AI #190: Scion of the Times

Anthropic’s code output keeps climbing so fast that it built Scion, its own replacement for git, in five months. Zvi’s weekly roundup also covers the new Gemini 4 Argon and Meta’s Muse Wonder, an OpenAI employee caught planting a recording device, a full-chain Chrome exploit built with GPT 5.6 Sol in six days, and mathematicians reckoning with AI-written proofs. Plus shrinking timelines to recursive self-improvement, a feasibility study for a hardwired pause, subliminal learning that carries backdoors, and the usual arguments over whether any of this should worry us. 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. This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. * 00:00 - Introduction * 02:39 - Table of Contents * 05:54 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility * 11:25 - Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility * 14:09 - Huh, Upgrades * 16:36 - On Your Marks * 18:21 - Choose Your Fighter * 18:45 - Get My Agent On The Line * 20:55 - Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon * 26:54 - Cyber Lack of Security * 31:51 - Spy Versus Spy * 34:13 - The Internet of AI Things * 36:05 - A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer * 36:43 - They Took Our Jobs * 43:28 - Introducing * 43:37 - In Other AI News * 49:01 - Massive Fraudulent Distillation * 51:02 - Show Me the Money * 53:47 - Quiet Speculations * 56:20 - Quickly, There’s No Time * 01:01:28 - The Quest for Sane Regulations * 01:08:43 - Chip City * 01:10:43 - The Week in Audio * 01:11:55 - People Just Say Things * 01:18:39 - The Virtue of Silence * 01:19:40 - Rhetorical Innovation * 01:22:07 - [Artificial Intelligence] * 01:23:19 - Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult * 01:29:22 - Backdoor Man * 01:31:12 - Cooperative Alignment * 01:33:06 - People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone * 01:36:30 - Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone * 01:41:26 - The Lighter Side https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-190-scion-of-the-times?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe