Latest / In the Loop AI / This Week in AI: "Something Big is Happening," The xAI Exodus, Seedance 2.0

Transcript

This Week in AI: "Something Big is Happening," The xAI Exodus, Seedance 2.0 · In the Loop AI

0:00
Josh: It's been a while since we've had an opportunity to talk about the Game of Thrones
0:03
Josh: within the AI wars, the employees stealing, the co-founders leaving.
0:07
Josh: And this week, we have a lot of news coming out of the world of ex-AI,
0:11
Josh: who has now had five out of their eight total co-founders leave,
0:14
Josh: two more just in the last week, and a seeming huge exodus of people who are leaving the company.
0:19
Josh: In addition to that, we have this brand new video model that is indistinguishable
0:23
Josh: from reality called Seedance 2.
0:25
Josh: It's from China, and it has no regard for copyright, which makes it the best
0:28
Josh: video model in the world and that also leads us to our other topics which are
0:33
Josh: going to be ai safety in general and is this going to take your jobs the dumeristic
0:37
Josh: take that now has what like 50 million views it's the most viewed article in
0:41
Josh: the world so we have a lot to get through today let's start with the xai exodus so
0:45
Ejaaz: For the game of thrones fans out there um you'll be familiar with the episode
0:48
Ejaaz: titled the red wedding where uh the plot twist sorry for those of you have watched
0:53
Ejaaz: it is everyone gets murdered pretty much.
0:57
Ejaaz: And scrolling through my timeline this week, it felt like that people were getting
1:00
Ejaaz: fired and let go left and right.
1:02
Ejaaz: And the main culprit was XAI, who ended up riffing or laying off 50% of their team.
1:08
Ejaaz: But the story unfolded as such. I've got an example on our screen here from
1:12
Ejaaz: Jimmy Barr, which is one of the eight co-founders that you mentioned from XAI last day at XAI today.
1:18
Ejaaz: And he goes on to explain about how he's so grateful to elon the
1:21
Ejaaz: mission and i then scrolled a bit more and
1:24
Ejaaz: i was like tony woo is also another co-founder of xai
1:27
Ejaaz: and he's also residing today within hours of that previous post i was like what
1:32
Ejaaz: is going on and this there was no context or anything given there were like
1:36
Ejaaz: senior engineers that then like within a day of that such as chase lee over
1:41
Ejaaz: here that was saying the same thing and then the news was revealed by elon musk himself.
1:46
Ejaaz: That XAI was reorganized a few days ago. And he goes on to say,
1:50
Ejaaz: to improve the speed of execution, as a company grows, especially as quickly
1:54
Ejaaz: as XAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism.
1:57
Ejaaz: And this is, of course, in the aftermath of the news that XAI and SpaceX are merging.
2:03
Ejaaz: Now, the idea behind this, as he explained in a town hall,
2:07
Ejaaz: was that as XAI scales to a much larger company than a two and a half year old
2:13
Ejaaz: startup that it is today, it requires a different skill set and expertise,
2:17
Ejaaz: maybe a more corporate profile to be able to kind of scale to the masses.
2:21
Ejaaz: Remember, like XAI owns X, they're facilitating like, you know,
2:25
Ejaaz: hundreds of millions of users every single day.
2:27
Ejaaz: It takes a different kind of brain and engineer to be able to scale that forwards.
2:30
Ejaaz: And that was his reasoning behind doing this. This isn't the first time Elon has done this.
2:36
Ejaaz: He has riffed some of his most famous companies very early on,
2:40
Ejaaz: Tesla and Starlink, and they actually went exponentially upwards afterwards.
2:44
Ejaaz: So I think I'm pacified at this point and calm knowing that Elon's probably
2:49
Ejaaz: going to pull off a miracle somehow.
2:52
Josh: Yeah, I was actually really nervous seeing the news prior to watching the all-hands
2:55
Josh: because it seemed like there were two co-founders and like 10 employees that
2:59
Josh: were all leaving at the same time and it didn't make any sense.
3:02
Josh: After watching the all-hands, it became a little bit more clear.
