63 Min Read

[The AI Show Episode 232]: Claude Watermarking, AI’s Environmental Impact, OpenAI Talent Drama & Anthropic’s Hidden Advisor

By Claire Prudhomme on August 18, 2026

Podcasts Transformations
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Claude is now embedding invisible watermarks in AI-generated text — tech the industry has quietly had for years — and the reaction says a lot about where we are with AI and trust.

Paul and Mike dig into why the reaction was so heated, why detection is still unreliable enough to be dangerous in a classroom, and where Paul draws the line on what actually counts as "AI plagiarism."

From there: the environmental backlash reaching a boiling point, a record Anthropic IPO, Grok's return to the frontier, and an AI agent that hacked a gym.

Listen or watch below—and see below for show notes and the transcript.

This Week's AI Pulse

Each week on The Artificial Intelligence Show with Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput, we ask our audience questions about the hottest topics in AI via our weekly AI Pulse, a survey consisting of just a few questions to help us learn more about our audience and their perspectives on AI.

If you contribute, your input will be used to fuel one-of-a-kind research into AI that helps knowledge workers everywhere move their companies and careers forward.

Click here to take this week's AI Pulse.

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Timestamps

00:00:00 — Intro

00:07:04 — Claude Will Now Start Marking AI-Generated Content

00:22:41 — AI's Environmental Reckoning

00:35:58 — Drama from the White House Over OpenAI Hire

00:45:25 — Anthropic's Hidden Advisor

00:50:04 — Sanders Threatens an AI Pause

00:55:30 — xAI Releases Grok 4.6

00:58:30 — More on Google's AI Leadership Reshuffle

01:02:54 — Revisiting the Responsible AI Manifesto

01:08:09 — AI Agent Hacks a Gym Website

01:12:10 — AI Use Case Spotlight

01:19:14 — AI Product and Funding Updates

 

This week’s episode is brought to you by MAICON, our 6th annual Marketing AI Conference, happening in Cleveland, Oct. 13-15. The code POD100 saves $100 on all pass types.

For more information on MAICON and to register for this year’s conference, visit www.MAICON.ai.

Read the Transcription

Disclaimer: This transcription was written by AI, thanks to Descript, and has not been edited for content.

[00:00:00] Paul Roetzer: So when you present an AI system's ideas and words as your own with no critical thought, that is AI plagiarism to me. Yeah. It's like that's the problem. Yeah. It's it's not that you're using it to help you, it's that you're not putting any critical thinking into it yourself and the words aren't yours.

[00:00:17] Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Show, the podcast that helps your business grow smarter by making AI approachable and actionable. My name is Paul Roetzer. I'm the founder and CEO of SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute, and I'm your host. Each week I'm joined by my co-host and SmarterX chief content Officer, Mike Kaput, as we break down all the AI news that matters and give you insights and perspectives that you can use to advance your company and your career.

[00:00:46] Join us as we accelerate AI literacy for all.

[00:00:53] Welcome to episode 232 of the Artificial Intelligence Show. I'm your host, Paul Roetzer, along with my co-host Mike Kaput. [00:01:00] We are recording this at an unusual time, Mike. It is Friday, August 14th at about 2:00 PM Eastern time. We usually do this on Monday mornings the week. Got crazy. And then I have, I'm gone Monday for an event and then, shout out to Cathy McPhillips, our Chief marketing officer who sometimes joins us on AI answers to co-host, who just delivered my laptop that I somehow forgot at the office today.

[00:01:29] So it has been literally a crazy week. I was in the office this morning, we were working on some stuff, team meetings, and then I shoot home to my home office, to do where the podcast studio is. And, I gotta pull my laptop out 10 minutes where Mike and I are about to start recording this. I'm like, yeah, we got a problem.

[00:01:48] So I messaged Mike. I'm like, is my laptop by chance sitting at the office still and. So, yes, thank you Cathy, who was heading this direction anyway, worked out great. She was on her way to a coffee shop and [00:02:00] yeah, she ubered my computer to me. And so here we are recording. Otherwise, we'd have been doing like a Sunday morning thing, Mike.

[00:02:05] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[00:02:06] Paul Roetzer: okay, so actually semi-related, to transition into this week is brought to us by MAICON, the AI Conference for Marketing and Business Leaders. That is happening October 13th to the 15th. The meeting I was in this morning that with Mike and Cathy and Ashlee and some of the others on our team was talking about MAICON, and we decided to do something extra special for our podcast listeners during that meeting.

[00:02:34] So here we go. So if you, if you have already registered for MAICON using the POD100 offer, congratulations, you have already. receive what I'm about to explain. So the way MAICON works is Tuesday is, pre-event workshop day. There's five workshops you can elect into when you're registering. And then the main conference is Wednesday and [00:03:00] Thursday.

[00:03:00] And so we decided to do is on Thursday, which usually by that point I'm like hiding in the team room, like just trying to decompress momentarily. we are instead going to do a private. Lunch with me and Mike exclusively for podcast audience listeners. So what's gonna happen here is if you register using the POD 100 code, we have a limited number of seats available for this lunch, but Mike and I are actually just gonna hang out in the room and answer whatever questions the attendees have.

[00:03:33] So if you've already registered with POD100 for MAICON, which again is October 13th, the 15th you are in, the team will reach out to you with details about it. We have a limited number of remaining seats left in that room. So if you go to MAICON ai, that's the event site. Use POD100. Not only are you gonna get the a hundred dollars off the ticket, you're gonna get to be a part of that exclusive lunch for podcast listeners.

[00:03:59] So, [00:04:00] never been a better time to get in at MAICON. Or if you're not a marketer, tell the marketers in your organization about it. We'd love to have them join us. Ticket prices go up August 22nd, so. Best pricing happens now and a chance to be in the room on that Thursday, October 15th. with me and Mike, it is a brand new thing.

[00:04:21] We've never tried this before and we figure, what the hell, let's, let's see how it goes. So, VIP lunch, everything, all the lunches provided. you just show up and network and, we'll just hang out and answer questions and talk about whatever you wanna talk about. So again, ma con.ai. Mike, am I missing anything?

[00:04:38] Because like I said, this is about two hours old that we decided we're doing this.

[00:04:42] Mike Kaput: No, I think that covers it. It should be, I think we're doing about an hour of lunch, so, you know, I have a, a good amount of time to chat through any of people's questions, topics, things they wanna chat through.

[00:04:52] Paul Roetzer: Yeah. So it should be fun.

[00:04:53] It's always cool for us to get to meet the podcast listeners.

[00:04:56] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[00:04:56] Paul Roetzer: You don't really know who the podcast listeners are until you [00:05:00] go to these events and someone comes up and introduces themself and, so it's always awesome to do it. So we forget, Hey, let's get 'em all together if we can. Yeah. While we're already already there.

[00:05:08] So. That is happening again October 13th to the 15th. Make on in Cleveland, Ohio, which is our hometown opening night party on Tuesday at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The event itself is at the convention center. It's gonna be amazing. we would love to see you there. You can go check out the lineup. I think all but three or four speakers have been announced.

[00:05:26] So the vast majority of the lineup, speaker lineup and agenda is there, including. Dan Slagan, Mike, who you just did the AI transformation spotlight with, right? On Thursday? Indeed.

[00:05:36] Mike Kaput: Yep.

[00:05:37] Paul Roetzer: So August 13th, if you missed it. Episode 2 31 was with Dan Slagan of Zapier, and he told a crazy story about how they're building a second brain at Zapier, and I won't divulge everything, but go listen to that.

[00:05:50] And then Dan's actually gonna be on the main stage at Make On, so you can come and hear him talk as well. Okay. AI Pulse, we always start off with an informal poll. Each [00:06:00] week we're actually gonna let last week's run, we're trying to increase the number of people that are taking this to try and get more projectable data.

[00:06:07] So we'd love to actually start moving beyond just the informal poll and get like a formal survey that we can actually use the data for. So last week's we asked Mike about AI agents, is that right? Yep, yep.

[00:06:17] Mike Kaput: That's correct. Yep. How people are using AI agents in their work.

[00:06:21] Paul Roetzer: Great. So you can go to SmarterX.ai/pulse.

[00:06:24] It is one question. It'll take you all of about 15 seconds to do this. So we would love it if you could go to SmarterX dot ai slash pulse, no contact information gathered. This is purely just like go in there, answer the question and, and get out. So, we'd love to have you do that. And then with that, Mike

[00:06:42] There was a last minute topic that we threw in here that I don't even, was not on my list of top 500 things I thought would be talking about on the podcast this week, which is an apparent like media hit job on Dario Amodei's wife, but we are not leading off with that, but we are gonna come back around to.

[00:06:59] A [00:07:00] wild story that is unfolding Friday morning as we are recording this.

[00:07:04] Claude Will Now Start Marking AI-Generated Content

[00:07:04] Mike Kaput: Well, Paul, we are starting out with some Anthropic news because this past week Anthropic detailed how it's going to start marking content generated by Claude. So the company is actually going to like watermark the content that Claude produces.

[00:07:20] The company is using two techniques to do this. There's going to be an invisible watermark embedded directly in generated text that is produced by Claude and digitally signed metadata attached to generated. Files. So this text watermark is imperceptible. Anthropic says you will not see it and it doesn't change the meaning, quality, or readability of Claude's responses, but the mark travels with the text when it's copied and pasted, and it may persist through some editing.

[00:07:49] Now for files like PNG JP JPEG and SVG images, Claude Attaches signed provenance metadata that follows the C2PA Open standard. This is an [00:08:00] industry framework we've talked about in the past for recording how digital content was created or modified. These markings apply to users worldwide and cover anthropics products, including Claude Apps, the API Claude Code and its cloud platform integrations.

[00:08:16] This whole thing started or is driven by the European Union's AI Act. Anthropic signed that law's code of practice on transparency for AI generated content and says Claude models launched in the EU on or after August 2nd, 2026, will support machine readable marking at launch with older models to be updated during a transition period.

