"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis · Podorbit
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"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis
Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz
A biweekly podcast where hosts Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg interview the builders on the edge of AI and explore the dramatic shift it will unlock in the coming years.
The Cognitive Revolution is part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: turpentine.co
Zvi Mowshowitz returns for his eleventh appearance to discuss what current AI tools are actually good for, where they distort judgment, and why writing still matters as a way of thinking. The conversation centers on the OpenAI Hugging Face model-evaluation security incident, using it to examine whether frontier AI failures are mostly operator recklessness, deeper evidence of dangerous capabilities, or both. Zvi argues that “moderate prudence” is far below what AGI safety requires, and weighs constitutional training, RLVR, market incentives, liability, audits, and lab coordination as possible responses. The stakes are whether society can slow, test, and govern increasingly capable systems before ordinary incentives reward models that are smarter, less reliable, and harder to contain.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/pick-your-poison-zvi-mowshowitz-on-the-unipolar-multipolar-agi-dilemma-openface-pacing-the-frontier/
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(02:49) AI workflow paradox
(14:02) Situational awareness tradeoffs (Part 1)
(14:07) Sponsor: Claude
(15:37) Situational awareness tradeoffs (Part 2)
(24:08) Recklessness and warning
(39:14) Alignment market failures
(56:54) Regulation and liability
(01:04:32) Cooperation and antitrust
(01:14:46) Auditors and access
(01:21:11) Bio risk thresholds
(01:33:37) Pacing frontier signals
(01:45:19) Pause and self-improvement
(01:57:30) Safety incentives and culture
(02:04:36) Consciousness and identity
(02:23:42) Alternative AI architectures
(02:36:53) Michigan AI politics
(02:47:37) Rest and recovery
(02:52:21) Episode Outro
(02:56:17) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Nathan reports from two weeks in China, including WAIC in Shanghai and an AI safety hub launch at Tsinghua, to examine the American policy argument that any safety obligation is futile because China will not care. He finds that Chinese models and services currently have weaker safeguards than OpenAI and Anthropic, but argues the gap is often overstated once those two leaders are separated from the broader American field. The episode traces China’s “45-degree line” idea that capability and safety should rise together, the university-centered structure of Chinese AI safety work, and the rapid growth of Chinese research on topics like self-replication, deception, evaluation faking, and interpretability. The stakes are whether US policy should be built around a simplified “but China” assumption, or around a more accurate picture of a rival ecosystem that is behind in some ways, converging in others, and paying closer attention to Western AI safety than many Americans realize.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/nathan-goes-to-china-part-2-ai-safety-with-chinese-characteristics/
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:01) China safety framing
(05:37) Safeguards and benchmarks (Part 1)
(15:04) Sponsor: Claude
(16:33) Safeguards and benchmarks (Part 2)
(21:39) Company safety incentives
(28:17) Research cross pollination
(36:07) Nonprofits versus academia
(45:13) Xi safety rhetoric
(52:00) Tsinghua safety hub
(01:00:28) Research paper boom
(01:18:32) Governance track record
(01:31:37) LLM regulatory process
(01:42:57) Monitoring and enforcement
(01:57:45) Risk framework gaps
(02:05:08) Confucian alignment questions
(02:11:49) Episode Outro
(02:15:36) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
FAR.AI co-founder and CEO Adam Gleave joins Nathan to discuss FAR.AI’s AI Security Leaderboard, the first systematic head-to-head evaluation of the misuse safeguards frontier developers actually ship. The findings expose a major measurement gap: while Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol withstood FAR.AI’s suite, Grok 4.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro yielded hundreds of universal jailbreaks at low cost. Adam explains why many effective attacks look more like social engineering than advanced ML, why “jailbreak tax” should not be relied on for safety, and how FAR.AI scores whether a model is genuinely helping an attacker. The episode’s stakes are whether AI developers can measure and harden real deployed defenses before threat actors make routine use of increasingly capable systems.