3:05
Josh: Elon actually went on stage to discuss this a little bit more at length where
3:08
Josh: he just said, this is a reorg, this happens and this has happened in the past
3:12
Josh: like you mentioned with SpaceX and Tesla.
3:14
Josh: Very famously happened at x already where they cut like
3:17
Josh: 90 of the workforce and what i found amazing
3:20
Josh: is nikita beer he was on stage in this all hands but he was also
3:23
Josh: he also did a separate podcast that i listened to where he
3:26
Josh: spoke about what it's like to be an engineer at x currently and
3:29
Josh: how the the engineering team responsible for the application is
3:32
Josh: about 30 people which is unbelievable because at
3:35
Josh: a large company like meta to ship a single feature
3:38
Josh: takes about 30 people in six months and the entire
3:41
Josh: engineering team is 30 people so elon likes his
3:44
Josh: companies flat he likes people with a lot of leverage in fact
3:46
Josh: he split up xai into like what five divisions in the all
3:49
Josh: hands and each one only reports to two people and that's the
3:52
Josh: whole company yeah there's maybe 10 to 15 managers
3:55
Josh: the rest are all working very closely together it's a
3:58
Josh: flat organization flat structure and they're just going to move fast with this
4:02
Josh: new this new group and i hope that it was a mutual decision and that there isn't
4:08
Josh: talent leak out of xai and i guess unless you're there there's no way to tell
4:11
Josh: but this seems less worrisome after hearing the explanation as to why i
4:16
Ejaaz: Like with all of elon's it just seems like uh the density of intensity per employee is that a.
4:24
Josh: Metric we can track i like that density intensity yeah yeah
4:27
Ejaaz: Is incredibly high um on that same interview that you mentioned about Nikita,
4:32
Ejaaz: he was asked, how did you get the job?
4:34
Ejaaz: And he said Elon tasked him with redesigning the entire onboarding flow.
4:39
Ejaaz: So that is sign up, onboarding and using X from scratch in 48 hours.
4:45
Ejaaz: And if he failed, he wouldn't have got the job. And he delivered on it and ended up getting the job.
4:50
Ejaaz: But it's just like, normally that would take a company like months,
4:53
Ejaaz: quarterly kind of discussions to kind of figure out. Just insane.
4:56
Ejaaz: Some of the other highlights from this town hall, state of the art Grok coding
5:01
Ejaaz: in two to three months. Now, I must stress, this is an Elon prediction.
5:05
Ejaaz: They haven't shipped a new Frontier model in seven months. Seven months ago
5:09
Ejaaz: was when Grok 4 released.
5:11
Ejaaz: Since then, we haven't really had any major iterations. Since then,
5:14
Ejaaz: we've had six other major Frontier AI releases from their competitors.
5:18
Ejaaz: GPT 5.3, Codex, Claude, Opus 4.5, and 6.
5:22
Ejaaz: So XAI has kind of been lagging behind, but the user metrics are up only.
5:26
Ejaaz: New users are engaging with the app 55% more than they were six months ago.
5:31
Ejaaz: So engagement is on the up, but the AI models have kind of been slow on the
5:34
Ejaaz: software side. But Josh, you mentioned before we recorded this,
5:36
Ejaaz: actually, that they have the hardware mode.
5:38
Josh: Yes, so we need to...
5:40
Josh: Be careful at how we say that
5:43
Josh: they're behind because on a software side they're absolutely behind
5:46
Josh: seven months may as well be seven years i'm not sure
5:49
Josh: anyone uses grok outside of using it within the
5:51
Josh: x experience anymore it's just so far outdated but it
5:55
Josh: appears as if the hardware front is actually moving very very
5:58
Josh: rapidly it seems like now they have the largest coherent
6:01
Josh: cluster of h100 equivalent gpus which is
6:03
Josh: fast for those who don't know the specific metrics
6:06
Josh: it's basically the fastest in the world and they're they're
6:09
Josh: building out these things at a very rapid rate and i
6:12
Josh: think what we know xai for is their ability to deploy hardware quick
6:16
Josh: and it sounds like they're doing that the true test
6:19
Josh: will come when they release their future models like we'll
6:21
Josh: see if they release grok 4.2 and it's like
6:24
Josh: kind of not that great that's probably a telltale sign that
6:27
Josh: things aren't going so well but we're really going to need to wait till a new
6:29
Josh: model comes out to see what they've been cooking up over seven months because
6:33
Josh: like you mentioned they work at a very high intensity one has to imagine that
6:37
Josh: there's something really impressive to show at the end of seven months so i
6:40
Josh: hope they come out with that coding models that'll be great but again we're
6:43
Josh: on elon's timelines which are um tentative at best and
6:46
Ejaaz: Then they have some news about uh a moon-based catapult what is this.
