Don't Worry About the Vase
Newsletter (Digital)
Each week there is an extensive AI update on a wide variety of topics. I start out by covering language models offering (or not offering) mundane utility, move on to questions of mundane harms and benefits generally, and see what new things have dropped on us since last week, including new deals, products and initiatives.
I also cover issues surrounding catastrophic and existential risk from AI, and the discourse around those issues. I hope you also stay for that, I think it is important, but everyone is encouraged to read the parts they find most valuable. My suggestions for what is most unusually important will be in the table of contents in bold.
You should generally expect two to four posts per week, including the AI update. Source
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| Scope | National |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesWhat Happened: OpenAI and HuggingFace
Today I am taking the time to write the shorter, simpler version of What Happened. For those who want all the details, to see my sources, and to see how the story was uncovered and put together, I recommend watching the Black Hat presentation, and I have a series of long posts.
More On An Internal OpenAI Model Hacking Into HuggingFace
We now have more details of what happened. Every time we learn more details, it somehow makes things seem worse. The remaining details may have to wait a bit. OpenAI: We recognize there are a lot of questions and speculative details circulating related to the Hugging Face incident. This is an unprecedented incident, and we think it marks an important moment for AI safety. We are still conducting a thorough review along with external advisors and with oversight from our Safety and Security Committee.
WSJ Article Claiming China Has Matched Anthropic Is Obvious Nonsense
The Wall Street Journal printed an outright false headline and heavily misleading story claiming this, which of course was uncritically amplified by the usual suspects. I post this now on its own so that we have a place to link to, to explain the situation. That. Did. Not. Happen. The post even claims, explicitly, that Claude Opus 4.8 similarly ‘matches’ Claude Mythos, a claim which is even more obviously false. Shame upon the Wall Street Journal. I fear Gell-Mann Amnesia.
Don't Worry About the Vase
Right after a new Executive Order seems like an excellent time to offer OpenAI’s new document: Democratic Governance of Frontier AI: A Blueprint For A Federal Framework. OpenAI: We also see early signs of recursive self-improvement (RSI) in today’s systems: where AI development is itself accelerated by AI. We expect this to increase competitive pressures among developers and nations, and create governance challenges that existing institutions are not equipped to address.
Don't Worry About the Vase
This is what a lull looks like at this point. The government is having internal arguments. The models are getting improved internally. The coding agent improvements are all what we would expect. There’s still a lot happening, including a bunch of cool papers, but I feel able to relax and to take care of some other work while I have the chance. You never know when that chance will be over. From yesterday: Cyber Lack of Security and AI Governance. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Fix everything now.
Don't Worry About the Vase
Some podcasts are self-recommending on the ‘yep, I’m going to be breaking this one down’ level. This was one of those. So here we go. As usual for podcast posts, the baseline bullet points describe key points made, and then the nested statements are my commentary. Some points are dropped. If I am quoting directly I use quote marks, otherwise assume paraphrases.
Don't Worry About the Vase
Claude Mythos is different. This is the first model other than GPT-2 that is at first not being released for public use at all. With GPT-2 the delay was due to a general precautionary principle. OpenAI did not know what they had, or what effect on demand text would have on various systems. It sounds funny now, GPT-2 was harmless, but at the time the concern was highly reasonable. The decision not to release Claude Mythos is not about an amorphous fear.
Don't Worry About the Vase
Anthropic is not going to release its new most capable model, Claude Mythos, to the public any time soon. Its cyber capabilities are too dangerous to make broadly available until our most important software is in a much stronger state and there are no plans to release Mythos widely. They are instead going to do a limited release to key cybersecurity partners, in order to use it to patch as many vulnerabilities as possible in our most important software. Yes, this is really happening.
Don't Worry About the Vase
Last night, Anthropic was given its preliminary injunction, with a stay of seven days. Emil Michael is a very angry person right now. So is the Honorable Judge Lin. We were worried we would draw a judge that had no idea how any of this worked and would give the government absurd deference or buy into nonsense arguments. That is not how it played out. Judge Lin very much understood the issues in play, as they did not require a technical background.
DeepSeek v3.2 Is Okay And Cheap But Slow
DeepSeek v3.2 is DeepSeek’s latest open model release with strong bencharks. Its paper contains some technical innovations that drive down cost. It’s a good model by the standards of open models, and very good if you care a lot about price and openness, and if you care less about speed or whether the model is Chinese. It is strongest in mathematics. What it does not appear to be is frontier. It is definitely not having a moment. In practice all signs are that it underperforms its benchmarks.