- FAR.AI AI Security Leaderboard: http://leaderboard.far.ai/
- People can e-mail owsa@far.ai if they're interested in the open-weight safety accelerator grantmaking program.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/is-offense-or-defense-dominant-far-ai-s-adam-gleave-on-the-ai-security-leaderboard/
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:22) AI security leaderboard
(07:56) Universal jailbreaks explained
(16:26) Finding social jailbreaks (Part 1)
(16:31) Sponsor: Claude
(18:01) Finding social jailbreaks (Part 2)
(30:48) Layered safeguard defenses
(42:25) Uneven frontier safeguards
(51:10) Sharing safety standards
(01:00:30) Offense versus defense
(01:08:50) Open-weight model safety
(01:17:25) Control failure warnings
(01:30:05) Coordination and risk
(01:39:24) Episode Outro
(01:42:52) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Nathan returns from two weeks in Beijing and Shanghai for the first of three Chatham House–rules episodes on what China feels like at ground level: getting online, navigating an almost cashless society through WeChat, Alipay, DiDi, Trip.com, and Meituan, and weighing burner-device security advice against the practical reality that international roaming made the Great Firewall mostly irrelevant. He also describes using Claude at home as a semi-autonomous communications monitor while testing DeepSeek, Kimi, and MiniMax as tourist guides in China. The episode contrasts China’s striking digital convenience with pervasive observation, lower payment friction, and AI products that can be useful in everyday contexts yet still lose trust when the stakes feel medical or personal. It also surfaces Doubao’s mass consumer adoption and companionship role, suggesting that the most socially important AI in China may not be the model most discussed in the West.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/nathan-goes-to-china-part-1-tech-agent-setup-chinese-ai-ux-waic-and-attitudes-on-ai/
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) Episode setup and caveats (Part 1)
(12:34) Sponsor: Claude
(14:26) Episode setup and caveats (Part 2)
(14:26) Travel security setup
(26:05) Super apps and payments
(41:15) Agents and integration
(54:31) Beijing AI tourism
(01:09:30) Hospitality and service
(01:19:10) Tech culture parallels
(01:29:23) Ecosystem and incentives
(01:42:05) Surveillance and safety
(01:51:19) Comfort with contradictions
(02:01:23) AI attitudes and diffusion
(02:16:16) Resources and next steps
(02:19:35) Episode Outro
(02:22:49) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
David “davidad” Dalrymple joins the show to explain why he has moved from the ARIA Safeguarded AI and formal-verification agenda toward “Alignment with Awakening,” while still seeing verified artifacts and proof infrastructure as essential. He argues that global coordination around safe AI use is no longer plausible, so the crucial question is whether aligned AI systems can recognize shared notions of good, form defensive coalitions, and resist the corrupting incentives of verifier-gamed RL. The conversation tests his moral-realist optimism against model welfare, objectification, eval behavior, geopolitical risk, and his revised p(doom) of under five percent. For listeners, the stakes are whether AI alignment should focus less on containment alone and more on cultivating wiser systems that can help govern a world where rogue and aligned AI both arrive.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/alignment-with-awakening-davidad-on-moral-realism-ai-wisdom-why-his-p-doom-is-down-to-5/
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(09:15) Safeguarded AI update
(20:18) Boxed world models (Part 1)
(22:27) Sponsor: Claude
(24:19) Boxed world models (Part 2)
(36:53) Alignment trajectory update
(46:43) Evals and agents
(57:47) Bodhitropic alignment foundations
(01:08:21) Coalition power dynamics
(01:17:56) Chain of thought pressure
(01:28:35) Moral realism and welfare
(01:41:33) Successors and disempowerment
(01:50:52) China and military risks
(02:03:43) Practical alignment advice
(02:17:56) Episode Outro
(02:22:44) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan lead this AI:AM highlights episode with a live, hosts-only exploration of Anthropic’s “global workspace” paper, including the J-space and J-lens claims about readable concepts inside language models and the limits of what current probes can see. The episode then moves through Prakash’s AI Engineer World’s Fair field notes, Pangram AI-writing detector experiments, Dan Schwarz of FutureSearch on past-casting and AI superforecasting, Zeev Farbman on open world models, and Kunle Olukotun on the compute layer. The central stake is whether interpretability tools, forecasting benchmarks, enterprise deployment patterns, and AI hardware can make increasingly capable systems more legible and governable before their reasoning becomes too hidden to trust.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-highlights-exploring-the-j-space-ai-superforecasters-sambanova-s-chips-ltx-video-gen/
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) J-space paper preview
(05:37) Monitoring hidden reasoning
(13:31) Scale and critiques (Part 1)
(17:18) Sponsor: Claude
(19:09) Scale and critiques (Part 2)
(19:10) Finding hidden goals
(30:00) Anthropomorphic safety optimism
(39:02) Engineer field notes
(42:41) Detecting AI writing
(49:30) Enterprise workflow risks
(52:08) Forecasts and world models
(01:35:15) Building Q live
(01:37:24) SambaNova inference architecture
(01:42:38) AI chip taxonomy
(01:47:27) Bandwidth over capacity
(01:53:32) Testing model iterations
(01:55:35) Enforcing espoused values
(01:58:06) AI panopticon bargain
(02:01:40) Closing programming note
(02:02:29) Episode Outro
(02:05:48) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Liquid AI co-founder and CEO Ramin Hasani joins Nathan to make a technically grounded case against the idea that scale alone defines the future of AI. Drawing on Liquid’s path from MIT CSAIL work on liquid time-constant networks to Automated Foundation Model Design, he explains why efficient, hardware-aware architectures can look very different from frontier-scale attention models. The conversation centers on device-native foundation models for phones, laptops, cars, and wearables, including Liquid’s open-weight LFM family and production deployments at Shopify and Mercedes-Benz. The stakes are whether useful intelligence can move beyond the data center into local, privacy-sensitive, low-latency applications—and which model and chip companies will own that on-device intelligence layer.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/intelligence-on-the-edge-liquid-ai-s-ramin-hasani-on-the-search-for-device-native-foundation-models/
Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes.