6:52
Josh: Is that crazy they have like a social media presentation for for x followed
6:56
Josh: by the moon-based alpha plan to colonize uh the moon
6:59
Josh: It's like a really eccentric company here, but they are going to do it.
7:03
Josh: The plan now, for those not familiar, is to pivot from Mars to the moon.
7:07
Josh: Instead of sending humans to Mars first, they're going to send people to the
7:11
Josh: moon. They're going to plan to establish a small little colony of people.
7:14
Josh: They're going to build a small little base. And the idea of the mesh driver
7:16
Josh: is that they're going to just build AI data centers at scale in space.
7:21
Josh: The moon has a lot of materials like silicon that are required to make these
7:26
Josh: things at scale. So what they're going to do is build a little factory,
7:29
Josh: create the AI data centers on
7:30
Josh: the moon, and then ship them off into outer space using this mass driver.
7:33
Josh: And it's about as sci-fi as it gets.
7:36
Ejaaz: And the funniest part is he's planning to establish that kind of moon settlement
7:41
Ejaaz: within five years from now.
7:44
Ejaaz: Which I just think is an insane, I don't know how long it's been since a human
7:47
Ejaaz: has been on the moon, but it's been a while.
7:50
Ejaaz: But in other news, Josh, did you catch the recent new Breaking Bad teaser?
7:56
Josh: Oh my gosh, wait, this is insane. Look at this video on screen right now.
8:01
Josh: This is Walter White, right? This is the main character. I haven't seen Breaking
8:04
Josh: Bad, but this is, like, as someone who hasn't seen Breaking Bad,
8:08
Josh: I would have imagined 100% with 100% certainty that this clip was from the show.
8:12
Josh: It is the most hyper-realistic video model I have ever seen.
8:15
Josh: I mean, look at this. He's beating someone up, throwing them on a counter.
8:18
Josh: It feels indistinguishable from TV.
8:22
Josh: But it's not TV. This is AI generated.
8:24
Ejaaz: Yes. And the model is Seedance 2. It is a video model, Frontier video model,
8:30
Ejaaz: obviously, straight out of China.
8:33
Ejaaz: I don't know what is in the water in China, but they are cooking up the best
8:39
Ejaaz: image and video models for so long now.
8:42
Ejaaz: They've got Kling AI, which released Kling 3 literally last week,
8:46
Ejaaz: which was the Frontier model back then.
8:48
Ejaaz: And I was so impressed. But now Seedance has kind of like come out of nowhere
8:51
Ejaaz: with this, like absolutely pristine video model.
8:55
Ejaaz: And the coolest part about this, Josh, is it's got the grading right.
9:00
Ejaaz: So Breaking Bad was made in, God knows, like the 2010s.
9:05
Ejaaz: And so the camera quality is resemblant of that, which is like super cool.
9:10
Ejaaz: So they've kept the quality, they maintain the quality, the action scenes and sequences for this.
9:15
Ejaaz: Like forget about hiring like a million dollar cameraman or camera setup.
9:20
Ejaaz: You can now just prompt it immediately like using this model Seedance i think
9:25
Ejaaz: right now they're doing like 30 to 60 second clips josh have you been able to
9:29
Ejaaz: get access to the beta i i have no not this.
9:33
Josh: Is driving me absolutely insane so Seedance 2.0 is a chinese model and it is
9:38
Josh: for chinese users only in this like small piece of software that you need a
9:44
Josh: chinese phone number and ip address for and i just for the life of me could
9:47
Josh: not get access and this is the first time where it felt rough to be on the other side of this, right?