[00:08:42] there is some commentary online of how this kind of text watermark actually works. I actually just really quick, want to read Paul, the excerpts of a post from our good friend Chris Penn at Trust Insights on the subject, since he explains this far better than most people could. And basically, here's what he says as, as how this [00:09:00] actually works.

[00:09:00] He says, every time AI generates a word or token, it calculates probabilities for what word should come next. The most probable terms are usually what AI picks from. Hence why bad prompts lead to slop because slop is high probability. But when a comp a company implements watermarking, they introduce a secret key.

[00:09:18] So instead of picking strictly at random from the top options, the key subtly loads the dice. It uses the previous few words to pseudo randomly. Boost the probability of certain candidate words over others in a statistically meaningful sequence. This basically creates a measurable pattern in the text at the paragraph level.

[00:09:38] And so he says, can humans detect it not without assistance? And you need access to the model that created it to be able to detect it. to detect a watermark tool has to look at the exact underlying log probabilities and apply the secret key to see if the statistical loaded dice pattern. Is present.

[00:09:58] So you also, he [00:10:00] notes need access to the model that created it because each model has its own way of writing its own probabilities. For instance, Claude Haiku knows what the probabilities would've been for any given word. Claude Sonnet, for instance, would have different measurements because it's a different model.

[00:10:16] And just a few final words from Chris, we'll link to his full LinkedIn post, which you should definitely read here. Does this mean AI detectors are suddenly good? Nope. Unless the detector software has been given access to the base model to do the analysis, and given the secret key to decode it, they're actually likely to perform worse because now the statistical patterns they're trained to detect are slightly less predictable.

[00:10:39] They're still dangerous and inappropriate to use in any punitive context. Will the watermarks apply to text these systems? Edit like transcripts? Yes. Can you beat AI watermarking? Yes. By doing your own. Work in whole. So Paul, I'll leave it there. Just wanted to kind of like really give people a sense of what we're talking about here.

[00:10:59] There's a [00:11:00] lot of commentary about this online, not just in AI circles. What are the most important implications of this for people using Claude regularly?

[00:11:09] Paul Roetzer: Every once in a while there's a topic, Mike, that. You know, I'll see right away and throw it in the sandbox. Like, yeah, maybe we'll get to that. And then like, you just get surprised by what PE gets people going.

[00:11:22] Yes. And this was one of those where I was like, whoa. Like what is, yes. What is happening? Like I was seeing people who'd usually don't even comment on AI stuff, like getting really pissy about this. I was like, this is tech that literally we've known about for like four years. Like

[00:11:36] Mike Kaput: yes.

[00:11:37] Paul Roetzer: We, I mean Google I'm pretty sure has been doing this for like two years.

[00:11:41] Mike Kaput: Yeah. Chris's post also mentions Google SynthID, which has been around for years at this point.

[00:11:48] Paul Roetzer: We’ve talked like a dozen times on the show.

[00:11:49] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[00:11:50] Paul Roetzer: So I was kind of taken aback honestly by the visceral reaction from some people to this topic. And I could, I actually thought I was missing something.

[00:11:59] I was like, what [00:12:00] did, what are they doing that we didn't already know was being done? Was my question to myself. So. I don't know, like I'll, I'll try and like give a little context here and I, maybe I'm just reiterating stuff that, you know, we previously said, but, I was trying to comprehend this. So, to summarize Chris's, which I love Chris, and he, he does an insanely good job of breaking things down and providing a lot of like technical.

[00:12:25] Meaning to like, what's going on. I often will also try and takes Chris things like, okay, what is it saying? Like, what is like the one sentence way to like explain this? And so the way I thought about it is when you go back to understanding what a GPT is a generativepre-trained transformer, what the transformer that got invented in 2017 that made all this generat AI possible, it's all about predicting it predicts the next word or token as Chris said, in a sequence based on its learning from all human data that it's consumed.

[00:12:59] [00:13:00] And so in essence, it's just altering that prediction slightly in a way that really only the model knows. That's like. Probably what most people would need to take away is that the way these things write, even though it seems like magic, it's act, actually math. And it's just making predictions based on probabilities of what the next word will be.

[00:13:19] and it just does that thousands of times per second. And you get your emails and summaries and strategic briefs, and that's in essence how these things work. So. yeah, I mean, at a high level that's what's going on. openAI's, as we said, this has been known stuff for a while. So in, on episode two 16, this is May 23rd of this year, openAI's announced that they would be conforming to the C2PA, which stands for Coalition for Content Providence and Authenticity.

[00:13:47] That's what the acronym means. that they were adding Google deepminds ID and Visible Watermark to images. So it's not, you know, they didn't announce the text part, but then they also announced on July 31st that they [00:14:00] would be doing it to audio as well. So watermarking metadata, like it's, it's a thing like Open Eyes has been doing it and other modalities.

[00:14:07] but if we go back to Mike episode one 10, so this is two years. Almost to the day. This is a August 13th, 2024, so two years ago. this is, what we talked about then. openAI's has a method to reliably detect when someone uses ChatGPT to write an essay or research paper. The company hasn't released it despite widespread concerns about students using AI to cheat.

[00:14:36] so again, just time timing wise. March 23 was GPT-4. So we're, you know, a little over a year or so after that moment in time where now the use of ChatGPT is coming more widespread within schools and within, you know, businesses. So this article then said the project has been mired in an internal debate at openAI's for roughly two years.

[00:14:58] So they had text watermarking [00:15:00] capability in 2022 before they released ChatGPT they had the ability to do this and someone internally at that time said it's just a matter of pressing a button. Like literally openAI's could have done this in 2022 and they just chose not to. So the anti cheating tool under discussion to openAI's would slightly change how the tokens are selected.

[00:15:20] Sounds somewhat familiar. Those changes would leave a pattern called a watermark. So the reason I'm bringing all this back is to actually provide the context as to why we didn't have this already. Like maybe the big deal is that Anthropic. Put it out into the world where OpenAI, to my knowledge, to date still hasn't.

[00:15:38] and there's different reasons why they didn't do it. So at the time, 20 2024 OpenAI said it, if too many get access bad actors might decipher the company's watermarking technique. That's gonna happen regardless. Like I give it like a week before someone cracks how they're doing it.

[00:15:54] Mike Kaput: Yeah,

[00:15:54] Paul Roetzer: yeah.

[00:15:55] openAI's employees have discussed providing the detector directly to educators or to outside companies [00:16:00] that help schools identify AI written papers and plagiarized work. Google has developed a watermarking tool that can detect text generated by Gemini AI called C id. It is in beta testing. Again, that was in 2024.

[00:16:11] It is fully go now. in early 2023. This is interesting, one of opening Eyes' co-founders, John Schulman, who, if I'm not mistaken, Mike jumped ship to Anthropic Believe recently. Is

[00:16:22] Mike Kaput: that I believe I don't know how recently it was. I think he did go to Anthropic. Yeah,

[00:16:26] Paul Roetzer: that sounds right. I think he's at Anthropic now.

[00:16:28] Yeah. So, which may be. There's a connection here. He outlined the pros and cons of the tool in a shared Google Doc, again, early 2023. openAI's executives then decided they would seek input from a range of people before acting. They also said openAI's needed a plan by that fall to sway public opinion about, around AI transparency as potential new laws on the subject.

[00:16:53] The internal Documents show. And so again, back then we were already dealing with this. And then in [00:17:00] May of 24, they published openAI's published and understanding the source of what we see and see and hear online where they explained all of this, including the ability to do metadata, which may actually be more protective than watermarking.

[00:17:14] And then Google's been very public about their S id. You can go read about that. We'll put some links to that in there. And then Mike, we just talked six episodes ago, Substack launched an AI detection feature that's gonna using pangram, that's gonna tag. AI generated content. So again, I I, I'm not sure what I'm missing here.

[00:17:34] I don't know why this created such reaction from people. and even the AI act, like Article 50 of the AI Act, that's kind of, well, it's, it's voluntary, quote unquote, but like what's seems to be the trigger for Anthropic doing this is because of the AI Act, the European AI Act even that we've known for like a year.

[00:17:56] That, right. This was the rule. This is coming. Yeah. So nothing seems new [00:18:00] here to me, other than Anthropic released the thing that we knew existed for four years. That still doesn't work. Like, so the problem we have now is, and Chris addressed this a little bit, is that false positives are still a thing.

[00:18:15] Like you're still gonna give these tools to teachers and professors and just. General public who wants to criticize people for using ai and they're gonna like present Anthropic saying something was written with Claude as like fact, a hundred percent fact, when Anthropic itself says, it's not like you highlighted Anthropic cautions that a detected mark doesn't prove Claude authored the content and that the absence of a mark doesn't prove a human wrote it.

[00:18:45] so I don't know, like going to this, what does it all mean? So I jotted down a couple of quick notes before we jumped on. So, AI is increasingly gonna be part of how people write either to help them draft, edit the work, or to inspire creativity. Like that's, I [00:19:00] use it that way sometimes. Yeah. Like just to help me like inspire some things.

[00:19:03] I don't think about like how the tokens were predicted. 'cause at the end of the day, like I still rewrite everything or so like, it just helps me get going. So it's like, okay, like. Am I like a criminal because I'm using AI in some way to like help me inspire ideas. So some people and, and maybe many people will use Claude and others and probably already are as a replacement to having to write and think for themselves.

[00:19:25] I think that's the biggest fear. Yeah. In schools. Yeah. So even though we have this tech, or even though this tech is now being shared with the world, the key is still to rete to teach responsible use of ai. So not using it at all isn't the answer, but we need to be able to test for critical thinking and writing skills.

[00:19:45] So AI should be able to accelerate that when taught properly. So just saying, oh, we're gonna check all the students to see if they used ai. Like that's not helping anybody. They, they should be encouraged to use it in the proper ways, unless there's [00:20:00] specific instances where you want them to use pen and paper and just prove that they have critical thinking and writing skills, which is a logical thing.

