LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“AI #146: Chipping In” by Zvi


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It was touch and go, I’m worried GPT-5.2 is going to drop any minute now, but DeepSeek v3.2 was covered on Friday and after that we managed to get through the week without a major model release. Well, okay, also Gemini 3 DeepThink, but we all pretty much know what that offers us.

We did have a major chip release, in that the Trump administration unwisely chose to sell H200 chips directly to China. This would, if allowed at scale, allow China to make up a substantial portion of its compute deficit, and greatly empower its AI labs, models and applications at our expense, in addition to helping it catch up in the race to AGI and putting us all at greater risk there. We should do what we can to stop this from happening, and also to stop similar moves from happening again.

I spent the weekend visiting Berkeley for the Secular Solstice. I highly encourage everyone to watch that event on YouTube if you could not attend, and consider attending the New York Secular Solstice on the 20th. I will be there, and also at the associated mega-meetup, please do say hello.

If all [...]

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Outline:

(01:38) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(03:17) ChatGPT Needs More Mundane Utility

(05:56) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(06:19) On Your Marks

(08:34) Choose Your Fighter

(10:14) Get My Agent On The Line

(12:10) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(12:52) Fun With Media Generation

(13:14) Copyright Confrontation

(13:25) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

(15:20) They Took Our Jobs

(21:34) Americans Really Do Not Like AI

(23:40) Get Involved

(25:06) Introducing

(26:11) Gemini 3 Deep Think

(27:16) In Other AI News

(29:35) This Means War

(31:11) Show Me the Money

(31:33) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

(33:55) Quiet Speculations

(35:21) Impossible

(37:58) Can An AI Model Be Too Much?

(39:39) Try Before You Tell People They Cannot Buy

(42:22) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(43:29) The Chinese Are Smart And Have A Lot Of Wind Power

(44:28) White House To Issue AI Executive Order

(50:42) H200 Sales Fallout Continued

(59:41) Democratic Senators React To Allowing H200 Sales

(01:01:17) Independent Senator Worries About AI

(01:02:53) The Week in Audio

(01:03:26) Timelines

(01:04:47) Scientific Progress Goes Boink

(01:08:36) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:12:22) Open Weight Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This

(01:13:21) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:14:45) What AIs Will Want

(01:18:31) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:22:03) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:24:33) The Lighter Side

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First published:

December 11th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rYshzqJ5ZdEcjmXzc/ai-146-chipping-in

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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