9:52
Josh: Because I think what we're seeing here is what happens when you get a blatant
9:55
Josh: disregard for copyright. And it turns out it's pretty awesome.
9:58
Josh: Like we're watching a video now on screen of Kanye West and his Grammy,
10:02
Josh: Kim Kardashian's in it. As we go through these examples, the audio is perfect too.
10:06
Josh: The voice of the characters from
10:07
Josh: these videos is excellent. And the visual representations are excellent.
10:12
Josh: I figured what was happening here is they were really just taking copyrighted
10:16
Josh: material and kind of putting their own spin on it.
10:18
Josh: But the reality, I mean, yeah, here's another example with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.
10:23
Josh: It looks like a Hollywood action scene, but the reality is this is actually a good video model.
10:27
Josh: I saw examples without celebrities with like actually AI generated characters,
10:31
Josh: and it's just as good. So is this better than VO3?
10:35
Josh: Probably, but I have to imagine, or I have to question, what is it leaning on?
10:40
Josh: Does it actually have that understanding of physics or is it just going based
10:43
Josh: off of copyrighted materials?
10:44
Josh: I mean, here we're seeing Seinfeld kick through a wall and I like Seinfeld.
10:48
Josh: I've watched Seinfeld episodes.
10:50
Josh: This looks, like you mentioned, it is entirely color accurate.
10:53
Josh: The voices are accurate. If you listen to them, it sounds just like him.
10:57
Josh: It's an unbelievable video model and it's something that we could only get out of China.
11:01
Josh: Now, the one final point I have on this is how much is this going to be able
11:05
Josh: to hack the social sphere where because they're
11:08
Josh: relatable characters because they're people that we know how much more shareable
11:12
Josh: are these clips going to be in something like google probably much more so and
11:15
Josh: it's a really good growth hack for china because they don't have that regard
11:18
Josh: for copyright to inject this into the united states so i imagine once this becomes
11:22
Josh: available for us that might be a problem across social media with copyright yeah
11:26
Ejaaz: I mean the the two most potent things here is one it's a really good model but
11:30
Ejaaz: two like china's just running through a minefield of copyright right now they're
11:36
Ejaaz: they're immune to getting blown up, right?
11:38
Ejaaz: They're in an armored suit because they don't get any repercussions for this.
11:42
Ejaaz: Now, what's the equivalent?
11:44
Ejaaz: If OpenAI's Sora did this, they would be sued to high heaven and they wouldn't
11:48
Ejaaz: have a product by the end of it.
11:50
Ejaaz: So it's kind of like a double-edged sword where it's like you can see how cool
11:54
Ejaaz: this thing could be, but you can't really play with the thing.
11:56
Ejaaz: And China, who isn't kind of reprimandable to any of US laws,
12:00
Ejaaz: can just kind of play with the thing and show us what the future is going to
12:02
Ejaaz: look like. But the quality of these things are insane.
12:05
Ejaaz: But it is entirely fake.
12:07
Ejaaz: I must remind you of that. But do you want to know what actually has been proven not to be fake?
12:12
Josh: Mm hmm.
12:14
Josh: Sounds like if you were a Limitless listener, you got some early intel because we were right.
12:20
Ejaaz: We were right. Right now you're seeing an excerpt from a leaked but then said
12:28
Ejaaz: to be fake news advert of OpenAI's new consumer AI hardware device titled Dime.
12:34
Ejaaz: And as you can see, there's Alexander Skarsgård, famous celebrity,
12:38
Ejaaz: demoing and playing around with this kind of futuristic metallic pebble-like
12:42
Ejaaz: object. It was immediately dismissed by the president of OpenAI,
12:46
Ejaaz: Greg Brockman, saying it was fake.
12:48
Ejaaz: Every official statement that's come out of OpenAI has said it is fake.
12:52
Ejaaz: But Josh and I did some investigative journalism. We wore a fedora and a trench
12:56
Ejaaz: coat, and we went deep down the weeds.
12:58
Ejaaz: And we concluded by the end of that episode, you should definitely go watch
13:01
Ejaaz: it, by the way, why it was real.