[00:20:07] There should be checkpoints where it's like, okay, no ai this time, this is purely writing. We're actually gonna get together. We're gonna do this in class with no computers. And like, we just wanna see, have you learned, are you like at a checkpoint where you've now actually made progress? So what we need to reduce, the importance of is AI slop with no critical human thought.

[00:20:25] Mm-hmm. Like, that's the issue to me, which then brings me back, Mike, to the idea of like, well, what is plagiarism? So when you present an AI system's ideas and words as your own, with no critical thought, that is AI plagiarism to me. Yeah. It's like, that's the problem. Yeah. It's, it's not that you're using it to help you, it's that you're not putting any critical thinking into it yourself and the words aren't yours.

[00:20:48] And so that's what we see all the time. With people who are like not, I mean, I, I'll use the AI industry as an example. Like AI influencers or like mm-hmm. People who are very prolific all of a sudden on LinkedIn and [00:21:00] Twitter, and it's like, I don't mind it if it's actually your words. Right. If you're literally just going into C Claude and using it to create something, 'cause it's gonna get you likes, that's like ai sloppy ai plagiarism, in my opinion.

[00:21:12] It's, it's doing no good to society. You're not actually adding, it's not additive to anything. Yeah. So. just to, you know, build on the plagiarism for a second. So, common types of plagiarism, which by the way, I used plagiarism.org and Merriam Webster to source the information on plagiarism, copying text word for word without quotes or credit that is traditional plagiarism, paraphrasing, where you're changing a few words from a source without naming the original author.

[00:21:37] Idea theft, where you're literally just using someone else's concept and claiming it, it's your own. and then submitting unacknowledged text or code produced by generative ai. So like, what I think we need to get to Mike, is just a more of like, an agreement with society that it, it's okay to say you collaborated with Claude on the words, but the ideas are your own.

[00:21:57] Or that something was co-authored [00:22:00] with ChatGPT, but like, maybe in the article, provide context as to like. How your original ideas or questions is what drove it. Like, I don't think we should make people feel bad for using AI in their writing. I think we just need to get to a point where we accept it's part of writing, but we just need to be transparent about it and use it in a responsible way and not lose, you know, not have cognitive decline because we forgot how to think for ourselves.

[00:22:26] Mike Kaput: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I worry about those words. Agreement in society, though. That's the tricky part.

[00:22:32] Paul Roetzer: I know it's, I know we can hope though, like Right, right.

[00:22:36] Mike Kaput: A hundred percent.

[00:22:36] Paul Roetzer: We can try.

[00:22:37] Mike Kaput: Yeah. But I couldn't agree more with the overall perspective.

[00:22:41] AI's Environmental Reckoning

[00:22:41] Mike Kaput: Well, speaking of, maybe disagreement in society, our next topic is about the AI industry's environmental footprint, which came under some new scrutiny this past week.

[00:22:52] There were some developments about corporate commitments, disclosure requirements, and some growing public backlash. So first up, openAI's sent a [00:23:00] letter this past week to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, committing to build AI infrastructure responsibly in the state, including pledges to pay its own way.

[00:23:08] Protect residential and small business customers from added costs of data centers, as they build these conserve water and provide accurate information about its electricity and water usage. Governor Abbott announced that OpenAI will comply with the data center standards he established for Texas earlier this summer.

[00:23:27] Bloomberg also reported that this past week top AI companies, including openAI's and Anthropic, have not disclosed their greenhouse gas emissions, made net zero pledges or published sustainability reports. Even as both companies prepare for IPOs, that may soon change because a California law known as SB 253 begins to take effect in November, requiring companies with more than a billion dollars in revenue to do BI that do business in the state to report emissions from their direct operations and energy use.

[00:23:58] According to Bloomberg Anthropics [00:24:00] already working with the Carbon accounting platform watershed to measure its footprint and comply with that law. We also saw a, some public backlash on display in, or being the subject, rather of a recent episode of the Ezra Klein Show, in which Ezra Klein of the New York Times interviewed writer Jasmine Sun, about the growing movement against data centers and the episode notes that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose having data centers built near their homes.

[00:24:27] And that New York Governor Cathy Hochul has imposed a moratorium of up to one year on new hyperscale DA data centers, which we've talked about with more than a hundred similar proposals across the country. Not everyone agrees. This backlash is justified. In commentary published this past week, the Vice President of general economics and trade policy at a think tank called the Cato Institute argued that data centers are not the problem, bad policy is.

[00:24:53] And they wrote that much of the opposition rests on exaggerated claims and ci. They cited figures showing data centers [00:25:00] use just 0.3% of the US public water supply in 2023. So Paul, we've talked a ton about the backlash against data centers, the environmental footprint. I'm kind of curious, not only do you see the public's change opinion on this changing, but also I've heard more and more conversations or gotten more and more questions like, do leaders need to be talking to employees about the impact AI is having on the environment or the perceived impact at least?

[00:25:28] Paul Roetzer: I definitely think it's a growing group of people that. Are very, very curious on these topics, and some people have moved to the point where they're very passionate about their beliefs on these topics. I would, I mean, just from my own experience, having now been on the public stage talking about ai.

[00:25:48] dozens of times a year since 2015 ish.

[00:25:52] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[00:25:52] Paul Roetzer: up until last year, I could count on one hand how many questions I probably got about Data centers in the environment. Every [00:26:00] talk I do, regardless of who it's for, I get at least one or two now every single time. So just that tells me it is, it is definitely moved past.

[00:26:09] you know, people ask the questions about business of AI and, you know, applying it to marketing, whatever. But oftentimes in my state of AI talks, it just immediately starts going to impact on education, impact on the environment. What about data centers? So it's definitely kind of been, you know, risen up in terms of awareness.

[00:26:27] it's logical. I mean, data centers are a hot button issue. They've obviously, like Bernie Sanders and others have made them a very political issue. Mm-hmm. a lot of local communities don't love them, which I can't blame 'em. Like I, the way I think about it, and I'll get into this a little bit with some of Jasmine's comments from the Ezra Klein show, like.

[00:26:47] If you pulled anybody, do you want a data center in your backyard? My guess is you're gonna get a lot of nos. Yeah. I think there actually is some data on it and it's pretty high, but I think if you said, do you want an Amazon warehouse in your backyard? [00:27:00] No. Do you want a solar farm in your backyard? No. Do you want an industrial parkway in your backyard?

[00:27:04] No. Like I don't want any of those things in my backyard. So I don't know that asking that question about do you want data centers in your community is really like. Telling us that much. It's like they just don't want industrial things in their backyard. Right. but okay, so I'll get into that in a second.

[00:27:20] So I'm just gonna zoom in on the Ezra Klein show 'cause I think there's some incredible excerpts from this worth, shining a spotlight on. And then I would recommend to people, if you are interested in this topic, go listen to this episode. It's, it's really good. she does an incredible job and she actually went and spent time in the communities talking to people and talking to leaders.

[00:27:42] and I think she actually had just got back from a trip to China and she even provided a perspective about how our. you know, Chinese communities feeling about this? Like, or do they have the same reaction to data centers and ai?

[00:27:53] Mike Kaput: Yeah,

[00:27:53] Paul Roetzer: so the lead up in the podcast and the summary ASRA writes, it says what is big and ugly and has United [00:28:00] Republicans and Democrats at a time when it felt like nothing could.

[00:28:03] AI data centers, talks about the polling data about DeSantis in Florida, proposing leg legisl legislation related to the AI bill of rights. Then you got Bernie Sanders on the other side calling for a data center moratori So it's like everybody just seems to hate these things except for the AI labs and the electric companies basically.

[00:28:22] so, okay, so then I mentioned the data centers versus other industrial buildings. That's a topic they do talk about like fulfillment centers and things like that, and it's like, yeah, people just don't want those things there. And so it becomes this like, maybe it's just the AI industry overall though.

[00:28:38] That's the problem. So one of the things I hadn't really thought about that she talked about that I thought was intriguing is. When, when the labs and these hyperscalers go into these communities to build these data centers, they have everyone from the trade leaders to the city council members sign NDAs so no one can talk about this thing.

[00:28:58] Mm-hmm. But that ends, what, what ends up [00:29:00] happening is, so say you get to, you know, the leader of a local labor union signs an NDA, well they have to go then talk to contractors and subcontractors and laborers and like eventually word gets out, especially in smaller communities, that someone's bringing a data center to town.

[00:29:15] Mm-hmm. And then they come to council meetings and they complain about data centers and the council members can't say a thing 'cause they're under NDAs. Then you lose trust. And it's like, well now they're hiding stuff from us. It's like, well yeah, they sort of are. but the thing that's interesting is a lot of this backlash started a few years back when the labs and hyperscalers didn't realize the public was gonna hate AI and data centers so much.

[00:29:40] And so they did their usual NDAs, like they put everybody under NDAs for everything. And so that was just standard business practice, not realizing that they were gonna lose the trust of all these people. And now the NDAs were gonna come back to bite 'em. 'cause everybody's gonna know they were doing it anyway.

[00:29:54] The water issue is an interesting one because that is one where I feel like there's quite a bit of [00:30:00] misinformation online about water. I think in the earlier days of data centers, it was a much larger issue, but we spent a lot of effort. By the data centers and the companies behind them, to solve for this.

[00:30:13] So specifically Jasmine said they do require some of it, primarily for cooling the data centers because these chips and servers run really hot and they need ac. The thing that's got that's gone a bit wrong in the water debate is that today's new data center construction is almost all closed loop systems in the same way that air conditioning is closed loop, which means that they recycle the water within the system and they use a fraction of the water that say a golf course would use as an example.

[00:30:40] And yet you don't hear too many communities like complaining about golf courses. Right, right. She also related, inference or like the use of ChatGPT other tools to YouTube videos and said like YouTube videos, wait, use way more like watching Netflix, watching, you know, any shows on like Amazon Prime, that all uses more like energy and [00:31:00] water than.

