OpenAI's Fog of War + Betting on Iran + Hard Fork Review of Slop
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Casey, something horrible has happened. What's that? My wife has fallen in love with an AI. Which AI? So for background, you know, my wife is not like a very techie person. She's not an early adopter. She works in city government. She's like a regular adopter. Like when it gets good, she's interested.
But don't talk to her before then.
Exactly. And it just got good enough for her to take an interest. And so yesterday she discovered Claude Code and started using it to do some stuff at work. And now it's all she wants to talk about. We're like out at a party last night and she's like, I just can't stop thinking about my coding. She had a dream about vibe coding last night. And maybe all of this is sort of some like karmic, you know, revenge for the Bing Sidney episode. But I do feel like I'm getting a taste of my own medicine here.
I mean, to me, this seems like your dream come true. Like, what does any man want more than his wife taking an interest in his hobby? This is like could be one of the best things that's happened to you in a long time.
It's true. It's true. I think we've always benefited in our marriage from the fact that we are. Are you speaking about our marriage or your marriage to your wife? my marriage to my wife that we're sort of like interested in different things and we can kind of cross pollinate. And so I guess I want to ask you as someone who's in a relationship with someone who works in AI, like how do you stop talking about it? Do you have like set hours where you're like, we're not going to talk about AI for this next hour? Here's what I'll say. If I ever figured that out, you'll be the first to know.
Okay. In my house, the few respites we get from AI during the week, I would say, would involve Friday night episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race. That's a good solid one hour of not talking about AI. Okay. And yeah, outside of that, we're really monitoring the situation, Kevin. We are fully locked in.
I'm Kevin Russo, tech columnist at the New York Times.
I'm Casey Newton from Platformer. And this is Hard Fork. This week, OpenAI scrambles to contain the fallout from its deal with the Pentagon. Then, how prediction markets have become one of the most controversial parts of the U.S. attack on Iran. And finally, it's a Hard Fork review of slop for children. You'll never guess what Peppa Pig is doing now.
Well, Casey, we are now in week two of this incredible high-stakes drama that's been playing out between the Pentagon and America's leading AI companies. There's been a lot going on. We now have more clarity on why the deal between Anthropic and the Pentagon fell apart. We also know how this Anthropic supply chain risk designation is actually going into effect and impacting the way that government agencies are responding. And we have been learning this week about how open AIs deal with the Pentagon is shaping up. So lots to discuss here. But first, we should make our disclosures. I work at The New York Times suing open AI and Microsoft in perplexity over alleged copyright violations. And my fiance works at Anthropic.
Okay, let's start with OpenAI because they are sort of the late arrival into this story, but in some ways the most dramatic. Since Sam Altman announced last Friday that OpenAI had arrived at an agreement with the Pentagon, we have learned a little bit more about that agreement. As a reminder, according to Sam Altman, this agreement did include some prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons system, basically the same two red lines that Anthropic had set out that were causing them so much trouble with the Pentagon. And I think it's fair to say this provoked one of the biggest backlashes in that company's history.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–11:31
2
How did OpenAI's Pentagon deal trigger public backlash and a rapid damage-control response?
11:31–27:34
3
What contract language did OpenAI release and why do experts say it's incomplete?
27:34–44:17
4
How are OpenAI employees and leadership reacting to the Pentagon agreement and resignations?
44:17–1:02:08
5
Why did Anthropic face a simultaneous boom in revenue and a 'supply chain risk' designation?
1:02:08–1:07:40
Speakers
6 identifiedMore from Hard Fork
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OpenAI’s Two-Week Pause + Jill Lepore on the Threat of the “Artificial State” + Train of Thought
Zuckerberg’s Anti-Doom Fantasy + Finally an A.I. Detector That Works + A.I. Math