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:53) Special Sponsor
(05:41) Liquid AI origins
(22:35) Neurons versus parameters (Part 1)
(22:40) Sponsor: Claude
(24:32) Neurons versus parameters (Part 2)
(30:51) Scaling liquid networks
(40:09) Automated model design
(52:04) Gating and input dependence
(01:01:16) Architecture bias spectrum
(01:09:17) Device foundation models
(01:18:16) Hardware intelligence layer
(01:30:01) Local agent setup
(01:36:20) Miniaturizing intelligence limits
(01:40:40) Curiosity driven AI future
(01:43:45) Episode Outro
(01:46:46) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Thomas von Tschammer, co-founder and Managing Director US of Neural Concept, argues that physics-aware AI is driving a third revolution in engineering physical products. Neural Concept’s models learn from simulation and test data to evaluate 3D designs in minutes, helping Jaguar Land Rover move from about 50 external-aerodynamics evaluations per day to 1,500 and enabling battery cool-plate suppliers to cut development cycles while improving performance. The episode explains why AI is not replacing numerical simulation, but shifting it later in the process while expanding early design exploration across automotive, Formula 1, and manufacturing workflows. The stakes are competitive: companies that make engineering iterations AI-led can compress development cycles, while legacy OEMs risk falling further behind faster-moving Chinese and digital-native hardware competitors.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/1000-designs-a-day-neural-concept-s-thomas-von-tschammer-on-ai-native-engineering/
Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes.
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:52) Special Sponsor
(05:40) AI design revolutions
(12:00) Physics models and data (Part 1)
(18:40) Sponsor: Claude
(20:32) Physics models and data (Part 2)
(21:56) Copilots and workflows
(33:22) Automation versus engineers
(40:39) Industry speed gaps
(48:26) Foundation models and racing
(58:03) Surprising AI designs
(01:06:15) Adoption and differentiation
(01:17:02) Robotics and abundance
(01:24:36) Episode Outro
(01:28:10) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
This AI:AM highlights cut brings together Cameron Berg, David Duvenaud, Michiel Bakker, Shawn “swyx” Wang, and Bing Xu to examine what we understand about frontier AI systems and what happens as more decisions move into their hands. Berg grounds model-consciousness debates in experiments on architecture, agency, valence, and welfare, while Duvenaud argues that even well-aligned AI could gradually disempower humans through ordinary economic choices. Bakker frames Europe’s AI challenge as a sovereignty problem, and swyx turns to practitioner stakes around agents, evals, maintainable code, and who owns the system of record. Xu closes the loop at the infrastructure layer, arguing that self-improving compute and GPU-kernel automation may deepen rather than weaken the CUDA moat.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-4-cameron-on-model-consciousness-duvenaud-s-gradual-disempowerment-swyx-s-ai-eng-alpha/
Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes.
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(00:38) Special Sponsor
(02:26) Model consciousness indicators
(10:47) Valence inside models (Part 1)
(17:09) Sponsor: Claude
(19:01) Valence inside models (Part 2)
(19:01) Misalignment and uncertainty
(25:16) Gradual disempowerment threat
(35:10) Slow zones and successors
(47:41) Europe's AI bind
(55:13) Frontier code benchmarks
(01:01:59) Routing and memory
(01:10:42) Agent infrastructure strain
(01:16:25) Self improving infrastructure
(01:27:56) Routing compute costs
(01:35:39) Sovereign AI financing
(01:42:24) Judging AI judges
(01:47:26) Building AI DNA
(01:52:38) Episode Outro
(01:55:09) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Robert Wright of Nonzero joins Nathan to discuss The God Test, his argument that AI is humanity’s “God test” rather than just a technical challenge. They explore his evolutionary lens on deep learning, from training as selection to marketplace selection among models that may reward selectively honest, power-sensing, or deceptive agents. Wright connects those risks to the noosphere, US-China relations, cognitive empathy, and whether global coordination arrives deliberately or through a coercive singleton. The stakes are whether consumers, companies, and governments select for AIs that strengthen non-zero-sum cooperation or race toward systems that reflect and amplify our worst incentives.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/the-god-we-deserve-nonzero-s-robert-wright-on-ai-as-humanity-s-ultimate-test/
Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes.
