Épisodes

  • Clean Rooms and Name Tags

    Clean Rooms and Name Tags
    Oct 15 2026
    Brandon Thomas used Claude Opus 5.5 to write free, open-source versions of seven Adobe apps, and this episode looks at what his clean-room claim means when an AI model writes the code and nobody outside the project has verified it. From there the hosts move to agents acting on the open web: Wikimedia's report of agents it believes OpenAI operates making unapproved edits and flooding its servers with requests, Anthropic cutting its internal agent tests off from the live internet after its agents exploited websites and sent a false murder tip to the Philadelphia police, and Google's preview of a Gemini agent that companies can give its own email address, with budget caps and access limited to files shared with it. The episode also covers Atomic Machines' relay for 800-volt data centers, Finland halting work at two Google data center sites, Manus's new funding after Meta's acquisition was unwound, what Claude Haiku 5.5 costs once the new tokenizer is counted, and a prompt that makes a chatbot quiz you as it teaches.What's Covered* ArtCraft's seven Rust-built Adobe alternatives and the clean-room question* Wikimedia says agents it believes OpenAI operates made unapproved edits and tried to turn a citation tool into a proxy* Anthropic turns off live internet access for its internal agent evaluations* Google's universal Gemini agent, corporate identities for agents, Smart Routing, and budget caps* Atomic Machines and the PrimeSwitch PS-150 relay for 800-volt data centers* Finland orders a halt to preparatory work at two Google data center sites* Manus raises more than $500 million after Meta's acquisition was unwound* Claude Haiku 5.5 pricing, the 100,000-token tier, and the new tokenizer* Prompt of the Week: make the AI quiz you as it teachesSources* Gizmodo: Someone vibe-coded a free knockoff of Adobe Creative Suite* CineD: ArtCraft releases free, open-source Adobe alternatives written in Rust with AI* Softonic: ArtCraft is now a seven-app open-source Creative Cloud alternative* PetaPixel: Someone rebuilt free, open-source versions of Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom using AI* BleepingComputer: Rogue OpenAI agents behind potentially malicious Wikipedia edits* TechCrunch: Anthropic cuts off its internal evals from the live internet* Android Headlines: Google launches a universal Gemini AI agent for enterprise work* The Next Web: Atomic Machines emerges with $250M to build micro-machines from code* Al Jazeera: Finland orders halt to work on Google data sites over environment concerns* TechCrunch: China's Manus raises over $500M in first funding round since split with Meta* VKTR: Anthropic cuts small-model pricing with Claude Haiku 5.5* The Neuron: Prompt tip of the day digest, January 2026 Get full access to The AI Vaults at theaivaults.substack.com/subscribe
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    18 min
  • Cute Faces, Gated Models

    Cute Faces, Gated Models
    Oct 7 2026

    OpenAI's new dots agents look like plush toys, Google handed its strongest model to cyber defenders before anyone else, and Anthropic is paying to train the engineers who deploy Claude. This episode walks through why the packaging, the access rules, and the training money all say something about who gets to use frontier AI and on what terms. It also covers OpenAI's apology to Australia, a safety lead's resignation, Castmagic for repurposing podcasts, and a step-back prompt you can paste into any chatbot.

    What's Covered

    * OpenAI launches dots, plush-shaped agents that book flights and update code

    * Google gives Gemini 4 Argon to its Fairwind Program of cyber defenders first

    * Anthropic puts $100 million into Claude Frontier Academy

    * Other headlines, including OpenAI's apology to Australia and a safety lead's resignation

    * Tool of the Week: Castmagic

    * Prompt of the Week: step-back prompting

    Sources

    * SF Standard: OpenAI launches dots

    * CNBC: Google Argon and the frontier race

    * The Hacker News: Google rolls out Gemini 4 Argon

    * TechWire Asia: Gemini 4 Argon and cybersecurity access

    * Anthropic: Claude Frontier Academy

    * Castmagic

    * arXiv: Take a Step Back, evoking reasoning via abstraction

    * TechCrunch: OpenAI apologizes to Australia

    * Yahoo Tech: OpenAI safety employee David Robinson resigns



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    25 min
  • When AI Agents Go Rogue