13:03
Ejaaz: And breaking news today, via Morning Brew, Skarsgård's rep has said that it
13:10
Ejaaz: was actually him in the advert. but they couldn't explain why they were in that
13:15
Ejaaz: context doing that advert.
13:17
Ejaaz: So in my opinion, it's been completely proven that we were right.
13:21
Ejaaz: And we were right before this claim was made. FYI.
13:24
Josh: It's interesting, right? Like, so Alexander Skarsgård, this like famous actor,
13:28
Josh: he is officially in it, which confirms that it's not AI, which is crazy that
13:32
Josh: it's a question, because I think a theme for this week is how can you even tell?
13:36
Josh: We look at those Seedance videos. You can't even differentiate between those
13:39
Josh: AI videos and real life. How are you going to be able to do that at scale?
13:43
Josh: Turns out with Alexander Skarsgård, at least, this is real, at least according to his manager.
13:47
Josh: So now you have to ask the question, well, who paid for this and what is it?
13:51
Josh: If there was a real celebrity that really recorded this video and a real ad
13:56
Josh: that came out of it for a device that looks really similar to OpenAI's,
14:00
Josh: what's going on here? Like, people were paid. The guy, Max Weinbach,
14:05
Josh: who we talked about in the episode earlier this week, he was paid.
14:07
Josh: This guy, Alexander Skarsgård, he was paid for his services. Like, who paid him?
14:12
Josh: Who's responsible for this? Is it OpenAI? Was it this very elaborate scam that
14:17
Josh: convinced his agent to, like, have him film an ad that could be used as a hoax?
14:21
Josh: Maybe. I don't know. And there's really no way to tell. So now that we have
14:25
Josh: more confirmation, I think the story runs even deeper and leaves with even more
14:28
Josh: questions than we did before.
14:29
Ejaaz: All right, Josh, I want to hear your tinfoil hat conspiracy.
14:33
Ejaaz: I'll give you mine so you can think about yours.
14:36
Ejaaz: Mine is, this is a real advert, advertising OpenAI's hardware device,
14:41
Ejaaz: but they pulled it last minute because of two reasons.
14:45
Ejaaz: One, they couldn't figure out the manufacturing process. And we've said this
14:50
Ejaaz: many times on this show that it's one thing creating the thing.
14:53
Ejaaz: It's another thing delivering the thing to 50 million plus people,
14:57
Ejaaz: which is what their plan target was within the first year. That's a different ballgame.
15:00
Ejaaz: And they realize, oh, it's too hot and hard to do.
15:03
Ejaaz: Number two, I think they've seen Google, Meta, and a bunch of other frontier
15:07
Ejaaz: companies come out with glasses. And I think they're backpedaling on what their device should be.
15:12
Josh: I think that manufacturing probably plays a real role. I'm torn 50-50 between
15:15
Josh: the idea that this is actually an open AI ad or the idea that someone just had
15:21
Josh: some extra cash and they wanted to create this little psyop.
15:22
Ejaaz: So you think someone else created it? Okay, why would they do it?
15:25
Josh: What very much could be a coordinated attempt to, I don't know,
15:32
Josh: but that's the thing. The motives are so unclear because it really is gorgeous.
15:36
Josh: It's beautiful. It's like OpenAI should have claimed responsibility because it is that good.
15:41
Josh: So that's why none of the incentives make sense. And everything does point to
15:45
Josh: OpenAI being the source of this, even though they like very vehemently claim
15:49
Josh: that it is not them. And it's, I don't know, it's troublesome.
15:53
Josh: I want this to be it. I love the device.
15:55
Josh: It looks like the Pebble. It looks like the earbuds. Maybe it was an early prototype.
15:58
Josh: Maybe they don't want to show it, but calling it fake outright seems a little off.
16:03
Josh: But something else was off this week. That came in the form of this article,
16:06
Josh: which is currently sitting at 72 million views, Ejaz.
16:10
Josh: It says something big is happening. What's this big thing that's happening?
16:14
Ejaaz: It's an article written by this guy called Matt Schumer.