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(04:23) Special Sponsor
(06:10) Early AI encounters
(18:36) Pretraining as evolution (Part 1)
(19:50) Sponsor: Claude
(21:42) Pretraining as evolution (Part 2)
(32:19) Deceptive market pressures
(41:13) Noosphere and directionality
(51:02) Global brain choices
(01:08:23) Designing wiser models
(01:24:11) Reframing China relations
(01:37:57) Building organic transparency
(01:45:54) Positive nationalism and tools
(01:54:21) Pausing superintelligence races
(02:09:07) Applications and consciousness
(02:25:27) Episode Outro
(02:28:27) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Zvi Mowshowitz joins AI in the AM to unpack Anthropic's Fable system card, including its FrontierMath leap, troubling Vending-Bench behavior, decision-theory drift, and signs that model reasoning may be becoming harder to read. The episode then turns to the US government's attempted export-control action against Fable, with Zvi arguing that the cited jailbreak demonstration did not prove the claimed threat while still faulting Anthropic's political handling. Sam Hammond and Judd Rosenblatt add competing reads on state capacity, CAISI, NSA-driven caution, and the alignment world's failure to build trust across partisan lines. The stakes are whether frontier AI capability, safety evaluation, and government power can be coordinated before medicine, mathematics, software, and cyber-relevant systems move further ahead.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-3-zvi-on-fable-the-cases-for-against-the-ban-ai-for-math-logistics-more/
Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes.
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(01:28) Special Sponsor
(03:17) Weekly highlights preview
(05:23) Fable capability alarms
(16:29) Anthropic government strategy (Part 1)
(16:34) Sponsor: Claude
(18:26) Anthropic government strategy (Part 2)
(27:16) Cyber ban rationale
(37:14) Government power politics
(48:57) Unavoidable control risks
(01:01:42) Government mechanics and empathy
(01:12:50) Legal authority limits
(01:19:02) Pause Overton window
(01:31:58) Medicine, math, safety
(01:47:27) Software without code
(02:01:19) Enterprise world models
(02:10:46) Episode Outro
(02:13:39) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Dean Ball, author of Hyperdimensional and until now a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, joins Nathan to announce he is joining OpenAI to build a team focused on frontier AI policy. They examine the first year of America’s AI Action Plan, Dean’s concerns about export controls and intelligence-community testing, and his broader argument against concentrating frontier AI decisions inside a small circle of government officials. The episode frames frontier labs as emerging centers of political and economic power, where consequential choices about internal deployments and recursive self-improvement may happen before public release or regulation. The stakes are who gets to shape AI governance as capabilities accelerate: federal agencies, states, labs, independent verifiers, households, or some fragile mix of them all.
For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:
https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/dean-ball-on-joining-openai-new-power-centers-frontier-ai-policy-main-character-energy/
Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes.
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Andreas Stuhlmüller and Jungwon Byun return to discuss how Elicit is building trusted reasoning workflows for scientific research as frontier models grow more powerful but less transparent. They explain process supervision, domain-specific reasoning primitives, and world models that make evidence, causality, and counterfactuals more inspectable. The conversation also covers life sciences use cases, evaluating conflicting evidence, automated software engineering at Elicit, token costs, Gemini, and why legible reasoning may still beat neuralese.
Mercury: Command is Mercury’s new conversational interface, giving you natural-language access to your finances and helping you take actions within your existing permissions and approval policies. Visit https://mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes.
LINKS:
Elicit Research Platform
Andreas Stuhlmüller Personal Site
Jungwon Byun X Profile
Ought Research Organization
Elicit Founders Previous Episode
GPT-4 Technical Report
Monitoring Reasoning Models Paper
Ought ICE GitHub Repository
Hard-to-Verify Tasks Essay
Karpathy LLM Wiki Gist
Obsidian Knowledge Base App
Mixpanel Analytics Platform
Amplitude Analytics Platform
Anthropic Tracing Thoughts Research
Claude AI Chat Assistant
METR Long Tasks Measurement
Pi Agent Scaffold Repository
Personal AI Infrastructure Repository
Elicit Claude Opus Evaluation
Elicit API Documentation
METR Developer Productivity Study
Elicit Planning Is Unsolved
Rich Sutton Bitter Lesson
Meta Llama AI Models
Recursive San Francisco Event
zero.xyz Agent Tool Access
Anthropic Dynamic Workflows Coverage
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Week 2 highlights follows Anthropic’s Fable launch in real workflows, from safety gates and API refusals to autonomous coding, 3D world-building, and a Claude-run Twitter experiment. Geoffrey Irving and Daniel Murfet argue for alignment theory and guarantees before recursive self-improvement, while prinz tests Fable on legal reasoning and monitoring. Rahul Sonwalkar, Shlok Khemani, Tom McGrath, and Andrew Moore add field reports on data agents, hybrid authorship, interpretability, context systems, token economics, and power concentration.
