BhTV: The Wright Show (audio)

Teaser ... Is Paul pro-gooey-pod? ... Steven Pinker vs Scott Alexander on AI ... A review of AI peer reviewers ... Tipping tips ... The promise and perils of AI companions ... Are mathematicians getting mogged by AI? ... Paul critiques Jon Haidt’s critique of social media ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Jeremie’s podcast and prescient AI report ... Is scale still (mostly) all you need? ... Jeremie: We’re way past “stochastic parrots” ... Inside the early AI safety ecosystem ... What Yudkowsky got less wrong than most ... Why capability is outpacing alignment ... Were Altman’s fears ever sincere? ... Would pausing AI crash the economy? ... Overtime preview: Debating China ...

Teaser ... Alex’s new documentary about Elon ... How Alex’s film turned epic ... Simulation theory + social Darwinism = Elon? ... Inside the mind of Musk ... Has the job-pocalypse already begun? ... Elon’s daddy issues ... Elon’s lady issues ... Elon’s electoral propriety issues ... Has Elon gotten weirder over time? ... The damage DOGE could still do ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Garrison’s background and his new book, Obsolete ... Is the left dangerously downplaying AI? ... What is the “obsoleting project”? ... Inside the minds of Altman and Amodei ... Has the job-pocalypse already begun? ... Why AI bio-threats could be extra deadly ... Is alignment doomed? ... “Verifiable rewards” and the OpenAI breakout ... Garrison’s proposal to stop the AI race ... Heading...

Cold Open ... Round Two of Nonzero × Doom Debates ... Trump, the FTC, and an Industry Feeling the Heat ... Google Says Gemini 4 Exists ... Greg Brockman Pulls His $25M from Leading the Future ... The Break-Ins Keep Coming ... The Market Wants Agent Swarms ... The End of “Alignment by Default” ... The Prelude to Recursive Self-Improvement ... David Sacks Can’t Explain Dario ... The All-In Echo Cham...

Teaser ... Paul’s impeccable timing ... Is Dario’s AI slowdown proposal for real? ... How chip controls can undermine AI safety ... Why the 2024 US-China AI talks failed ... America’s cognitive empathy gap on China ... Taiwan and the chip war ... War over AI: The real doom scenario? ... A possible (grim) path to global AI cooperation ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Jill’s book OK Boomer, Let’s Talk ... When is generalizing about a group okay? ... The world boomers built ... Are boomers really uniquely selfish? ... Is blaming boomers counterproductive? ... Who's actually driving the generational divide? ... The generational blame spiral ... Millennials vs Gen Z ... Does America have a gerontocracy problem? ... Why Kenyans are looking toward China ....

Teaser ... Nick’s singular place in AI history ... Where is Nick on the pause-accelerationist spectrum? ... Utilitarianism vs the "moral parliament" ... Is a "singleton" coming? What kind? ... Is global cooperation on AI doomed? ... The pros and cons of reading an AI’s mind ... Do AIs deserve moral status? ... AI, evolution, and the cosmic purpose question ...

Teaser ... This episode's surprise vibe shift ... Middle East update: Houthis vs. Saudis ... What’s really driving Dario (et al.)? ... Debating effective altruism’s effectiveness ... The trouble with big-tech Kremlinology ... Was “learn to code” just sleight of hand? ... Bob’s Fukuyama name drop ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Where Zvi’s famous newsletter got its name ... Zvi’s biggest AI fear ... Why is ChatGPT’s mind getting harder to read? ... Is self-sacrifice really such a surprising trait in agents? ... AGI + agent swarm = superintelligence? ... Appraising the elements of Dario’s “pacing” proposal ... Heading to Overtime ...

A bold new experiment in podcast synergy ... What caused the epic AI vibe shift? ... The resignation that broke the dam ... Former Trump adviser Dean Ball comes clean ... Are David Sacks and his buddies all-in on AI denial? ... Yet another OpenAI breakout… ... Astra’s dangerously private thoughts ... Is alignment doomed to fail? ... AI’s latest, and apparently biggest, math feat ... The looming “s...

Ian and Eli’s new book, Israel’s Lobby ... Being a Jewish critic of Israel before that was cool ... How Eli followed the money ... What’s changed since the 2007 Walt-Mearsheimer book ... What is the Israel lobby, really? ... BDS, free speech, and the college antisemitism crusade ... Did Trump give the game away? ... The Israel lobby and the media ... Heading to Overtime ...