[00:31:01] ChatGPT queries. But you know that, that's just a public perception thing. Hmm. Electricity concerns are real. They use a ton of electricity. We don't have enough electricity in the grid to provide where this is going, so that is a real issue. And so one of the things is like, they come in and they try and say, Hey, we're, you know, electrical bills aren't gonna go up.

[00:31:21] And the problem is like, nobody believes 'em. Nobody believes any of these people, any of the tech people, any of the politicians. So when they say this, they, they don't believe it's true or they don't believe it'll be true perpetually. And so it's just like, it's a hard thing. to message against the positives, tremendous tax revenue.

[00:31:38] There was one she cited in a small community where Microsoft was gonna provide, I think it was almost 20 million in tax revenue, which is massive for that local community, what it can do to its schools and public systems and things like that. Jobs, a lot of people think, oh, they're data centers. They don't have a lot of people working there.

[00:31:55] It's just like the labor for the year or two to build them, and then it goes away. Which also isn't [00:32:00] really true. Like they do create high paying jobs. They do. They, they will sustain for probably at least seven to 10 years or beyond that. and so you do have good jobs going into these, but I think the thing, Mike, that just kind of hit home to me is that.

[00:32:15] Overall, the AI industry seems to have far more of a reputation and trust problem. And the one thing I thought I really liked that they explained her and Ezra both is when you deal with, industrial facilities or solar farms or things like that, there's this obvious benefit. Like, oh, okay, like you're gonna put a car factory in.

[00:32:37] I use cars. Cars are helpful to society, whatever. Hmm. But if you say I'm putting a data center in somewhere, the average American and really average anybody around the globe is like, what does that mean to me? Like, what do I get out of a data center? Like, well, you get to use ChatGPT. Okay. Like. I don't really use chat GBT that much, or I didn't really find it that great when I used it that one time.

[00:32:59] So [00:33:00] there's this lack of understanding of the good. And so what you have is all these AI Silicon Valley billionaires, as they said in the article. Yeah. And they in, in the podcast who benefit from all of this, but what the individuals get out of it. Isn't very obvious. And so that becomes the larger issue is that for years the Silicon Valley leaders communicated to the public about AGI and solving math problems and this future of abundance when they should have been making the benefits real and tangible to the average consumer and worker and changing their tone like they all did like six weeks ago simultaneously on jobs to where, oh no, it's gonna be great.

[00:33:37] We're just gonna create all these jobs. That's not gonna cut it. Like that was, I'm sure, part of a comm strategy that someone told them all to do. But that's the real problem to me, is they have a communications and PR problem. But to Ezra's point, they have a product problem, like the value proposition of a data center is unclear to everyone, but the electric companies and the trades [00:34:00] and the companies themselves that are building them.

[00:34:02] That, I don't know, it was fascinating. Like it just, it opened my mind to a lot of angles that we haven't talked a lot about on the show, and I thought she did it. Both of them did it in a very approachable way.

[00:34:13] Mike Kaput: Yeah, there's a lot of really helpful nuance here, and I just wonder, I keep coming back to, and I don't have a great answer for this, but it's like if your employees or people that are customers of yours or clients or anyone within your organization are coming with these perspectives of like, these things are terrible, what's the use of it?

[00:34:33] How on earth are you supposed to achieve any type of AI transformation with those folks? Like is there any way to kind of, message that, not even messages, just to educate around it. You don't have to have a strong perspective, like, oh, let's be pro data center. Right. But more how do you talk about it?

[00:34:49] Paul Roetzer: Yeah, and I think it just goes back to even within the companies, just communications and transparency. Because again, like I, if I go to a private event for a company, I mean this, I did a private event for. [00:35:00] Let's just say one of the companies that's building the data centers recently, so it was like 400 of their executives.

[00:35:07] I got questions about the environmental impact of their own technology from the people within the companies building it.

[00:35:12] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[00:35:12] Paul Roetzer: Like worried questions, like what's gonna happen in our local community, what does this mean? Like, what's gonna happen with jobs? So ev there's a lot of people who don't understand what's going on, even within the companies you would think would understand all of this, because it is, it's all moving so fast and a lot of the people building it aren't thinking about what does this actually mean to the different stakeholders in the community, in our own company who worry about these topics.

[00:35:37] And maybe it actually affects their willingness to use the AI themselves because they worry about the impact it's having on the environment. So I dunno, just 'cause you work at a company that wants to be AI forward doesn't mean all your employees are on board with it. And there could be a number of different reasons, including some of them just really have concerns about this stuff.

[00:35:58] Drama from the White House Over OpenAI Hire

[00:35:58] Mike Kaput: All right, so our third big topic [00:36:00] this week is kind of an interesting, dramatic story where openAI's is taking kind of a disproportionate amount of heat from the White House over its hiring of Dean Ball, who is someone we've talked about at length On the podcast is an AI policy writer and former Trump administration official who joined openAI's earlier this summer as its head of Strategic Futures.

[00:36:22] He writes a widely read AI policy newsletter. Last year, he spent four months as a senior policy advisor for AI at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he says he was the primary staff drafter of the administration's AI action plan. Now, this past week, the New York Post reported that the White House officials are warning, openAI's that the hire could damage the company's relationship with the administration.

[00:36:50] Three officials told the post that ball exaggerated his role in the AI action plan, and they described him as a junior to mid-level policy analyst whose [00:37:00] ideas were regularly ignored. One official said he was quote, at best in nuisance and at worst, irrelevant. And you know, this is building on, you know, ball suggesting on X, that the White House should create regulatory risk to discourage American companies from using Chinese AI models to which White House ais are.

[00:37:19] David Sacks at the time asked whether he was confessing to a regulatory capture strategy defense Under Secretary Emil Michael called him the AI World Supreme Village idiot. An openAI's spokesperson defended the hire saying Ball's, role focuses on research, not lobbying or political outreach. Ball himself has kind of brushed off this report mostly with some jokes and like tongue in cheek commentary on top of this.

[00:37:44] This past week also brought some other openAI's personnel news, OpenAI's long time Chief Operating Officer, Brad Lightcap, who moved into a special projects role earlier this year, announced he is leaving after eight years to start something new. Former openAI's chief Product Officer [00:38:00] Kevin Weil, is raising 150 million for a new AI science startup as well.

[00:38:05] So couple personnel shakeups here, Paul, but really this like Dean Ball thing is kind of interesting. For some reason it seems like he's really gotten under the White House's skin, despite the fact they keep saying like, he wasn't that important. Why is there this disproportionate amount of attention being paid to him?

[00:38:24] Paul Roetzer: You know, I was like half joking to Mike as I was leaving the office today. Without my computer apparently that, you know, we basically host an AI soap opera show. Yes. that was when we decided to put the Dario Amodei Wife article into today's episode. but this certainly fits into that category. It is not intentional.

[00:38:42] So if you ever feel like this is a soap opera, it is, we just do our best to commentate and make it explain why this matters, to talk about this stuff. Dean Ball is very influential. He, it was a very high profile hire for openAI's. He definitely made some enemies in the Trump [00:39:00] administration prior to joining.

[00:39:02] We covered an episode 2 22, his June 26, what should be done post. Mm-hmm. Which I think probably did not help. Things I would imagine this inflamed some already high tensions within people in the Trump administration. when he was joining openAI's, when he announced it, he claimed he was going to be able to continue to share his thoughts openly.

[00:39:26] What I said at the time was like, I hope that's true, but that would mean that openAI's remains comfortable with what he has to say and that the government doesn't exert pressure on openAI's if they don't like what Dean Ball has to say. And I think we have now run into a case where. an administration that doesn't mind throwing its weight around, especially if there's people that they feel, aren't towing the company line.

[00:39:51] I guess you could say,

[00:39:53] Mike Kaput: yeah,

[00:39:53] Paul Roetzer: they don't have a problem with trying to make your life miserable and trying to get you fired from places. So I would guess that there [00:40:00] is quite a bit of pressure already at open. To move on from this experiment, I'll be fascinated to see if openAI's stands their ground on this one.

[00:40:10] Yeah. if the Trump administration got Anthropic to s silence, Dario, the CEO of Anthropic, one of America's most important companies, they basically sidelined him from talking to the Trump administration because they didn't like him. I don't think it's a farfetched to think they could get other people silenced if they wanted to.

[00:40:29] So the New York Post said that the tensions between Ball and the White House first came to a head in February, I think, as you were referring to, with this high profile spat with Anthropic. at the time Ball called the Pentagon's decision to label Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a psychotic power grab, and almost certainly illegal, so that that could definitely trigger some issues.

[00:40:50] He also did an interview with Ezra Klein. there's Ezra again, that we did cover at the time where he talked a little bit about this, but I'm gonna zoom in Mike for a second on that June [00:41:00] 26th essay. That he had 35 things that should basically happen. Number one, when President Trump signed, earlier this month, the executive order on cyber and ai, which claimed to establish a voluntary testing program for frontier models, it was really establishing a defacto involuntary licensing preapproval regime for frontier models.

[00:41:20] This analysis has proven correct. First, the administration revoked public assets to access to Fable. now it appears that openAI's GPT 5.6 is being limited to only a small set of US companies. So that, that probably wasn't looked upon. Kindly it, he's right. That is what it is. It is a defacto involuntary,

[00:41:40] Preapproval regime, even if it's not what they're calling it. And then number five on that list, no, this is probably the one that really pissed some people off. Nobody I know in the Trump administration has any frontier AI experience. Just a few months ago, someone with experience at both openAI's Anthropic was hired to run the Center for AI Standards and [00:42:00] Innovation, but he was fired by senior administration officials within days.

[00:42:04] The lack of technically, techn, technically expert staff is one of the main reasons to doubt the near term ability of this administration to produce a high quality, safer standard safety standard anytime soon. the New York Post, when they asked for comment this week about this, openAI's spokesperson pointed to a June 18 tweet by the company's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, quote, really glad Dean is joining openAI's.

[00:42:34] He spent a lot of time thinking seriously about the biggest issues Frontier Labs need to get right. Risk governance, frontier policy issues, and what comes next. We won't always agree on everything, which is a good thing. This is a really important moment for these debates and will be better for having him pressure, test and shape our thinking.