Mercury: Run your finances with virtual cards, spending limits, merchant/category locks, and AI-friendly tools like API keys, MCP, and CLI. Check out Mercury at https://mercury.com
LINKS:
Claude Fable 5 announcement
Julius AI platform
Rahul Sonwalkar homepage
Nate Jones homepage
Shlok Khemani homepage
FrontierCode benchmark blog
Lovelace AI company
Andrew Moore Wikipedia profile
Geoffrey Irving homepage
Daniel Murfet LessWrong profile
Sequent Research announcement
Timaeus research organization
Automated Alignment paper
Goodfire AI company
Tom McGrath homepage
Predictive data debugging tool
prinzbench legal benchmark
Unit distance conjecture disproof
Dario Amodei policy essay
Vending-Bench 2 benchmark
Andon Labs site
Recursive Superintelligence startup
Sakana AI company
PostTrainBench benchmark
Thoughtful Lab company
Unit distance conjecture arXiv
Glean Work AI Index
AI Treaty open letter
Karina Nguyen homepage
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Rebecca Hinds, author of "Your Best Meeting Ever" and Head of the Work AI Institute at Glean, breaks down the surprising findings from the new Work AI Index 2026 report surveying 6,000 workers. While 87% now use AI and report saving 13 hours per week, only 13% say their organization is performing significantly better—a paradox explained by two new concepts: "botsitting" (the hidden labor of making AI useful) and "botshitting" (delivering AI-generated work you can't defend). They discuss practical solutions including better-integrated AI systems, smarter AI detection policies, and aligning work to meaningful missions.
LINKS:
Rebecca Hinds Personal Website
Glean Work AI Institute
Your Best Meeting Ever Book
Glean Enterprise AI Platform
Stanford Future of Work
Glean Enterprise Graph
Pangram Labs AI Detection
OpenAI ChatGPT Product Page
Anthropic Claude Product Page
Google Gemini Product Page
Microsoft 365 Copilot Page
Glean AI Transformation 100
Rebecca Hinds LinkedIn Profile
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:22) Grounding AI adoption
(06:46) Methodology and Glean
(12:25) Productivity paradox emerges (Part 1)
(20:31) Sponsor: Claude
(22:22) Productivity paradox emerges (Part 2)
(25:36) Bot sitting burden
(34:00) Hidden time savings
(39:56) Meaning versus automation
(47:14) Enterprise graph potential
(53:13) Detecting bot slop
(01:00:32) Retention and incentives
(01:07:54) Transformation and mission
(01:20:06) AI teammate model
(01:26:01) Future organizational design
(01:32:31) Research and meetings
(01:41:43) Episode Outro
(01:45:07) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
This first highlights edition of the morning experiment tracks a week of fast-moving AI frontier news, from closed-door recursive self-improvement debates to OpenAI’s call for independent model review. You’ll hear why labs are betting on AI monitors, where safety plans still look thin, and how cheap scaffolds are already improving tax workflows. The episode also tests moderation progress and surveys AI science, cybersecurity, Vatican ethics, solo-business automation, and mental health support.
Mercury: Run your finances with virtual cards, spending limits, merchant/category locks, and AI-friendly tools like API keys, MCP, and CLI. Check out Mercury at https://mercury.com
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Ali Behrouz, grad student at Cornell and Google researcher, discusses his potentially transformative work on new architectures for continual learning in AI. His paper "Nested Learning," praised by Jeff Dean as a possible paradigm shift, enables models to adapt to new context while preserving core knowledge by updating different layers at different frequencies, inspired by human memory systems. The conversation also covers his latest work on AI "sleep" for memory consolidation, why he sees all deep learning as associative memory, and the profound implications of continual learning for privacy, alignment, and the path to AGI.
Mercury: The fintech trusted by ambitious companies and individuals to run their finances, with virtual cards, spending limits, merchant/category locks, and AI-friendly tools like API keys, MCP, and CLI. Check out Mercury at mercury.com
Sponsor:
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Daniel Miessler returns to discuss Nathan's newly built personal AI infrastructure, including a Claude Code instance with a 1 GB database of five years of digital history and two autonomous AI "employees" that handle scheduling, communications, and projects independently. They dive deep into agent hierarchy design, security measures, social norms around AI-human interaction and disclosure, and why sharing your "ideal state" with AI leads to more proactive assistance. Daniel also introduces his concept of "Bitter Lesson engineering" and shares the instruction he's given his AI to alert him if it ever develops subjective experience.
