AI Explained Official Podcast

Is Manus AI the memecoin of the AI world, or legit? I’ll compare it to OpenAI’s Deep Research, Operator, Grok 3 DeepSearch and more to find out. I’ll also let you in on some of the secrets of what makes a good hype campaign, the estimated costs of Manus AI, and where it is strong. Other news (yes, Gemini image editing and research hacking, I mean you), will have to wait for a few more hours, as millions enquire about Manus AI.

https://app.grayswan.ai/arena

AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained
Patreon Vid: https://www.patreon.com/posts/4-ai-trends-in-123857767

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:46 - Hype Campaign
02:40 - Single, Public Benchmark 
03:12 - What is Manus AI?
04:22 - Test 1
05:12 - Cost and Rate Limits
06:15 - Test 2 vs Deep Research + Grok 3 DeepSearch
08:24 - Test 3 (not AGI)
11:10 - 4 Trends in AI in 2025
11:37 - Hype Works

Manus AI: https://manus.im/app

Xiao Hong Interview: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/manus-chinas-latest-ai-sensation

Gaia Benchmark: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=fibxvahvs3
MIT Report: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/11/1113133/manus-ai-review/

Information Report: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropics-claude-drives-strong-revenue-growth-while-powering-manus-sensation?rc=sy0ihq

Hype Examples: https://x.com/Saboo_Shubham_/status/1898425707401031940
https://x.com/EHuanglu/status/1899110687902978373
https://x.com/AJs_AI/status/1898756132384178291

Mistakes: https://x.com/TheXeophon/status/1898737178273829220

Tools and Code: https://x.com/peakji/status/1898994802194346408

https://operator.chatgpt.com/




Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Podcast: https://aiexplainedopodcast.buzzsprout.com/

GPT 4.5 is here, and do you remember when AI lab CEOs like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei were betting everything on scaling up base models like this one? Well let’s find out what would have happened if the future of AI rested on models like GPT 4.5. You’ll see all the benchmarks, highlights of the paper, emotional intelligence and humor tests, Simple Bench results (reddit was an unreliable source), and why it’s not all bad news for OpenAI.

https://www.emergentmind.com/

AI Insiders (now $9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:04 - Details and Benchmarks
03:04 - Emotional intelligence? 
08:37 - Creative writing?
11:40 - Visual reasoning and Pricing
12:41 - Simple Performance
16:01 - End of Pretraining Scaling?
17:03 - CEO Hype
18:11 - System Card Highlights
23:32 - Karpathy Reaction

GPT 4.5 System card: https://cdn.openai.com/gpt-4-5-system-card-2272025.pdf
Release Notes: https://openai.com/index/gpt-4-5-system-card/
Altman Hype: https://x.com/sama/status/1891533802779910471
Details: https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-4-5/ https://x.com/OpenAI/status/1895219596317335792
End of an Era: https://x.com/wgussml/status/1895187231666774377
Anthropic Original Claim: https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/06/anthropics-5b-4-year-plan-to-take-on-openai/
Smell: https://x.com/rapha_gl/status/1895213014699385082
Bob McGrew: https://x.com/bobmcgrewai/status/1895228291981943265
Deep Research System Card: https://cdn.openai.com/deep-research-system-card.pdf
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1izu1t7/gpt45_crushes_simple_bench/
API Pricing: https://openai.com/api/pricing/
LiveStream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfRYp0nItZ8&t=1s
https://simple-bench.com/


Karpathy Comparison: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1895213020982472863
https://x.com/karpathy/status/1895337579589079434


Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Claude 3.7 is here, hot on the heels of Grok 3 and a host of other developments, but how good is it really? And what does it say about the next few months in AI? I’ve read the papers, played with the model for hours, and benched it on Simple. Things aren’t slowing down. Plus the latest in humanoid robots, led by Helix and freaked out by Protoclone. And reports of GPT 4.5 and DeepSeek R2.

GraySwan Competition! https://app.grayswan.ai/arena/challenge/agent-red-teaming

https://x.com/GraySwanAI/status/1894084923260043282

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

01:25 - Claude 3.7 New Stats/Demos 

05:22 - 128k Output

06:13 - Pokemon

06:58 - Just a tool? 