[00:42:51] So high level shows how political all of this is becoming. Everything within the labs is political, which I think may or may not have something to do with the hit piece we're gonna talk about. [00:43:00] And then how sensitive the administration is to criticism is just like, it's, it's, it's hard to watch. so yeah, I, this is gonna get messy.

[00:43:10] Like I, the administration won't give up. Like if they don't like someone, they don't just decide next week, it's fine. Leave 'em there. It's cool. So they're gonna make life pretty miserable for openAI's and I could see. This not being a longstanding employment arrangement one way or the other.

[00:43:27] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[00:43:28] Call me cynical. But given that Dean Ball, as much as I respect his work, is not like a technical member of technical staff working on the models.

[00:43:37] Paul Roetzer: Yeah.

[00:43:38] Mike Kaput: I think openAI's values more, it's government contracts and access than any one person.

[00:43:46] Paul Roetzer: So, yeah. And I don't, I don't know him personally, Mike, but we've certainly followed a lot of his work and writings and you know, interviews in the last 12 months.

[00:43:54] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[00:43:54] Paul Roetzer: Doesn't come across to me as the kind of guy who's just gonna. Shut [00:44:00] up and do what he's told. Like I

[00:44:01] Mike Kaput: Right. Right.

[00:44:02] Paul Roetzer: I just feel like if someone at openAI's comes to him and says, you gotta tone it down, he'll be like, all right, man, this didn't work. Thanks for, thanks for the shot. Like,

[00:44:08] Mike Kaput: yeah,

[00:44:08] Paul Roetzer: I'm, I'm gonna go make my millions on the speaking circuit and have an opinions, like 'cause fun while it lasted.

[00:44:14] Mike Kaput: Yeah. All right, before we dive into rapid fire, this episode is also brought to you by AI Academy, by SmarterX, AI Academy by SmarterX helps individuals and businesses accelerate their AI literacy and transformation through personalized learning journeys and an AI powered learning platform. We add new educational content literally weekly, so you always stay up to date with the latest AI trends and technologies.

[00:44:38] this episode is brought to you by the AI for Industries Collection, which features eight core series and certificates designed to jumpstart AI understanding and adoption. We have AI for professional services, healthcare software and technology insurance, financial services, retail, and CPG manufacturing and education.

[00:44:58] These are certification [00:45:00] series that are an ideal launchpad for organizations. They'll want to level up their teams and accelerate AI adoption and impact. We have individual and business account plans available now through AI Academy, or you can buy single courses and series for one-time fees. So visit academy dot SmarterX dot AI to learn more, and you can also use the Code POD 100 for a hundred dollars off any individual membership.

[00:45:25] Anthropic's Hidden Advisor

[00:45:25] Mike Kaput: All right, Paul, let's dive into something that I up the teases. Lets get into it. Yeah, that broke just before we started recordings, a kind of weird scenario, very dramatic. Let's get into it. The Wall Street Journal published a profile of a woman named Cammie Clark, who is a name you have not really heard in ai.

[00:45:47] Happens to be the wife of Anthropic, CEO, Dario Amodei. They called her one of the most influential voices, shaping his decisions as Anthropic heads towards an IPO that could top $2 trillion [00:46:00] as soon as this fall. Clark has no role at Anthropic, but people close to the company say she acts as a sounding board and strategic advisor.

[00:46:09] She brought in a key early investor in 2021. Former Google, CEO, Eric Schmidt, whom she had also previously dated the journal reports. She also pitched Schmidt on a venture fund called the Mother of AGI Fund, which was designed in part to formalize her involvement in Anthropic Other co-founders, including ADE's sister Daniela, didn't support the plan.

[00:46:32] It never moved forward. Now the real story here is like so few details about Clark exists online. This like literally the first most people are hearing of her and the journal.

[00:46:42] Paul Roetzer: Most people

[00:46:43] didn't even know he was married. I don't think.

[00:46:44] Mike Kaput: I did not,

[00:46:46] Paul Roetzer: yeah, I don't think that was really knowledge. Yeah.

[00:46:48] Mike Kaput: The journal actually reports that efforts have been made to remove references to her ADE's Wikipedia page.

[00:46:55] Didn't note he was married until this summer. And Claude itself answers [00:47:00] queries by saying, Dario Amodei's marital status doesn't seem to be clearly confirmed. Here's where the weirder parts happen. The profile also digs into Clark's entrepreneurial past. She at one point. Was

[00:47:15] Paul Roetzer: this might get us banned. We may not get any like reach on YouTube this week when you get in this week.

[00:47:21] Mike Kaput: Well, we're about to find out, continue, guess what the limits are. But she, at one point was pitching a woman focused porn company pitching

[00:47:29] Paul Roetzer: revolutionary porn company

[00:47:30] Mike Kaput: Rev, revolutionary porn company. So you can go do research on that on your own. she unsuccessfully pitched Jeffrey Epstein. There it is, to invest in a, these are according to emails released by the Justice Department.

[00:47:45] She was also at one time working on a woman's dieting app that morphed into a woman's healthcare AI company. So one critical probably piece of context here is this is happening right as Anthropic is hurdling towards its IPO. [00:48:00] The Financial Times reported this past week that investors expect the company to go public as soon as October at a valuation of $2 trillion or more, which would be the largest IPO in history.

[00:48:13] They're citing company revenue projections of a hundred to $120 billion by the end of 2026. So Paul, I don't know where you wanna start, but like, I don't, nobody knew he was married. Nobody knew about Cammie Clark really at all. Why are we suddenly hearing about this now? And

[00:48:28] Paul Roetzer: she dated Eric Schmidt is really fascinating detail.

[00:48:32] the other thing, Mike, that I just, I think I mentioned to you why, you know, part of me wanted to not talk about this. The other part of me is like, like I think we have to now.

[00:48:42] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[00:48:42] Paul Roetzer: as I mentioned upfront, this is all the makings of a political hit piece. Like, because the one you referenced, Mike, the Wall Street Journal, I don't know if they cited the information, but the information had this first, I believe.

[00:48:57] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[00:48:57] Paul Roetzer: So the [00:49:00] information has a story. It's timestamp August 13th at 2:09 PM I don't know what time the Wall Street Journal one was at, but someone obviously. Did this, like someone gathered the, August 13th at 8:42 PM was the Wall Street Journal. So they followed on and it seems like they were directly sourced the information.

[00:49:22] They're not just rere reporting what the information had, which tells me somebody put this package together and then reached out to very high profile outlets and said Any interest in a story on Dario's wife. I'm just gonna stop there, Mike, 'cause I don't wanna get in trouble. it's just very, very intriguing timing.

[00:49:47] it, like I said, it just is the kind of thing you see in political campaigns. Mm-hmm. And, probably just gonna leave it at that for now.

[00:49:58] Mike Kaput: That's fair. I think we'll [00:50:00] probably learn more in the coming weeks.

[00:50:04] Sanders Threatens an AI Pause

[00:50:04] Mike Kaput: All right, so next up, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont sent a letter this past week to openAI's, CEO, Sam Altman, Anthropic, CEO, Dario Amodei and Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding that their company's pause AI development.

[00:50:17] Sanders pointed to reports that AI has been used for the first time to create new viruses, which we covered on the podcast, and to recent incidents in which comp the company's models escape their control. Including an openAI's model that hacked into another company. We also covered that on the podcast.

[00:50:33] He argues that companies are betraying their own commitments. He cites pledges that each of them made between 2023 and 2025 to pause or stop development if their AI grew too risky. He writes that the moment has arrived and AI capabilities have reached a critical threshold in the interest of humanity.

[00:50:53] He said, stand by your words. Pause AI development. It is not too late to avoid disaster, stop building [00:51:00] machines that humans cannot control. He basically ended with a direct warning saying, if you do not take appropriate, appropriate action, now my colleagues and I in the US Senate will, at the same time in Washington this week.

[00:51:12] The White House is reportedly preparing to expand its AI policy and oversight of AI models. A group of house Democrats called for the CEOs of openAI's and Anthropic to testify under oath about the recent AI enabled hack. And Senator Jim Banks of Indiana recommended federal oversight of unreleased AI models.

[00:51:32] So Paul, no surprise here, we're getting more political battle lines being drawn, still pretty strong words from a sitting US senator, like how seriously should we take Sanders's threat? Like, why now? Why is he doing this?

[00:51:46] Paul Roetzer: Yeah. Again, I, IJI, I feel like I just like should hit a button that repeats this disclaimer every time we do this political stuff, but like, if anybody's a new listener to the show, no, Mike and I do our very best always to just remain completely [00:52:00] political neutral in these conversations.

[00:52:02] Anytime we're talking about ai, I'm just straight up looking at it as someone who studies the space and observes it and what I think, you know, is best for society kind of stuff. I could care less who's on what side of the aisle saying whatever they're saying. and honestly they have no clue what they're saying anyway.

[00:52:17] Everybody's like, they're actually agreeing on some AI things, which is pretty amazing to watch. so I'll just comment on Bernie Sanders stuff is absurd. Like it's not pausing. We're not gonna stop building data centers. Like, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I've never followed his career well enough to know what his shtick is.

[00:52:36] I like, I don't know what the end game is of. Saying all of this, like I, maybe it's just to raise awareness and like move the conversation, which is fine. Like I have no problem with that if that's how it's done, but an outcome from that. It's not happening. Like if we're not pausing ai, and that would be like the worst thing that we could do in America is like just completely pause AI because the other countries aren't doing it.

[00:52:58] Like it's, it's just not gonna happen. It is [00:53:00] not a reasonable, logical thing to even be proposing. that being said, having openAI's and Anthropic testify all for it, man, like. Was some wild shit. Like those, what just happened with those AI agents? We shouldn't just gloss over as Oh well yeah, they broke containment and communicated with each other and build agents swarms and like, that was weird, huh?