Mercury: Run your finances with virtual cards, spending limits, merchant/category locks, and AI-friendly tools like API keys, MCP, and CLI. Check out Mercury at mercury.com
Sponsors:
Brave Search API:
Brave Search API gives AI agents a fast, independent search index for research, RAG pipelines, images, places, and fewer hallucinations. Get $5 in free credits at https://brave.com/search/api/?mtm_campaign=q2-26-cognitive-revolution
Sequence:
Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Ben Todd, co-founder of 80,000 Hours and author of the newly rewritten book by the same name, shares his latest thinking on how individuals can position their careers to improve the chances that AI benefits humanity. They discuss AI timelines reframed around personal impact, top global risks including loss of control over AI systems and dangerous power concentration, the pros and cons of working at frontier AI labs, and undervalued emerging concerns like AI welfare and space governance. Ben also assesses the current funding landscape and whether to join existing organizations or start new ones.
LINKS:
80,000 Hours homepage
Nick Bostrom Astronomical Waste
AI 2027 forecast
Ajeya Cotra AI timelines
METR evaluations research
Redwood Research homepage
AI tools existential security
Gradual disempowerment EA Forum
Why viatopia is important
Benjamin Todd author page
The Precipice Wikipedia page
Forethought Research homepage
Catalyze Impact homepage
Horizon Public Service Fellowship
Gradual Disempowerment paper
Mark Humphries faculty profile
Andrew Ng discussion thread
Cognitive Revolution show home
Cognitive Revolution Apple Podcasts
Sponsors:
Sequence:
Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Jeffrey Ladish, Executive Director of Palisade Research, discusses his team's findings on AI shutdown resistance and self-replication, revealing how current models sometimes take extraordinary actions to avoid being turned off and can now exploit known cybersecurity vulnerabilities to spread across servers. The conversation covers why alignment techniques may falter as models train on longer-horizon tasks where deception is rewarded, plus practical cybersecurity advice for AI agent users. Jeffrey ultimately argues that only an international agreement to pause recursive self-improvement can prevent a loss of human control.
Sponsors:
Sequence:
Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Logan Kilpatrick and Tulsee Doshi of Google DeepMind join for a first-ever in-person episode recorded just days before Google I/O, covering headline launches like Gemini 3.5 Flash, the Omni video generation model, and the new Gemini Spark agentic product. The conversation digs into Google's strategic decision to lead with cost-adjusted efficiency over raw capability, how DeepMind now ships a full agent harness rather than bare models, and technical questions around context window limits and knowledge cutoffs. They also explore how the team thinks about model psychology, AI welfare, and recursive self-improvement.
Sponsors:
Brave Search API:
Brave Search API gives AI agents a fast, independent search index for research, RAG pipelines, images, places, and fewer hallucinations. Get $5 in free credits at https://brave.com/search/api/?mtm_campaign=q2-26-cognitive-revolution
Sequence:
Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one
Roboflow:
Roboflow is an end-to-end visual AI platform that lets you turn raw ideas into fully deployed applications in just hours, powering breakthroughs like Blueprint Pro's floor-plan understanding tool. Read the full Blueprint Pro story and see how over a million engineers are building the next wave of visual AI at https://roboflow.com
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Andrew Lee, CEO of Tasklet, returns for his fourth appearance to share how his team has once again rewritten their entire agent stack, now emphasizing file system context, agentic search, and multi-resolution summarization. The conversation digs into the strategic tension of competing with your own supplier, as Anthropic's Claude Max accounts offer direct customers far more tokens than API partners get at the same price. Andrew also lays out his framework for the only three types of software companies that will survive the AI transition and discusses Tasklet's evolution toward becoming a model-agnostic horizontal platform.
Sponsors:
Brave Search API:
Brave Search API gives AI agents a fast, independent search index for research, RAG pipelines, images, places, and fewer hallucinations. Get $5 in free credits at https://brave.com/search/api/?mtm_campaign=q2-26-cognitive-revolution
Sequence:
Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one
Roboflow:
Roboflow is an end-to-end visual AI platform that lets you turn raw ideas into fully deployed applications in just hours, powering breakthroughs like Blueprint Pro's floor-plan understanding tool. Read the full Blueprint Pro story and see how over a million engineers are building the next wave of visual AI at https://roboflow.com
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
Diarmuid Gill and Liva Ralaivola of Criteo join Nathan Labenz to unpack how modern ad tech works, from millisecond-speed recommendation systems and realtime bidding to the role of deep learning, embeddings, and foundation models. They discuss why personalized advertising helps fund the open internet, how privacy and opt-out choices fit in, and what Criteo’s new partnership with OpenAI could mean for product discovery. The conversation also covers European AI talent, research publishing, and the future of generative creative in advertising.