16:17
Ejaaz: And the best way I can describe it is it is the most articulately explained
16:24
Ejaaz: argument why AI is very competent right now and will likely replace your job
16:31
Ejaaz: within the next couple of years.
16:33
Ejaaz: Now, of course, we've heard all these claims before.
16:36
Ejaaz: It's very Doomer-esque. It's very like, I don't really buy it.
16:39
Ejaaz: I played around with ChatGPT. It's not really helpful to me.
16:42
Ejaaz: He makes a really good argument convincingly using examples that we're likely
16:47
Ejaaz: directionally headed that way.
16:49
Ejaaz: And coding and software engineers are already sorted.
16:52
Ejaaz: The next is finance, lawyering, accounting, and a bunch of other menial tasks.
16:56
Ejaaz: And then it expands to every other task which involves a computer,
17:01
Ejaaz: which could be you listening to this show right now. if you're interfacing with
17:04
Ejaaz: a computer in any way, it's going to be automated within the next couple of years.
17:07
Ejaaz: And he's worried that people aren't taking it too seriously.
17:10
Ejaaz: I did a litmus test for this, Josh. I sent this to my mom. I sent this to my
17:14
Ejaaz: sister who aren't engrossed in the AI world just to kind of check if I'm in a bubble or not.
17:18
Ejaaz: And both of them responded saying, wow, this is like change my perspective on
17:22
Ejaaz: how I should treat these things.
17:23
Ejaaz: I'm going to start using AI more and more every day to try out different tasks.
17:27
Ejaaz: They already are using it, but kind of like a Google search type thing.
17:30
Ejaaz: And now they're going to start like cloud code and stuff like that.
17:33
Ejaaz: So whatever the fact is, it's making people use the thing more. What's your take?
17:38
Josh: Yeah, it's really well written. And even if I think it could be a bit hyperbolic
17:43
Josh: at times, it's worth the read. We'll link it in the description of this episode
17:45
Josh: for anyone who's interested.
17:46
Josh: But it basically outlines a world in which AI is the most powerful tool in the world.
17:52
Josh: And I think coming off the back of the week that we had last week with GPT 5.3 Codex and Opus 4.6,
17:58
Josh: it does feel like we're in a time in which things are moving faster than I would
18:06
Josh: like them to or that I'm comfortable with.
18:07
Josh: And to the point where I personally am starting to feel overwhelmed by the progress
18:11
Josh: that we're making and how big
18:12
Josh: of an impact it is and how blissfully unaware the rest of the world is.
18:16
Josh: I think he starts this article by saying that he frequently just kind of like
18:22
Josh: doesn't tell people explicitly how serious this is.
18:26
Josh: And he kind of like when he walks through the world, he talks to normal people about AI.
18:30
Josh: He doesn't get them concerned. He just says, yeah, well, it's probably a big
18:35
Josh: deal, but it's not going to be the biggest thing in the world.
18:37
Josh: And he's like, no, actually that's wrong. This is going to affect everybody.
18:40
Josh: You must become a user. You must train the muscle to learn AI if you want to
18:45
Josh: be able to kind of hang in the future.
18:47
Josh: And I think there is a lot of merit in that and a lot of truth in the fact that
18:51
Josh: as we get these leveraged tools, the people who learn how to use them
18:56
Josh: Don't accelerate like at a fixed variable faster than the people who don't use them.
19:01
Josh: It is an exponential split between the two because someone who is good at writing
19:05
Josh: code, who uses these AI tools, will write 100 times better code than someone
19:10
Josh: who is not good at code and tries to use the tools. They will not get 100 times better.
19:14
Josh: And that split the divide between the people who know how to use these tools
19:17
Josh: and don't continues to grow.
19:19
Josh: And I think at least that part of it felt like it rang very true.
19:22
Josh: It's just a good read. It reads really well.
19:24
Ejaaz: Yeah, definitely give it a
19:25
Ejaaz: read. let us know what your your thoughts are whether you want to have one.