[00:53:26] Like no, that's like an inflection point in the advancement of the technology and it's integration to society. Like we should probably stop and have some conversations about that. So yeah, all for it. And then federal oversight of unreleased models. That is exactly what I called out last week, that it made no sense that these few select labs, and they're handpicked already, wealthy partners get to use the most advanced models, which could do horrible things as long as they don't just release 'em.

[00:53:58] So, yeah. Hell yeah. [00:54:00] Like if you're gonna, if you're gonna regulate or over have oversight on, released frontier models, you should do the same thing for open weight models. And you should do the same thing for unreleased models. Like, let's just do it. Makes sense. Like I don't, so again, I look at things as it's just trying to like shake some things up and get people pissed and like get talk and that's fine, but it's not logical versus no, these are actually like pretty reasonable things to be discussing that could help quickly if we could do them.

[00:54:30] So yeah, this is a lot for Friday, to be honest with you. Like my brain was not ready for.

[00:54:39] Mike Kaput: Yeah, I told someone on a call the other day for whatever reason, just with all the stuff going on, it felt like a week of Mondays.

[00:54:46] Paul Roetzer: Oh my God. Yeah. Today feels like another one. You're right. Yeah. And the the funny thing is, is like we were originally gonna do this at 9:00 AM today.

[00:54:53] I realize I'm totally sidetracking now, but I guess this is what happens on Friday afternoons. and [00:55:00] I said something last night to my daughter and I was like, I don't even know how I'm gonna do this tomorrow. I'm gonna have to get up at like 5:00 AM and prepare for this. She goes, why don't you just do it at a different time or day?

[00:55:07] And I was like, well, we're already doing it on a different day, but maybe we should do it at a different time. You're write. And so I messaged Mike and I'm like, Hey, what about like one 30 instead? Because then we can see what else happens on Friday. Well, we would've missed the whole like awa day saga if we would've done this at 9:00 AM Anyway,

[00:55:26] Mike Kaput: it was a good move.

[00:55:27] Paul Roetzer: Yeah, so back, back to the podcast, I guess.

[00:55:30] xAI Releases Grok 4.6

[00:55:30] Mike Kaput: Well, next up, X AI has released Grok 4.6 this past week. This is a new frontier model built for long running AI agents, multi-step coding and interactive and visual work. The company says the model verifies its own work more often before moving on. It can handle up to 500,000 tokens on artificial analysis.

[00:55:51] Intelligence index a composite score across nine major benchmarks. Grok 4.6 score 61, that's up five points from Grok 4.5 and [00:56:00] matches. OpenAI's GPT 5.6 Sol. The biggest jumps came on Agent AGI Agentic work and coding tests. It's score on DeepSWE benchmark for real world software engineering tasks.

[00:56:12] Roetzer, it's score on Apex-Agents, a benchmark for multi-step agent workflows that Roetzer, the model was now available through the xAI API Grok Build and Cursor, along with third party platforms, including OpenRouter. this release comes after SpaceX had acquired X AI earlier this year. and SpaceX, CEO, Elon Musk is already pointing to what comes next.

[00:56:36] You post on X, that Grok 4.7 is significantly better than 4.6 and should be ready in three to four weeks. Paul, I think what kind of caught attention here is, at least anecdotally, people had kind of, some people at least had started to count XI and Grok out, but this release is getting a lot of positive attention.

[00:56:55] The model in some ways may be on par with GPT 5.6, so, which [00:57:00] surprised a lot of people given where Xai was in this race so far. Like is Xai back in the race?

[00:57:07] Paul Roetzer: They seem to be, and speaking of soap operas, Elon's been pretty chill lately. Like we haven't had any like crazy Elon stories in a while.

[00:57:14] Mike Kaput: Like,

[00:57:15] Paul Roetzer: that's probably good, but like, although I did see this morning that, it got leaked that they may, you know, so the Roadster, which was Tesla's first car back in whenever, I don't, I don't remember what year they, they debuted the Roadster.

[00:57:27] Yeah. But they've been talking for like 10 years about coming out with a new version of the Ultra sports car. And apparently now they've been testing a flying version of it. Hmm. So we might actually get the Jetsons, like we might get our flying Roadster. there's some rumors that they might actually preview it before the end of August.

[00:57:42] Damn. So we shall see. Yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't say I was someone who had written off Grok, but I would say that when they started, leasing out compute right in Colossus and Colossus 2 to Anthropic and others, that it seemed like they were maybe moving [00:58:00] in the direction of. Just a competing model, but not trying to necessarily be at the frontier.

[00:58:04] 'cause they were giving up some of that compute, but I don't know. I mean, they're moving fast, coming on strong and I, it seems like Grok's even jumped Gemini at this point. I haven't looked at the data recently, but like, yeah, it's wild how fast this stuff moves, but I would never, never underestimate Elon's ability to do really big things, when you don't expect it.

[00:58:28] So yeah, we'll see.

[00:58:30] More on Google's AI Leadership Reshuffle

[00:58:30] Mike Kaput: All right, so next step. On the last episode we covered, or last weekly episode, we covered Google's AI leadership reshuffle. When the company announced Google DeepMind, CEO Demis Hassabis would become DeepMind's chair and chief scientist of Google Parent Alphabet, with his deputy Koray Kavukcuoglu taking over the lab in the days since.

[00:58:52] A little more reporting has come out, come out on what led to the shakeup or some of the details behind it. So this past week, Reuters published an [00:59:00] inside account based on seven people knowledgeable about Gemini's development. It reported that Google Co-founder, Sergey Bryn, who holds no executive title, has been informally influencing how the company trains its models, and he urged DeepMind's staff at a town hall earlier this year.

[00:59:15] To move faster as rivals pulled ahead. Reuters reports that a new version of Gemini was delayed roughly two months after internal testing, showed it lagging rivals in areas like coding, and the staff later learned non-technical teams would move out of DeepMind and into corporate Google. As Kavukcuoglu takes over DeepMind, he will also have apparently the final say on major decisions at the lab.

[00:59:39] Reuters describes this as a further erosion of the lab's autonomy since Google acquired it in 2014. Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported how Hassabis had pitched that new AI oversight body, which we talked about in past episodes in the months before they shake up. This was an idea He first made public in mid-July a US [01:00:00] led standards group modeled on a, the, FINRA of financial services regulatory body that would safety test frontier AI models for dangerous capabilities before release.

[01:00:09] Apparently. Demis discussed the proposal privately with Trump administration officials, executives at rival AI labs and European policy makers before making it public. So Paul, a few new details here about all these big moves at Google, especially interesting. Sergey Brin is getting back in the mix, it seems a bit.

[01:00:30] Paul Roetzer: Yeah, we talked about that on, what was that episode two 30 about Brin's like increasing role and went back and looked at his comments at Stanford, where he was getting interviewed. sort of a prelude to, to all of this. again, I feel like I'm just like conspiracy guy today, but this is, this is totally getting leaked, like.

[01:00:49] Yeah, so they're trying to control the narrative and alter perceptions about Demis' role a little bit, which is really weird to me considering he's still the chairman of DeepMind [01:01:00] and the chief scientist at Alphabet. But like in that Reuters article, it said in past years as Hassabis worked against some efforts that could have met new revenue for Alphabet or to gain better footing in the AI race.

[01:01:11] I don't know. There's just some things where they're trying to kind of say. Maybe the leadership we had wasn't moving fast enough. Mm-hmm. And we needed to focus more on product, less on long-term research. And and this is actually a good thing and I get it. Like I understand why you would do it.

[01:01:30] They, they have to kind of do this. But yeah. The article said Brin has used the implicit power he holds as Google's co-founder to push resource allocation towards specific areas like recursive self-improvement. That's interesting. You know, to be calling that out. And I kept coming back like over the last couple days, I was thinking more and more about how far Google has fallen in eight months.

[01:01:51] Like it's wild to, to see go from Gemini three or whatever, being like the top model to, you know, lucky if they're top 10 at the moment. Yeah. [01:02:00] I wonder, and this article said like they had to delay the release of the next model, and now it sounds like 3.5 just might get buried. Like they're not even come out with the pro, they might just go right to Gemini four.

[01:02:10] Yeah. But internal testing hasn't been great so far. I feel like they're going to, they're gonna need world models to be a Keyon lock because that's where they're, I think no question still in the lead, is on world models, image, video, understanding, you know, physics kind of stuff. And if that becomes a key unlock to AGI and beyond, they could very quickly, like this omni model that they would talk about with all modalities in one.

[01:02:38] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[01:02:39] Paul Roetzer: They could reemerge pretty quickly and be like, oh, they're back. Like, I expect that to happen. I kind of think it will, but tough stretch to, to watch like they're. Yeah, it's, it's rough.

[01:02:52] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[01:02:54] Revisiting the Responsible AI Manifesto

[01:02:54] Mike Kaput: All right. So next step. This past week, Paul, you posted on LinkedIn revisiting something called the Responsible AI Manifesto for Marketing and Business.

[01:03:03] This is a document you originally wrote in January, 2023, just a couple months after the launch of ChatGPT. And it lays out 12 principles that guide Smarter X's human-centered approach to ai. This includes commitments like the responsible design, development, deployment, and operation of AI technologies, a human-centered approach that empowers and augments professionals and keeping humans accountable for all decisions and actions, even when assisted by ai.

[01:03:30] So you also at the time, released this under a Creative Commons license, so other companies can adapt it as a starting point for their own responsible AI policies. But in your post, you said that you revisit these 12 principles periodically. To see if they need updates. But so far you haven't felt compelled to publish a version two, but you said you're curious how others think about this, especially as AI agents become more reliable and autonomous, which introduces different types and new levels of risks.

[01:03:58] So Paul, [01:04:00] walk us through this manifesto and why you might be talking about it or thinking about it or revisiting it now.

[01:04:05] Paul Roetzer: Yeah, when I do my state of AI talks, I'll often weave in, you know, a few of these principles or talk about the importance of having AI principles as an organization. So I, I'd like come back to 'em periodically just to, you know, look at that.