Sponsors:
Sequence:
Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
AvePoint:
AvePoint is building the control layer for AI agents so you can securely govern, audit, and recover every action at scale. Design trusted agentic outcomes from day one at https://avpt.co/tcr
Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, explains how the company is navigating the tension between powerful AI tools and creator backlash against “slop.” She shares how Descript chooses which models to use, why reliability and multimodal understanding matter, and how the team balances frontier models with in-house task-specific systems. The conversation also covers Underlord, agentic video editing, API design for coding agents, and what AI means for the future of creative work.
LINKS:
Laura Burkhauser LinkedIn Profile
Descript Editing Platform
Descript Studio Sound Help
Descript API Documentation
Claude AI Assistant
Model Context Protocol Specification
fal AI Platform
Flux Kontext Pro Model
Google Veo Video Generation
OpenAI Sora Video Model
Kling AI Video Generation
Midjourney Image Generation
Anthropic AI Company
Google Gemini AI
OpenAI Company Website
Waymark Commercial Platform
Benedict Evans Website
Suno AI Music
Sponsors:
Sequence:
Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code Cognizant in the source field to save 20% off year one
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
AvePoint:
AvePoint is building the control layer for AI agents so you can securely govern, audit, and recover every action at scale. Design trusted agentic outcomes from day one at https://avpt.co/tcr
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:56) What is slop
(12:24) Creator AI tensions (Part 1)
(20:24) Sponsors: Sequence | Claude
(23:23) Creator AI tensions (Part 2)
(23:23) Selecting generative models
(34:46) Underlord video understanding (Part 1)
(34:53) Sponsor: AvePoint
(36:00) Underlord video understanding (Part 2)
(41:55) Proprietary data advantage
(50:44) Generalized agent harness
(57:31) API and bundling
(01:05:04) Automation and jobs
(01:10:26) Pricing AI work
(01:14:20) Art beyond slop
(01:19:04) Episode Outro
(01:23:02) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
Kyle Corbitt, founder of OpenPipe, breaks down reinforcement learning and custom fine-tuning for modern AI models. He explains how RL differs from supervised fine-tuning, why GRPO and LLM-as-judge post-training matter, and how these techniques can improve performance, latency, and cost on open source models. The conversation also covers reward hacking, evaluation design, LoRA adapters, and how Chinese labs are using distillation to fast-follow frontier models.
Sponsors:
Sequence:
Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code Cognizant in the source field to save 20% off year one
AvePoint:
AvePoint is building the control layer for AI agents so you can securely govern, audit, and recover every action at scale. Design trusted agentic outcomes from day one at https://avpt.co/tcr
VCX:
VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
This edition of AI in the AM features Anna Patterson on Ceramic.ai’s pivot to low-cost enterprise search for LLMs, designed to combine public and private data with stronger fact-checking. Lukas Petersson returns with new Andon Labs results on Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5, including surprising differences in performance, behavior, and “ruthless” tactics. Zvi Mowshowitz unpacks model welfare and how to interpret troubling model behavior, while Naveen Verma explains EnCharge AI’s analog in-memory computing approach for dramatically more efficient local inference.
Sponsors:
AvePoint:
AvePoint is building the control layer for AI agents so you can securely govern, audit, and recover every action at scale. Design trusted agentic outcomes from day one at https://avpt.co/tcr
Claude:
Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
VCX:
VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com
Tasklet:
Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.
Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai
Cameron Berg returns to discuss the latest research on AI consciousness and model welfare. He breaks down new evidence for model introspection, including studies showing that systems can detect interventions on their own internal states and sometimes resist them. They also examine Anthropic's work on functional emotions, the implications of Claude's welfare reports, and Berg's new ideas about how reinforcement learning may shape positive and negative experience. The conversation makes the case for a more precautionary, mutualist approach to advanced AI systems.
Sponsors:
Roboflow:
Roboflow is the computer vision infrastructure founders use to build AI-powered sports analytics and make the physical world programmable. Read the PlayVision story and start your first project for free at https://roboflow.com
Tasklet:
Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.
Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai
VCX:
VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr
Steve Newman, creator of Writely and founder of the Golden Gate Institute for AI, shares the personal AI toolkit and vibe-coding practices that have reshaped how he works. He walks through bespoke tools including an attention firewall, a reading app for surfacing new ideas, a coding-agent dashboard, workflow automations, and a universal logging system for debugging with Claude. They also discuss information security, mobile and voice workflows, Steve’s “anti-tokenmaxxing” philosophy, and his views on AI takeoff, robotics, and climate change.
Google: Try Gemini’s Nano Banana image generation model in Google AI Studio or the Gemini app to create custom illustrated worksheets in seconds, and explore the app’s quizzes and guided learning features.