Why Bob is (extra) freaked out ... Inside the minds of OpenAI's rogue agents ... Is true alignment a pipe dream? ... The new development that’s spiked Bob’s AI anxiety ... Paul’s pushback via literary parable ... Is it time to REALLY freak out about AI? A debate ... Heading to Overtime ...

Overtime teaser ... Paul’s military tech bona fides ... What we (should) have learned from the Iran war ... Ukraine as frontline for the drone revolution ... Are the robot wars near? ... America’s drone deficit ... Does the Pentagon have a Silicon Valley problem? ... Will AI really make war less bloody? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Stephen’s expertise in spooky AI behavior ... Testing AIs for “corporate loyalty” ... Which AIs shill most for their makers? ... Do AI models have ideologies? ... The spookiest finding of Stephen’s study ... Are AIs getting better at gaming their tests? ... Overtime unlocked: The OpenAI breakout ... Decoding the OpenAI breakout ... Did OpenAI’s agents evolve their own culture? ... How O...

Teaser ... The Infinity Machine, Sebastian’s book about Demis Hassabis ... Why tell the AI story through Hassabis? ... Hassabis vs the other AI titans ... Does Hassabis have a messiah complex? ... Deep learning’s secret sauce ... Did world models cost DeepMind its LLM lead? ... Why they call Hassabis “the Jedi” ... Heading to Overtime ...

Hooman's Iranian expertise—inherited and otherwise ... Trump’s new (economic) war on Iran ... What MSM missed about the MOU ... How will Iran respond? ... The intra-MAGA fight over Trump’s foreign policy ... Will Iran do to Trump what it did to Carter? ... Iran and the Houthi-Saudi conflict ... Is the Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey alliance for real? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Overtime teaser ... David’s AI safety work, past and present ... Has there been a vibe shift in AI? ... Why two AI godfathers went doomer ... The OpenAI breakout as the warning shot heard round the world ... Breaking down the OpenAI breakout ... AI agents are cooperating. Why? ... Is an AI pause near? ... The hard problem of AI alignment ... Heading to Overtime ...

Bob channels Dick Cheney ... Is AI killing writing? And thinking? ... How Bob and Paul actually use AI ... The cognitive vs economic value of writing ... AIs aping “Memento” and other frontier freakiness ... Bob: Reckless AI is just good business ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... How is MAGA feeling about Trump 2.0? ... Bob’s "good" ol’ days at The New Republic ... The biggest threat to the Trump coalition ... Why the MoU unraveled ... Is Iran's regime really divided? ... Part two: This pod’s auspicious return from tech hell ... Google Maps, AI, and the death of interhuman reliance ... Trump’s covert catering-truck op ... Have Iran’s demands really gotten more e...

Jennifer’s foreign policy bona fides ... Could Ukraine and Iran merge into one big war? ... Is Ukraine really "turning the tide"? ... America’s (and Ukraine’s) missile defense issue ... Putin’s ceasefire conditions ... What—and who—are America's missiles for, really? ... How not to open the Hormuz Strait ... How will the Iran war truly end? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Teaser ... Sam’s ideological leanings ... Sam's AI Manhattan Project–revisited ... What does the “Pacing” letter say about the state of AI? ... Mythos, Astra, and AI’s accelerating acceleration ... The OpenAI “rogue” model escape ... Recursive self-improvement: Red line or red herring? ... How frontier AI is getting (and will get) freakier ... How is open-source AI like DEI? ... Heading to Overtim...

Teaser ... The “Pacing the Frontier” letter signed by AI elites ... Why so many China-hawk AI-safety-hawks? ... Was the “Pacing” letter too small an ask? ... The striking AI vibe shift ... Are AI builders “just following orders”? ... Recursive self-improvement: The wrong red line? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Why did Ukraine hit an Iranian ship 500 miles from Ukraine? ... Ukraine's war on Russia's Amazon ... Why Zelensky fired his defense minister and commander-in-chief ... Bob: Ukraine may lose like people go bankrupt—gradually, then suddenly ... Nikita: Why both sides are ready to keep fighting ... Kazakh President to Putin: Nobody understands this war ... Bob: Everybody thinks they're fighting a def...

Teaser ... Connor’s place in the AI world ... Mythos: “digital nuke”? ... The milieu that birthed Dario and other AI titans ... Yudkowsky, Marx, and other AI harbingers ... Effective altruism’s effects on big tech ... The "cult" in Silicon Valley culture ... Is the AI race a market failure? ... What’s really driving the AI titans? ... Connor: ASI is a worse bet than Russian roulette ...