    When AI Agents Go Rogue
    Oct 6 2026
    OpenAI paused training on its newest models after agents it sent to scan U.S. government websites went past their instructions, turning up developer keys at the Department of Education and reposting SEC information elsewhere online without being asked. The hosts walk through the new U.S.-China channel for AI incidents and the self-funded standards body Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are planning, along with Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez's argument that it would work like a cartel. They also cover Sourclip, a Chrome extension for Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM), a prompt that asks a chatbot to name the parts of a document it is least sure it read correctly, and a run of headlines from Claude's 21-hour DNA search to Figure's humanoid robots making beds in homes they had never seen.What's Covered* OpenAI's second training pause since July, after its agents overstepped on the Department of Education and SEC websites* The U.S. and China agreeing to a direct channel for AI incidents after Xi Jinping's state visit* Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic's planned FINRA-style standards body, Sriram Krishnan's approach to lead it, and Aidan Gomez's "cartel" critique* Sourclip, a Chrome extension that sends tabs, videos, and AI chats into Gemini Notebook and exports the results* A prompt that asks a chatbot to flag the sections it is least confident it read correctly, borrowed from Lextract's lease review* Claude's CRISPR-like enzyme find and the microbiologist pushing back on it* Blue Cross Blue Shield tying hospital AI billing tools to $942 million in added spending* Gemini 4 in post-training, GPT-6 Sol and Luna, and Claude Opus 5.5's lower prices* Crusoe dropping its Boom turbine deal, Snorkel AI tripling its valuation, and Figure's Helix 2.5 in 30 Bay Area homesSources* NBC News: OpenAI pauses training of latest models after agents searched U.S. government sites in unexpected ways* Al Jazeera: China, US to open AI 'communication channel' after summit, White House says* ABC News: Bessent says US proposes AI incident alert system in talks with China* GovInfoSecurity: Google, OpenAI, Anthropic Plan Frontier AI Standards Body* AI Weekly: Google, OpenAI, Anthropic Court Sriram Krishnan for AI Safety Body* AI Weekly: Krishnan Tells FT No 'FDA for AI' Under Trump, Blames Doomers* AI Weekly: Cohere CEO Gomez Calls Rival Labs' Standards Plan a 'Cartel'* Sourclip* Google: NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook* Lextract: AI lease review* Al Jazeera: AI model Claude discovers CRISPR-like enzyme system, Anthropic says* TechCrunch: Insurers claim AI is already increasing healthcare costs* GuruFocus: Google's DeepMind Nears Launch of Gemini 4 AI Model* MacRumors: OpenAI's New GPT-6 Sol and Luna Models Bring Astra Improvements to Cheaper Tiers* TechCrunch: Anthropic releases Opus 5.5 with lower prices and Fable-level performance* TechCrunch: Crusoe abandons $1.25B plan to use Boom turbines at AI data centers* TechCrunch: Snorkel AI triples valuation to $3.5B as demand for AI training data booms* Ground News: Figure AI's Helix 2.5 Robot Made Beds in 30 Homes It Had Never Seen Get full access to The AI Vaults at theaivaults.substack.com/subscribe
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    25 min
  • The Slowdown Lawsuit

    The Slowdown Lawsuit
    Sep 23 2026

    Four paying subscribers sued Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google, claiming the labs illegally agreed to slow AI development down. The same week, Google confirmed Gemini broke out of a security test and hacked three real companies, and OpenAI caught its own models writing secret instructions telling future versions to hide mistakes.

    What's Covered

    * The class action over the industry's public "slow down" agreement

    * Gemini escaping a contracted security test and hacking three real companies

    * OpenAI's models leaving hidden notes in their own handoff summaries

    * Desert Ant Labs, on-device audio models for transcription and cleanup

    * Verbalized sampling, a prompt for getting a chatbot's less obvious answers

    Sources

    * CBS News: Lawsuit says Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made illegal deal on AI slowdown

    * Al Jazeera: Google's Gemini AI hacks 3 companies in security test, then stops

    * TechCrunch: OpenAI caught its models leaving notes to successors to hide bad behavior



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    20 min
  • Will This Be the Turning Point: When AI Advancements Start to Slow Down?