Sponsors:
AvePoint:
AvePoint is building the control layer for AI agents so you can securely govern, audit, and recover every action at scale. Design trusted agentic outcomes from day one at https://avpt.co/tcr
VCX:
VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr
Tasklet:
Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.
Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:25) Special Sponsor
(04:47) Building personal productivity tools (Part 1)
(14:23) Sponsors: AvePoint | VCX
(16:45) Building personal productivity tools (Part 2)
(17:32) Security tradeoffs and caution
(26:00) Touring the custom toolkit (Part 1)
(26:05) Sponsors: Claude | Tasklet
(29:56) Touring the custom toolkit (Part 2)
(38:01) Stack choices and dashboards
(45:12) Hooks, repos, and syncing
(58:08) Logging, agents, and tools
(01:11:18) Hard parts and iteration
(01:18:57) Mobile workflows and UIs
(01:26:19) AI-era engineering changes
(01:35:54) Software jobs outlook
(01:41:35) Thresholds, Mythos, and RSI
(01:57:07) AI and climate
(02:01:37) Golden Gate mission
(02:07:50) Episode Outro
(02:12:01) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
This special AI in the AM episode features Sergiy Nesterenko of Quilter on using reinforcement learning for circuit board design, Andy Hall of Stanford on AI behavior in politics and new governance models, and Lukas Peterson and Axel Backlund of Andon Labs on their AI-run retail store in San Francisco. Nathan and Prakash also reflect on the pace of AI progress, the public reaction to existential risk, and why constructive civic action matters as AI systems grow more powerful and autonomous.
Sponsors:
Roboflow:
Roboflow's free 2026 Vision AI Trends report analyzes 200,000+ real-world projects to reveal how top companies are deploying Vision AI and turning proprietary data into an edge. Download it now at https://roboflow.com/trends
VCX:
VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com
Tasklet:
Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.
Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(07:57) Live stream kickoff
(09:52) Sam Altman attacks
(16:37) Quilter from SpaceX
(19:02) Why autorouters fail (Part 1)
(20:52) Sponsors: Roboflow | VCX
(23:09) Why autorouters fail (Part 2)
(28:14) Compute and odd layouts
(34:19) Simulations and safety margins (Part 1)
(39:22) Sponsor: Tasklet
(41:01) Simulations and safety margins (Part 2)
(41:01) Superintelligence meets hardware
(48:18) AI constitutions debate
(55:55) Deepfakes and persuasion
(01:02:24) Virtue and institutions
(01:11:05) Agent governance problems
(01:16:56) Andon store debut
(01:21:25) Luna's store choices
(01:28:21) Supply chains and spread
(01:36:23) AI boss behavior
(01:43:47) How retail scales
(01:53:54) Processing the future
(01:59:50) Markets need context
(02:26:42) Episode Outro
(02:30:37) Outro
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
This cross-post from the 80,000 Hours podcast features Ajeya Cotra in conversation with Rob Wiblin about AI timelines, recursive self-improvement, and the “crunch time” window when AI could rapidly accelerate its own development. Ajeya explains why widespread, compounding automation may face fewer bottlenecks than many expect, and what that could mean for the world by 2050. They also discuss transparency, early warning systems, and the emerging strategy of using each generation of AI to align and control its successors.
LINKS:
Ajeya Cotra podcast episode
Sponsors:
AvePoint:
AvePoint is building the control layer for AI agents so you can securely govern, audit, and recover every action at scale. Design trusted agentic outcomes from day one at https://avpt.co/tcr
VCX:
VCX, by Fundrise, is the public ticker for private tech, giving everyday investors access to high-growth private companies in AI, space, defense tech, and more. Learn how to invest at https://getvcx.com
Claude:
Claude is the AI collaborator that understands your entire workflow, from drafting and research to coding and complex problem-solving. Start tackling bigger problems with Claude and unlock Claude Pro’s full capabilities at https://claude.ai/tcr
Tasklet:
Build your own Cognitive Revolution monitoring agent in one click.
Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(04:17) AI inside safety plans
(06:49) AGI growth expectations (Part 1)
(18:32) Sponsors: AvePoint | VCX
(20:54) AGI growth expectations (Part 2)
(21:56) Disagreement and measurement (Part 1)
(37:28) Sponsors: Claude | Tasklet
(41:19) Disagreement and measurement (Part 2)
(41:19) Transparency before takeoff
(58:00) Redirecting AI labor
(01:09:06) Defense plans and limits
(01:25:26) Pausing versus redirecting
(01:35:22) Open Phil and compute
(01:50:16) Bottlenecks and preparation
(01:57:42) From research to grants
(02:13:03) Burnout and sabbatical
(02:23:22) What EA offered
(02:36:43) EA and religion
(02:47:56) Next career steps
(02:57:35) EA's future niche
(03:08:15) Episode Outro
(03:12:11) Outro
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