The AI Slowdown Debate | Diet TBPN
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What happened over the weekend and why does it matter for the AI debate?
We're back. Did anything happen over the weekend in tech or was it kind of mellow?
Uh it was a crazy weekend. There was a lot of news, a lot of back and forth about pacing the AI debate. I was in the hospital 'cause I got rhabdo. It's brutal, but I am recovering fourteen. Explain
rhabdo 'cause it sounds it's bad really scary and it is bad.
It can be very bad. Fortunately, I I I did okay. I got an IV, uh, got some medicine, uh broke a fever, got through it, and I'm I'm healing up. But uh it it happens and it's the dumbest, dumbest uh illness you can possibly get. It comes from uh working out too much and not being hydrated. Very avoidable. Hopefully AI can find a cure. If there's even a one percent chance that AI can find a prevention for rhabdo, I think it's worth any amount of risk.
Pushing forward.
Yeah, we m we must push forward. Uh no, lots of debate.
We have never missed an episode for being sick. Yeah.
How did the hosts explain rhabdomyolysis and its relevance to AI research?
And I realize that because someone's asking me the other day, what do you guys do when you're sick? We just we keep going. I mean I did talk to the doctor. I mean I did talk to
the doctor, they they they said, Do you want a do you want a doctor's note for work? And I was like, No. I kinda laughed. Uh but uh I do think that uh like this job can be done while sick because you're just sitting in a chair having a conversation. But I might be a little bit slow today. So bear with me if I'm not the sharpest on any of the questions. Before we get into the pacing AI debate, uh what happened with the US Open? Give me a little tennis update. What happened?
Um
it's on the cover of the Wall Street Journal, so you know it's important news. Uh tennis's US open climaxes and back and forth duel, but there was something interesting.
Ben Shelton, the American lost.
Okay.
Uh and uh what was notable was that when he actually hit the winning shot and uh and won. Uh he went back and was getting s ready for the next uh for the next um point.
Yeah.
And uh he starts looking around and everyone is st you can see people in the crowd are standing up uh and and and cheering and he slowly realizes that he won. Uh by checking the finally looking at the scoreboard. And yeah, it just w became very obvious that he was so focused on the next point, he was not actually not looking at the scoreboard at all. It was just like flow state, just just playing. That's awesome. Um and I'm sure a lot of venture capitalists out there were seeing that. And they're like, Yeah, all that matters is your next investment. You shouldn't even know when one of your companies, your seed companies, are gonna IPO. Yeah. You should be so focused on on the next investment. I mean I think
a lot of people that don't like VC Victory Labs would appreciate that too. It's like we get it. There was an acquisition. Uh let's focus on what you're doing right now. Um I also like the cameraman work. I saw a clip of the scoreboard was counting down. There was zero. Zero seven seconds left. What who do they cut to? Piers Brosnan, double O seven himself. I thought that was nice camera work. Shows you that there's levels to the game of live production.
Yeah. You know,
you gotta you y th those little touches, clearly that was just spur of the moment. That's not that's not something that's scripted. That's just someone being creative in the moment with the tools that they have. The switcher, basically. Uh anyway, the the pacing AI debate. I wanted to start with some history here, and then we can go through the timeline of what actually happened uh since we got off stream Friday. And then all the news breaks, of course. But the pacing the frontier goes back to July 28th of this year. So there was a there was a uh Pacing the Frontier statement, an open letter. It was signed by employees and leaders from OpenAI Anthropic. Deep mind meta and a bunch of other places talking about this idea of pacing the frontier.
Then uh the same day Sam Altman publicly said we may have to pace the rate of AI development. Two days later Open AI uh uh tells Axios that open AI shaped the position the petition's language and Altman had discussed pacing with White House officials, so stuff was happening in D C.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What happened over the weekend and why does it matter for the AI debate?
0:01–0:54
2
How did the hosts explain rhabdomyolysis and its relevance to AI research?
0:54–4:13
3
What was the key takeaway from the US Open tennis match and why was it mentioned?
4:13–8:47
4
How did the pacing‑the‑frontier AI debate originate and who signed the open letter?
8:47–16:20
5
What are the three steps proposed in Dario Amodei’s “We Must Pace the Frontier” essay?
16:20–21:35
6
Why are independent third‑party evaluators controversial in AI safety?
21:35–25:32
7
How does the discussion connect AI pacing with energy policy and renewable power?
25:32–25:38
Speakers
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