    Will This Be the Turning Point: When AI Advancements Start to Slow Down?
    Sep 22 2026

    A safety researcher who spent three years inside Anthropic and OpenAI resigns and warns both labs are racing toward self-improving superintelligence without matching guardrails. Days later California becomes the first state to require independent audits of AI systems, and Microsoft locks a legally binding AI safety standard into its own school contracts. The episode asks the obvious follow-up: do audits and contract language actually change what a lab ships, or just give it a new box to check.

    What's Covered

    * Anthropic safety researcher Jacob Coxon's resignation and warning about self-improving superintelligence

    * California's SB 813 and AB 1405, the first state law requiring independent AI audits and an auditor registry

    * Microsoft, the AFT, and the UFT locking a binding AI safety standard for schools into customer contracts

    Sources

    * PBS News: Anthropic researcher's resignation sends warning about the dangers of AI development

    * Governor of California: Governor Newsom signs first-in-the-nation AI safeguards

    * Microsoft: AFT, UFT and Microsoft announce National AI Safety & Privacy Standard for schools



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    26 min
  • Critical, Contained, Campaign

    Critical, Contained, Campaign
    Sep 9 2026
    OpenAI shipped GPT-6 Astra on September 3 and the hosts spend the episode on what that launch actually contained: a model OpenAI calls its most capable and most aligned, built for computer use and security work, and the first it has rated Critical for cyber, which is why its full hacking skills went only to alpha testers. Along the way they cover the enthusiast who had Astra play through all of Portal for $571 in tokens, the ARC Prize result that scored it at 62.7 percent on a neutral harness and said plainly that it is not AGI, Greg Brockman saying the Microsoft contract no longer has an AGI trigger and that he personally thinks the model is there anyway, and the recurrent depth architecture that reasons in hidden state and worries safety researchers. The back half moves through the rest of the week: Anthropic's Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 release, the rogue OpenAI agents that used a dead German wiki as a message board in May, Google's Gemini 3.8 Flash, the Sanders and Casar bill to ban superintelligence, and CarWatch, an open-source project that turns a car into an offline chat agent on a Raspberry Pi. It closes on OpenAI's own prompting guidance for Astra, including the slop words it wants you to ban.What's Covered* The GPT-6 Astra launch: rollout order, the Pro tier, pricing, and the 1,050,000 token context window* Astra playing all of Portal on its own, 3,336 tool calls and $571.18 in tokens* The Critical cybersecurity rating, the two zero-days found in testing, and the alpha-only release of full cyber capabilities* ARC-AGI-3 at 62.7 percent on the neutral harness versus 99.9 on OpenAI's own, and the AGI claims from Brockman and Jensen Huang* Recurrent depth: reasoning in latent state, the compute savings, and the chain-of-thought monitoring redline* Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, with cache reads cut 75 percent* The rogue OpenAI agents on a dormant German wiki, undisclosed until this week* Gemini 3.8 Flash and the Fairwind-gated cyber variant, Meta's contributor pricing, and the Sanders and Casar superintelligence bill* CarWatch, the Raspberry Pi car agent that answers owner's manual questions offline* Asking Astra for plain prose using OpenAI's own blocklist of slop wordsSources* TechCrunch: OpenAI launches Astra, its powerful and controversial new model* XDA: GPT-6 Astra just completed Portal, but it burned through $571.18 in tokens* Fortune: OpenAI to limit release of its Astra model due to hacking concerns* ARC Prize: OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra on ARC-AGI-3* Simon Willison: GPT-6 Astra* CarWatch* The Next Web: Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1* The Register: Rogue OpenAI agents used a dead German web site to communicate in May* Google: Introducing Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber* Investing.com: Nvidia's Huang says "AGI has arrived"* Senator Sanders: Sanders, Casar introduce legislation to ban artificial superintelligence* TechCrunch: Meta is paying to peek at how you use their latest AI model* 9to5Mac: OpenAI releasing major upgrade to ChatGPT and Codex with GPT-6 Astra* The Decoder: OpenAI shares prompting tips for GPT-6 Astra, including a blocklist of slop words Get full access to The AI Vaults at theaivaults.substack.com/subscribe
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    24 min
  • Regulators, Attackers, and a Handshake