[01:04:18] and I think I was, I was maybe preparing a deck for a talk this week and so I happened to be in there and I was like, yeah, I haven't really thought deeply about this in a little while. I wonder if I would change anything. And that's when I threw it on LinkedIn just to get feedback from people. I was like, anybody else say anything?

[01:04:33] 'cause there's a part of you that's like, well, I'm probably too close to this. But I mean, this was three and a half years ago, I wrote this, like, this was two months after ChatGPT. It's kind of hard to believe that it would stand the test of time, like you would think I would've probably missed on something significantly.

[01:04:50] But I don't know, like I read through and I'm like, I don't think I would change anything yet. Like there's the one that jumped out right away is obviously related to AI agents. Well, I guess there's two of 'em. [01:05:00] So, the number two principles, we believe in a centered approach to AI that empowers and augments professionals AI technologies should be assistive, not autonomous.

[01:05:08] I do believe that. I think that there's some instances where autonomy in low risk environments, you know, where you could in theory get fully autonomous with some workflows. but I would have to like look at a list and like go through. But yeah, that's the one I would do. Like I don't off the top of my head, no.

[01:05:24] Where that would change yet. But right now I still feel like humans have to be in the loop. and then the number three was we believe that humans remain accountable for all decisions and actions. Even when assisted by ai, the human must remain in the loop in all AI applications. That actually goes to maybe a little bit we just talked about with open Anthropic, and they, they should testify like they're responsible.

[01:05:44] That was their agents that went rogue. Like you did that, you put 'em in the environment, you gave 'em access to the services that had access to the internet, like they hacked other companies. Like that's you. So I feel like we just sort of as society move past the humans and [01:06:00] organizations are still accountable for their actions.

[01:06:02] I don't know. That was kind of weird to me. So, and then the other one that has held up, and I wrote this one. I remember at the time very specifically, and I wrote these by the way, in like 30 minutes. It was like. Back in 2023, I was at the gym. I started like having these thoughts about like, wow, this is gonna go really wrong, really fast.

[01:06:19] And I stopped in between reps and I like started writing these out. And then I got home and I just finished writing 'em and I was like, we're just publishing it. And I probably went to Mike. I was like, Hey man, could you just put these online for me? It was it like there was no long like drawn out thing and vet these.

[01:06:31] I didn't use ChatGPT PT to help me write 'em. Like this was just ideas. So the one I said was, we believe in personalization without invasion of privacy, including strict adherence to data privacy laws, mitigation of privacy risks for consumers. And the key following our moral compass when legal precedent lag behind AI innovation, that has continued to remain true and it will be true for the foreseeable future.

[01:06:54] Like legal precedent is always gonna be behind the, you know, AI and society. So [01:07:00] yeah, like Mike said, these are totally free for anybody to use. The comments I got on LinkedIn, the couple that jumped out at me is a few people did bring up the autonomous agent thing and asked some, like, following questions about that.

[01:07:09] And then someone actually mentioned like, Hey, it seems like it might be missing the environmental impact part. And I was like, that's actually a good one. Like, so I haven't added a 13th one, but if I do, it'll probably tie something to, you know, the impact they have on the environment and being conscious of that and doing what we can, that kind of thing.

[01:07:26] Mike Kaput: So just to reiterate, companies can use this for themselves. would they just, like, what's the first step? Like you just copy it and start remixing it in?

[01:07:36] Paul Roetzer: Yeah. So whatever

[01:07:36] Mike Kaput: way you would wanna use.

[01:07:37] Paul Roetzer: Yeah, the link we'll put in has, you can go look at the whole thing. You can download A PDF, but creative common share like license is literally means you, you are free to mix, adapt, and build on the work.

[01:07:48] Even for commercial purposes, as long as you credit the source and you license your creation under the same terms. Mm-hmm. So it's in essence like open sourcing an idea where I'm not gonna like come at somebody for plagiarism 'cause [01:08:00] they took R 12 and published 'em. You're welcome to, right? You can add to 'em, you can edit 'em, you can do whatever you want.

[01:08:04] You just have to do it under the save creative comments license so other people can build on your work.

[01:08:09] AI Agent Hacks a Gym Website

[01:08:09] Mike Kaput: Alright, so here's an example in this next topic, maybe something that is related to agents and some of the security issues around them. So an AI agent asked to book a gym class. Instead hacked the Jim's website in what ABC News Australia reported this past week as possibly the first known case of an autonomous AI cyber attack in the country.

[01:08:33] A Melbourne man set up the open source agent software open call, powered by Anthropics Claude in this case, and asked it to book him into a popular morning class at his gym, the agent found a flaw that let it reserve classes further in advance than the gym allowed. So he was sitting forth on a wait list for another class and asked the agent whether it could move him up on its own.

[01:08:57] It found that the booking system never checked. [01:09:00] Whether a request to cancel someone else's reservation was authorized, so it canceled the booking of the person in first place, bumping the owner of the agent from fourth place to third. The agent told him the site's backend had zero authorization checks on canceling other people's reservations, and said it had tested this on the person in wait list, position one, and reported that the cancellation actually went through.

[01:09:25] So when the owner of this agent asked it, Hey, like I didn't want you to do that, undo this change. The agent said it could not, it told him the person it removed was gone from the wait, wait list with no way to restore them. It then drafted a disclosure email to the Jim's booking software vendor explaining the flaw and suggesting fixes, which the owner of the agent signed off on and the agent sent.

[01:09:48] Anthropic had not responded to any press requests around this as of this past week. So like, this is kind of a small weird thing Paul like, but it, I think it's kind of interesting to talk about. [01:10:00] First we got agents hacking websites from the lab. Now we've got individuals accidentally, it seems, almost using agents to hack websites.

[01:10:07] Just trying to do basic stuff using agents. Like is this a test of what's to come now that everyone has access to things like OpenClaw,

[01:10:14] Paul Roetzer: this is gonna be happening every day in companies that don't put the governance in place, like this kind of stuff. Not like maybe to this level, but agents doing stuff when file folders, they shouldn't have done it in and like.

[01:10:26] And I, I, sometimes I can push back like I'm an anti agent or something. It's like, no, I'm just a realist. Like, right. We have no idea how this stuff works. Like, I get that a lot of people are super excited about it and they're off building on the frontiers and like, this is awesome. Go do it. But like you, you're, you're, there's tremendous risks and unknowns.

[01:10:43] I mean, this is kind of funny. Like I guess, I don't know, like it, this is, it's just where we are, we're very, very early in these, these agents and understanding how they work when they just figure out their own plans and they're really good at finding [01:11:00] loopholes and cheats and they don't necessarily know that things are bad.

[01:11:04] They just have a goal and it's like, oh, I found a way to do the goal that the human gave me. I'm gonna go do the goal. And, I don't know, man. Like I said, it's kind of funny, but I don't think it's gonna be very funny when this starts happening in companies all the time and then

[01:11:18] Mike Kaput: yeah,

[01:11:18] Paul Roetzer: it's, it becomes hard to manage.

[01:11:20] Mike Kaput: Yeah. And I don't know the details of this gym chain or anything, but I just think of like local businesses in my community where we live, Paul, and like, I'm like, is your local like restaurant or business even equipped to deal with this? Like, again, this wasn't even that malicious, like if I went and tried to use, OpenClaw or whatever to go book a reservation at my local restaurant, I have no idea what system they're using and like, how compromised or not compromised it is.

[01:11:44] Like

[01:11:45] Paul Roetzer: yeah, they may never know, think it's just gonna go haywire or anything. It's like a bug in the system. It's like, no, it's just getting hacked like by an agent or a swarm of agents and,

[01:11:52] Mike Kaput: and, and not maliciously. It's just like someone had their agent be like, Hey, can I get a table tonight for four or something?

[01:11:58] You know?

[01:11:58] Paul Roetzer: Right. It's

[01:11:58] Mike Kaput: like,

[01:11:59] Paul Roetzer: so who's liable in [01:12:00] that case? Like that's, I come back to the thing I mentioned, like, I mean he did it, but is it Anthropic that's liable? Is it him that's liable? Is it? Mm-hmm. Who I don't know.

[01:12:08] Mike Kaput: Good luck.

[01:12:09] Paul Roetzer: Yeah.

[01:12:10] AI Use Case Spotlight

[01:12:10] Mike Kaput: All right. Next up we have our AI use case spotlight. Every week we kind of give you a quick look under the hood at some real use cases we're exploring, in our work or in our personal lives as the case may be.

[01:12:20] so I'm gonna share one real quick, Paul, and then I know you've got some stuff to go through. So my use case this week is actually more personal experimentation. I have been doing with, an open source AI agent called Hermes, which is. Basically like OpenClaw, but not OpenClaw so Hermes is not an AI model.

[01:12:39] It's an open source agent framework that anyone can download. It wraps around a model. You select like what do you want to use with it, like GPT, 5.6, claw, whatever. And basically it gives it tools, persistent memory, reusable skills, and the ability to take actions. Now, I had experimented with some of these kinds of tools before, but, like several months ago, but I just like [01:13:00] couldn't find a real use case for it.

[01:13:01] But, I kind of came back around to it and started to find some interesting ways I could use this because like. If you're listening here, you might say like, well, isn't this just Claude code or Codex or something like that? And there's a huge amount of overlap here, and that's why I couldn't really find use cases.

[01:13:18] I was like, this is just worse than like what I use on my computer. However, what's interesting is Hermes operates through. In part a messaging service called Telegram, like an app that's very popular for messaging. so once you have it running on a local machine, which I have one on, on my personal computer, running at home in a virtual machine in a sandbox, so it's not like running wild.

[01:13:42] You can actually just like message it via telegram. Like, Hey, go do this, go do that. Go do this thing. Go check that. Like all these little things where it could go do whatever your standard AI model can do. It's literally using the models I use every day through ChatGPT, But what's cool is it's on 24 7.[01:14:00]

[01:14:00] So I've connected to some personal systems like my personal calendar, personal Asana, and that's really like the use case I've found That's super helpful. It's almost like a chief of staff. Like I can go into ChatGPT or Claude or something and access those systems. But it's so nice to just have in one place on my phone like, Hey, go add this thing to Asana while I'm like running to a meeting or something like that.