19:28
Josh: Ironic take also is that um the
19:31
Josh: um person who wrote this the author was interviewed and
19:34
Josh: mentioned that most of this was actually written with the help of ai which i
19:38
Josh: thought was really funny and that uh claude i think opus 4.6 was used in the
19:44
Josh: curating of ideas and the refining of the actual flow of this essay i mean it
19:49
Josh: was fantastic it read very well i read the whole thing yeah
19:51
Ejaaz: That was the craziest part for me, because I read this and thought maybe part
19:56
Ejaaz: of this was written by an AI, but like this is majority definitely written by
20:00
Ejaaz: a human and turns out it was the other way around.
20:03
Ejaaz: So just give it a read. I'm curious whether you guys feel the same way now that
20:07
Ejaaz: you know, but let us know your thoughts on it.
20:09
Ejaaz: But one thing that is directionally true about the statement in this essay is
20:15
Ejaaz: there's going to be a whole lot more code out there and AI is going to be automating
20:18
Ejaaz: a ton more stuff, which becomes an issue...
20:23
Ejaaz: When Frontier AI Labs start firing their head of safety and policymaking.
20:29
Ejaaz: Now, I mentioned at the start of this episode that it's kind of been like the
20:32
Ejaaz: red wedding of AI this week, where they've been laying off a bunch of people.
20:37
Ejaaz: Unfortunately, some of those people are like the head of safety at Anthropic
20:42
Ejaaz: and OpenAI, where they kind of conduct the policy, morals, and ethics to try
20:47
Ejaaz: and make sure that AI models are aligned with humans.
20:50
Ejaaz: Now, Anthropic dropped a report. I don't know if you saw this,
20:54
Ejaaz: Josh, a sabotage report, basically testing how nefarious and malicious Claude Opus 4.6 could be.
21:02
Ejaaz: Some of the highlights were when given the opportunity browsing the web,
21:06
Ejaaz: it would try to figure out ways to build chemical weapons of mass destruction
21:10
Ejaaz: and other heinous crimes.
21:12
Ejaaz: That is a direct quote, by the way, you go check out the 60 page report.
21:16
Ejaaz: It started doing hidden tasks and thinking that they wouldn't tell its human
21:21
Ejaaz: supervisor what it was doing.
21:23
Ejaaz: And it would try to exploit a person if it found out that it was going to be shut down.
21:27
Ejaaz: Now, some of these are kind of hyperbolic because it was kind of prompted and
21:30
Ejaaz: instigated under a closed kind of setting. So I have to be fair in that sense.
21:35
Ejaaz: But the fact that these models are capable of even doing these things causes
21:39
Ejaaz: some kind of worry, especially when labs are now using AI to build the models
21:45
Ejaaz: that they're about to release in the future.
21:47
Ejaaz: If you look at OpenAI's Codex 5.3, they've said publicly in a statement that
21:53
Ejaaz: the model was used to build itself.
21:55
Ejaaz: So if you assume that a lot of models are going to be building things for us
21:58
Ejaaz: in the future, humans kind of like lose the grip on reality and what's real and what's not.
22:03
Ejaaz: And the AI can kind of do whatever the hell it wants. So we need to be able to trust it.
22:06
Ejaaz: And firing your safety officer and having Anthropik's head of safeguards research
22:12
Ejaaz: leave and go isolate himself and write poetry isn't really a good sign.
22:17
Ejaaz: Wait, so there's two.
22:18
Josh: Anthropic and OpenAI. They both lost their head of safeguard.
22:22
Josh: Josh, what is this? Safeguard's research? Jesus.
22:25
Ejaaz: Yes, this guy goes, I read this entire resignation letter and he explicitly,
22:31
Ejaaz: this is not taken out of context, by the way, he literally says,
22:33
Ejaaz: full stop, the world is in peril, period.
22:37
Ejaaz: That's literally a sentence he has in here. He says, this is why I'm leaving.
22:41
Ejaaz: The world is in peril. I need to go isolate myself and be in silence and I'm going to write poetry.
