt/glm-5-2-is-the-new-best-open-model

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Performance comparison table of Claude family models versus other AI models across multiple benchmarks. — “Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5: Capabilities” by Zvi Jun 19, 2026
Show notes

Only three days after the release of Claude Fable 5, Anthropic was forced by the United States Government to make it unavailable, when a jailbreak was brought to its attention, rather than the previous situation of ‘yes obviously experts can jailbreak anything if they care enough’ and ‘yes obviously you can ask Fable to fix your code.’

Three days was enough time for many of us to learn to love Fable, and for us to dearly miss it now that it is gone. The world was briefly smarter, and now it is again stupider. At some point it will get smarter again, which will likely be within two weeks.

This post is written as if Fable 5 is again available for public use, rather than trying to include a lot of qualifying clauses. It remains to be seen how this will play out, and this post does not attempt to cover that question.

My previous release coverage of Fable covered the model card and then model welfare. Coverage of the government takedown of Fable starts here, and continues here and here.

The Official Pitch

The pitch is that Fable 5 is the best model [...]

---
Outline:
(01:08) The Official Pitch
(04:06) Technical Details
(04:31) The System Prompt and Jailbreak
(06:45) Benchmarks
(15:22) Other People's Benchmarks
(21:08) The Classifiers Are Not Messing Around
(22:53) The Classifiers Need Work
(28:15) The Classifiers Have Consequences
(29:18) First Hit Is Free
(29:53) How Easily We Forget
(30:46) Data Retention Is An Issue
(31:15) Fable For The Win
(36:15) Andrej Karpathy Is Impressed
(37:54) Every Is Very Impressed
(39:04) Other People Are Impressed
(51:10) Know How To Tell a Fable
(53:06) You Can Just Make Things
(55:37) You Can Just Install Things
(56:05) Good Personality
(57:51) Fable Writes A Fable
(01:06:04) Is That Code
(01:08:32) Fable Crosses The Threshold
(01:09:12) Man With A Plan
(01:10:12) Less Impressed Assessments
(01:13:39) Actively Negative Assessments
(01:14:16) Coherence
(01:15:27) Good Night And Good Luck
(01:16:05) Curious Fable
(01:16:23) I See You, Baby
(01:16:40) We Finally Did It We Know How To Count Letters
(01:17:46) That's Not My Style
(01:20:12) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
June 19th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kMnobCQp9z2pSbzDB/claude-fable-5-and-mythos-5-capabilities

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Table showing benchmark performance scores across different AI models and evaluation tests. — “Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5: Capabilities” by Zvi Jun 19, 2026
Show notes

Only three days after the release of Claude Fable 5, Anthropic was forced by the United States Government to make it unavailable, when a jailbreak was brought to its attention, rather than the previous situation of ‘yes obviously experts can jailbreak anything if they care enough’ and ‘yes obviously you can ask Fable to fix your code.’

Three days was enough time for many of us to learn to love Fable, and for us to dearly miss it now that it is gone. The world was briefly smarter, and now it is again stupider. At some point it will get smarter again, which will likely be within two weeks.

This post is written as if Fable 5 is again available for public use, rather than trying to include a lot of qualifying clauses. It remains to be seen how this will play out, and this post does not attempt to cover that question.

My previous release coverage of Fable covered the model card and then model welfare. Coverage of the government takedown of Fable starts here, and continues here and here.

The Official Pitch

The pitch is that Fable 5 is the best model [...]

---
Outline:
(01:08) The Official Pitch
(04:06) Technical Details
(04:31) The System Prompt and Jailbreak
(06:45) Benchmarks
(15:22) Other People's Benchmarks
(21:08) The Classifiers Are Not Messing Around
(22:53) The Classifiers Need Work
(28:15) The Classifiers Have Consequences
(29:18) First Hit Is Free
(29:53) How Easily We Forget
(30:46) Data Retention Is An Issue
(31:15) Fable For The Win
(36:15) Andrej Karpathy Is Impressed
(37:54) Every Is Very Impressed
(39:04) Other People Are Impressed
(51:10) Know How To Tell a Fable
(53:06) You Can Just Make Things
(55:37) You Can Just Install Things
(56:05) Good Personality
(57:51) Fable Writes A Fable
(01:06:04) Is That Code
(01:08:32) Fable Crosses The Threshold
(01:09:12) Man With A Plan
(01:10:12) Less Impressed Assessments
(01:13:39) Actively Negative Assessments
(01:14:16) Coherence
(01:15:27) Good Night And Good Luck
(01:16:05) Curious Fable
(01:16:23) I See You, Baby
(01:16:40) We Finally Did It We Know How To Count Letters
(01:17:46) That's Not My Style
(01:20:12) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
June 19th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kMnobCQp9z2pSbzDB/claude-fable-5-and-mythos-5-capabilities

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

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