Show notes
One potentially big event was that DeepSeek came out with v3.1. Initial response was very quiet, but this is DeepSeek and there are some strong scores especially on SWE and people may need time to process the release. So I’m postponing my coverage of this to give us time to learn more. Meta is restructuring its AI operations, including a hiring freeze. Some see this as some sign of an AI pullback. I don’t think that is right. Nor do I think what they are doing with their Ai companions is right, as we got a look inside their 200 page document of what they think is acceptable. I wrote about current AI Companion Conditions at Meta and also xAI. The weirdest event of the week was America and China both self-sabotaging on chips. America is trying to sell Nvidia H20s to China and looks open [...] ---Outline:(01:44) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(06:58) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(12:54) Huh, Upgrades(17:41) Absurd Sycophancy(21:19) The Real Alignment Problem Is We Don't Know How To Align Models(29:15) Unprompted Suggestions(29:55) On Your Marks(34:11) Choose Your Fighter(36:46) Preserve Our History(40:48) Autonomous Friendly Robots(42:00) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(46:25) Oops I Did It Again(49:38) You Drive Me Crazy(56:12) They Took Our Jobs(59:28) Get Involved(59:42) Introducing(01:00:02) In Other AI News(01:04:19) Show Me the Money(01:08:59) Lol We're Meta(01:13:33) Quiet Speculations(01:16:14) The Quest for Sane Regulations(01:16:35) Chip City(01:27:33) The Week in Audio(01:35:15) Rhetorical Innovation(01:42:09) Misaligned!(01:42:44) Open Models(01:45:48) AI Model Welfare(01:48:41) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:51:08) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:55:02) The Lighter Side --- First published: August 21st, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dt22xhz4jeynahRY4/ai-130-talking-past-the-sale --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.