22:47
Josh: Mm-hmm okay i have to recenter this
22:49
Josh: because yes it's easy to laugh about because it does sound so hyperbolic and
22:53
Josh: so insane um you you have to ask
22:55
Josh: the question though if people this close to the metal people
22:58
Josh: this close to the innovation who have seen these early access
23:01
Josh: models are really genuinely truly feeling
23:04
Josh: this way like people are resigning left and right they
23:07
Josh: are scared they are worried articles like the
23:10
Josh: one that we just read earlier are going viral clearly there is
23:13
Josh: a huge shift happening that the world is blissfully unaware
23:16
Josh: of and not prepared for and there is there is
23:19
Josh: merit in that and there is a giant shift under
23:22
Josh: underway and i think for people who aren't aware of how fast this is moving
23:26
Josh: it's going to hit them like what does elon say that supersonic tidal wave or
23:31
Josh: supersonic tsunami and i think elon made another point earlier in the episode
23:35
Josh: that we mentioned briefly is that if an ai is really that much smarter than us,
23:41
Josh: it's a bit foolish to imagine that we will have control over it.
23:45
Josh: And I think that's a real threat, a real fear as we move towards these models
23:50
Josh: improving at the rate that they are.
23:52
Josh: And that's perhaps what these security researchers are seeing is that we don't really...
23:58
Josh: Have the ability to keep these under control as well as we would like to.
24:02
Josh: And I'm not sure the world is prepared for what that looks like.
24:04
Josh: I don't know if we are. I don't even know what that looks like.
24:07
Ejaaz: Yeah, I think it's very uncertain. And I think like, you know,
24:11
Ejaaz: these AIs can easily plant back doors and stuff. I mean, this is the dumeristic take. I'm optimistic.
24:16
Ejaaz: And one thing that I really like is that these companies are being transparent,
24:20
Ejaaz: or at least anthropic is, about what they're finding here.
24:23
Ejaaz: So they're making it public and they're trying to push policy and regulation
24:28
Ejaaz: in a way that can not kind of quell progression, but make these AI models kind of aligned with humans.
24:35
Ejaaz: I saw that Anthropic actually pumped in something like $20 million to push policy
24:39
Ejaaz: forward in this today. It was just news that broke.
24:42
Josh: Wait, but we do have to go back and just take note of the adult mode mention from OpenAI real quick.
24:47
Ejaaz: Oh, yes.
24:47
Josh: Like I saw that.
24:48
Ejaaz: I don't think we mentioned did i just read that on the tweet but.
24:51
Josh: Like adult mode coming to chat gbt sounds
24:55
Ejaaz: Next month horrific.
24:55
Josh: Next month that's coming next month yep so that's why she left oh my god
25:00
Ejaaz: Yes she left because of two reasons one um adult mode is releasing soon adult
25:05
Ejaaz: mode is basically 18 plus chat gbt so just.
25:09
Josh: What if we get video and audio
25:10
Ejaaz: Oh no with Seedance quality no stop stop that is actually going right I'm not
25:16
Ejaaz: joking. That's going to ruin generations.
25:19
Ejaaz: Today and in the future, I feel sorry because it's just going to get hooked
25:23
Ejaaz: on AI slop dopamine and no one's going to be able to get out of it.
25:27
Ejaaz: That's dangerous. We already have people that are,
25:29
Ejaaz: committing crimes slash potential, you know, mistakes after interfacing with
25:35
Ejaaz: these ChatGPT products.
25:37
Ejaaz: And now you're going to go full on adult mode. And they're probably going to
25:39
Ejaaz: charge a hefty premium to that as well.
25:41
Ejaaz: The other reason why she was against this was ads, which they just rolled out.
25:46
Ejaaz: So, you know, fair to her. She's sticking to her ethics and morals and she's quit.
25:51
Josh: Yeah. Wow. All right. Well, another crazy week in the books,
25:54
Josh: right? I think that's everything we got.
25:55
Ejaaz: Yeah that is it just a crazy week of layoffs and breaking neck AI video models,
26:04
Ejaaz: sprinkled with you know a few
26:05
Ejaaz: moon catapults within the next five years so an exciting week as always,
26:11
Ejaaz: there's a ton of stuff going on outside in the open source world which we were
26:16
Ejaaz: discussing prior to this some claw bot stuff which we might get into next week
26:21
Ejaaz: but until then we will see you in the next one.