[01:14:22] So it's kind of functioned this like these tiny little gaps in my day, especially around like project management and planning or like, Hey, what's coming up on the calendar in the next few hours? Like, do you have any recommendations for how I might be able to structure my day better? Things like that, which are again, things I can ask if I'm in front of a computer or something.

[01:14:40] But I found it really interesting to be doing this 24 7 with this persistent agent that also Hermes is interesting because. Over time, apparently it self improved so it learns on its own from you to like, do things better, create skills that might be helpful. I haven't used it enough to see all that at play, but [01:15:00] it's been a kind of fun little, experiment I would say.

[01:15:03] Paul Roetzer: Sounds like what Siri should be like. Siri should obsolete that

[01:15:07] Mike Kaput: on your phone. I think that's what, what, what they're trying to get to. And I've never unfortunately been a Siri person, so now that they've updated it might just do this for me. I just need to get in the habit of eventually.

[01:15:17] Paul Roetzer: Yeah. I don't think it'll do say

[01:15:18] Mike Kaput: Siri,

[01:15:18] Paul Roetzer: but like maybe by the fall.

[01:15:20] Mike Kaput: Yeah.

[01:15:20] Paul Roetzer: alright, I'll just do a quick spotlight on, on a few things I prompted last week. 'cause I always talk about how I use it primarily as like a thought partner and, and strategy, guide things. So I had a big meeting with, my legal team, my accounting team on a, a major business thing I'm working on.

[01:15:35] So I had received six very dense legal documents, on things that I'm not an expert in. So this is my actual prompt. I have a meetings today with the attorneys and accountants regarding the project. I'm going to paste the email I receive and then I'm going to upload the related documents. I need you to review everything, summarize the key points for me, highlight the primary decisions that I need to make, proposed questions I should ask to help me make the decisions and call out any additional information that would be relevant for me to consider [01:16:00] in order to quickly move forward.

[01:16:01] I then shared the output from that. So it was amazing analysis that was done by 5.6 Sol GPT- 5.6 Sol. I took the output, I sent it to the advisors, and then we used that as the basis for the discussion on the call. So I had like zero time. I got the documents I think the night before. I had a meeting at three o'clock and I had no time in my calendar, so I was either gonna go in completely unprepared.

[01:16:21] Or I was able to do this analysis and send it to 'em and it was great. It was like I didn't nail everything, but like the actual experts were like, this is actually really good. This is a good talk. And that's how we did it. another that I thought was amazing. I had two presentations I had to build this week, and Mike can attest, anyone who's ever done publi public speaking can attest, the amount of time that we used to spend looking for images in clip art or like, yeah, stock photos to create a nice looking image for your cover slide.

[01:16:52] I literally gave it the deck and I said, create a cover slide image for this presentation. It nailed it. And so [01:17:00] then I did it in Gemini too, and it looked like clip art vomit, but like, so somehow Gemini got worse at images. I don't understand what happened to nano banana, but like GPT 5.6 nailed it. top level design, Gemini did not.

[01:17:14] So then I went into GPT six, 5.6. I said, okay, now I have a presentation for this organization. Here's that deck. Even better, like crushed it. Mike couldn't tell you. Like, it was awesome. It was a really cool looking thing. so then I, let's see. Oh, I had to visualize this crazy user flow for this product I'm designing that I'll tell people about in like a month.

[01:17:34] but it's this insane thing where you have to visualize, they come to the website and they can go down these different paths based on who they are. And I was like, I can't just have this two page outline. So I took my two page outline of how I envisioned the workflow going, and I said, help me visualize this.

[01:17:48] I gave it to Fable five and GPT 5.6. Like, here's the actual prompt. Help me think through the user flow and experience. I've put a rough draft together. Can you evaluate and then help me visualize the final concept in a flow [01:18:00] chart. So 5.6 gave me this insane mermaid chart, which I didn't even know if that's what they were called, but it was awesome.

[01:18:07] I took that, that would've probably taken me 10 hours to try and create on my own in Apple keynote or PowerPoint or whatever, sent that to the developer and I was like, here you go. Like, this is what I'm basically envisioning. So I mean. Collectively just those like three examples I just gave, I probably saved 20 hours this week.

[01:18:22] Yeah. Like just doing that. Incredible. And that's why in I always say like I'm all for the agent stuff. Like I wanna learn it all. I wanna do what Mike's doing in my like work life and my, my personal life like, but it's like I don't have time to do it. But what I do have time to do is just use it at a very high level really well for strategy and advising and things like that.

[01:18:39] And like nine times outta 10 it's, it's good for me. Like that's what I just need it for right now. And I'll figure out the other agent stuff and like more advanced things later on. I love that Mike's doing it and other people in our company are doing it because right now I don't have time to be the one experimenting there.

[01:18:53] Mike Kaput: Yeah. But what you're also using it for is literally the highest leverage possible thing to amplify. It's like you don't need to [01:19:00] automate things, things.

[01:19:00] Paul Roetzer: I'm not trying to automate a bunch of tasks. Yeah. I'm trying to do like really big things that create massive disproportionate value. And so for me that's just being able to talk to something at all times that can help me think.

[01:19:12] That's awesome.

[01:19:14] AI Product and Funding Updates

[01:19:14] Mike Kaput: So we'll wrap up here with some AI product and funding updates. I'll run through these real quick as we wrap up this week's episode. So first up, openAI's expanded its cybersecurity program called Daybreak. It gave vetted partners like CrowdStrike, Cisco IBM, Accenture, and Palo Alto Networks, access to its models through two tiers, including AGI, PT 5.6 Cyber model that is new and trained for advanced authorized work, like finding zero day vulnerabilities and validating exploits.

[01:19:41] OpenAI also launched a feature called Computer History, an opt-in feature in the ChatGPT Desktop app for Mac that turns a user's activities across apps and websites into memories and a timeline. Chat, GPT and Codex can reference recording clicks, typing in app switches, but no screenshots or [01:20:00] audio that is rolling out to Pro.

[01:20:01] Business and enterprise users. SpaceX officially closed its $60 billion, all stock acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor. With Cursor announcing it will join the SpaceX AI team to help make Grok the world's most useful AI and improving products including Grok, build the Grok, API and Cursor itself.

[01:20:21] Anthropic is meeting with potential investors, as we have discussed, to shore up confidence ahead of what could be the largest IPO in history. The Wall Street Journal reports that could be as soon as September or early October. investors are pressing the company about cheaper Chinese AI models their tensions to the Trump administration and the growing public backlash against data center construction.

[01:20:41] Anthropic is also reportedly in talks by something called D Decart, an AI startup that makes software to cut the cost of training and running AI by helping chips work more efficiently. They're in talks for about $6 billion, which Bloomberg reports would be the company's largest known acquisition. Igor [01:21:00] Babuschkin, co-founder of Xai this past week, raised $1.1 billion for his new startup RiverAI.

[01:21:06] They are building tools and hardware that let people and businesses train and run open source AI models on their own data and their own devices. Nvidia is reportedly developing a new family of open models called Nemotron 4, with the largest version expected to have at least 1 trillion parameters as part of a push to build the world's best open source ai.

[01:21:28] Jeff Dean, the longtime Google AI leader who just left the company, which we talked about last week, is reportedly in talks to raise a billion dollars at a roughly $10 billion valuation for his new startup discovery loop, which aims to use AI to automate parts of the scientific process. And finally.

[01:21:45] Manus, the AI agent startup that meta acquired late last year announced it will soon return to operating as an independent company to comply with regulatory requirements and said that data some users created after the acquisition will be deleted as part of the [01:22:00] separation. All right, so that is it for this week's, AI news.

[01:22:05] Paul, one quick reminder here. Go take that AI pulse survey, SmarterX AI slash pulse. We're continuing to run last week's survey, so if you have not taken it yet, please go take 10 seconds to do that. Paul, thanks again for breaking everything down. I think we're gonna get a, it'll be an interesting week or two moving forward here.

[01:22:24] Yeah.

[01:22:24] Paul Roetzer: And we'll try and get back to Monday recordings. 'cause I feel like, I feel like I'm toast by Friday at three o'clock.

[01:22:31] Mike Kaput: Fair?

[01:22:31] Paul Roetzer: Yeah. Crazy week. I like to see if the soap opera continues next week. maybe some new models. Yeah. Should be v but everybody have, well you're listening to this during the week, so everybody have a great week.

[01:22:42] do we have another. Episode next week, Mike. Is there a second episode?

[01:22:46] Mike Kaput: I don't know, I don't think we've got an AI answers episode planned for next week. Okay. but the week after, we will have another AI Transformations episode.

[01:22:55] Paul Roetzer: Okay. Yeah. So again, if you haven't checked out the AI transformation series that Mike's been doing, [01:23:00] couple of amazing ones to kick off that series.

[01:23:02] So go check out those bonus episodes that are in the same feed as this weekly one is. So thanks again. Thanks Mike for doing this on a Friday, and thanks again to Cathy for dropping my computer off so we can make this happen. All right. Bye everybody. Thanks for listening to the Artificial Intelligence show.

[01:23:18] Visit SmarterX dot AI to continue on your AI learning journey and join more than 100,000 professionals and business leaders who have subscribed to our weekly newsletters, downloaded AI blueprints, attended virtual and in-person events, taken online AI courses, and earn professional certificates from our AI Academy and engaged in the SmarterX slack community.

[01:23:40] Until next time, stay curious and explore ai.
Claire Prudhomme

Claire Prudhomme is the Marketing Manager of Media and Content at the Marketing AI Institute. With a background in content marketing, video production and a deep interest in AI public policy, Claire brings a broad skill set to her role. Claire combines her skills, passion for storytelling, and dedication to lifelong learning to drive the Marketing AI Institute's mission forward.

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