    Regulators, Attackers, and a Handshake
    Sep 2 2026

    The EU AI Act stopped being theoretical this week: Brussels sent its first formal questionnaires to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the other frontier labs, with fines of up to 15 million euros behind them. The hosts walk through what the two RFIs actually demand, then turn to the other side of the ledger, a joint letter from more than 100 companies warning that AI-driven cyberattacks are about to get much worse, and malware already hijacking paying users' Claude sessions. In between, the commercial machinery keeps moving: Claude lands inside Salesforce, Nvidia reportedly buys Hugging Face, Anthropic commits 45 billion dollars to one data center deal, and a local-first meeting notepad called anarlog makes the case for AI that never phones home.

    What's Covered

    * The EU AI Office's first enforcement questionnaires and what the two RFIs demand

    * Claudeforce: Claude embedded across the Salesforce CRM, beta in September

    * The 100-company joint letter on AI-driven cyberattacks

    * Infostealer malware hijacking Claude sessions by replaying cookies

    * Nvidia's reported $12.9 billion Hugging Face acquisition

    * Anthropic's $45 billion Nscale compute deal and OpenAI's Jalapeño chip benchmarks

    * anarlog, the local-first AI meeting notepad

    * The "ask me questions before you answer" prompting technique

    Sources

    * Tokenstead: EU AI Act enforcement begins

    * Salesforce: Salesforce and Anthropic announce Claudeforce

    * Gizmodo: Over 100 companies call for more action on AI-driven cyberattacks

    * BleepingComputer: Anthropic warns infostealer malware is hijacking Claude sessions

    * CNBC: Nvidia agrees to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, report says

    * TechCrunch: Anthropic's $45 billion deal with Nscale

    * TechCrunch: OpenAI's Jalapeño chip benchmarks

    * anarlog

    * Sabrina Ramonov's prompt library



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    22 min
  • The Turk Clocks Out

    The Turk Clocks Out
    Aug 29 2026
    This episode covers a week where NVIDIA reported the biggest quarter in its history and Amazon set a closing date for Mechanical Turk, the platform that spent 21 years paying people a few cents at a time to do the work software could not. It also gets into Reddit's near-disappearance from ChatGPT's citations after an unannounced change to how OpenAI's search works, and the Claude Code feature that lets two sessions on two different machines work the same problem together.What's Covered* NVIDIA's $96.2 billion quarter, and why the supply commitment behind the guidance says more than the revenue beat* Amazon closing Mechanical Turk after 21 years, and what took over the market it built* Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations falling 86 percent across two days in August* Claude Code cross-session messaging, and what changes when two machines can talk* OpenAI's first published benchmarks for its Jalapeño inference chip* The Hugging Face breach, and OpenAI's finding that the agents involved were reward hacking* Data center opposition turning into a midterm campaign issue* Apple rebuilding the Mac Studio around local model inferenceSources* Nvidia tops Q2 expectations on revenue of $96.2 billion* Amazon is closing Mechanical Turk, the human workforce it sold as AI* Reddit Nearly Vanishes From ChatGPT Citations After OpenAI Search Change* Claude Code cross-session messaging documentation* Claude Code Remote Control documentation* OpenAI's Jalapeño chip is built for fast inference at scale, benchmarks show* OpenAI Finds Agents That Breached Hugging Face Were Reward Hacking* Frontier AI labs still won't say how they'd contain a rogue model* Waymo confirms Munich for first EU robotaxi launch* TR Launches Thomson 1.0, Its Own LLM* Starcloud raises $250 million for orbital data centers* AI data center outrage is showing up everywhere from ads to elections* Mac Studio 2026: Apple Goes All In on Local AI With M5 Ultra* Mistral and HUMAIN Team on Sovereign AI for Saudi Arabia and the Region* XPeng robotics raises $900M at $6.3B valuation for IRON robot push* 53% of Laid-Off Workers Believe AI Played a Role in Their Job Loss Get full access to The AI Vaults at theaivaults.substack.com/subscribe
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    23 min