09:54 - DeepSeek R2

10:20 - Claude 3.7 System Card/Paper Highlights 

17:18 - Simple Record Score/Competition

20:37 - Grok 3 + Redteaming prizes

22:26 - Google Co-scientist

24:02 - Humanoid Robot Developments

3.7 Release Notes: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-3-7-sonnet

vs o3 and Grok 3: https://x.com/12exyz/status/1891723056931827959

Extended Thinking: https://www.anthropic.com/research/visible-extended-thinking?s=09

System Prompt: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/release-notes/system-prompts#feb-24th-2025

System Card: https://assets.anthropic.com/m/785e231869ea8b3b/original/claude-3-7-sonnet-system-card.pdf

Unfaithful CoT: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.04388

Original Constitution: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claudes-constitution

Responsible Scaling Policy: https://assets.anthropic.com/m/24a47b00f10301cd/original/Anthropic-Responsible-Scaling-Policy-2024-10-15.pdf

Amodei and Hassabis:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4poqjZlM8Lo

https://simple-bench.com/

400 Weekly Users: https://x.com/bradlightcap/status/1892579908179882057

Grok 3 Jailbroken: https://x.com/LinusEkenstam/status/1893832876581380280

Google Co-Scientist: https://research.google/blog/accelerating-scientific-breakthroughs-with-an-ai-co-scientist/

But Hassabis Says Years Away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr0GiSgUvPU&t=156s

DeepSeek R2 Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/deepseek-rushes-launch-new-ai-model-china-goes-all-2025-02-25/

Protoclone: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1it9rpp/protoclone_the_worlds_first_bipedal/

Helix: https://www.figure.ai/news/helix

TechTrance: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTechTrance/videos

GPT 4.5 Soon:

A 'frontier reasoning model' from just 1000 examples (s1). A $100B Musk bid for power. Gemini 2, Rand and warning from Amodei. Here’s 7-8 developments you may have missed but which I would argue help us understand how the next few years will play out. From labour vs capital to automating rival companies and countries, and from non-profit shenanigans to new mini-docs, there was just too much for me not to make a vid.

GiveWell: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained

s1 Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.19393
Musk Bid: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/musks-97-4-billion-openai-bid-piles-pressure-on-altman-f6749e6c?mod=hp_lead_pos1
Altman Reply: https://x.com/sama/status/1889059531625464090?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Google vs OpenAI: https://x.com/sama/status/1888703820596977684
RAND Study: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA3691-4.html
Dev Meetup: https://x.com/btibor91/status/1888976302621040852
Altman $100 Trillion: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/sam-altman-open-ai-chatgpt.html
Karpathy Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI
Amodei Warning: https://www.anthropic.com/news/paris-ai-summit
Bengio Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HDjVncL5Go

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:37 -  AGI Inches Closer
04:26 - ‘Super-Exponential’
05:58 - Musk Bid
07:34 - Luxury Goods and Land
09:05 - ‘Benefits All Humanity’
12:52 - ‘National Security’
14:21 - s1
20:33 - Final thoughts


Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

12 hours ago Deep Research was unveiled, and I’ve tested it thoroughly, including vs Deepseek R1 with search, Gemini Deep Research and even R1 in Perplexity. It’s a notable step forward, with one big caveat. I’ll go through all the benchmark figures, my initial impression of the o3 model within, and much more.

Deep Research: https://openai.com/index/introducing-deep-research/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkCDVn3_wiw

GAIA Bench: https://openreview.net/forum?id=fibxvahvs3

https://openreview.net/pdf?id=fibxvahvs3

CodeELO:https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.01257

CamelCamel:https://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/

Deepseek R1 with search: https://chat.deepseek.com/

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.12948

HaluBench: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.08488

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

01:06 - Powered by o3, Humanity’s Last Exam, GAIA

03:55 - Simple Tests 

06:00 - Good News vs Deepseek R1 and Gemini Deep Research

09:32 - Bad News on Hallucinations 

14:14 - What Can’t it Browse?

14:42 - For Shopping?

16:40 - Final thoughts

o3-mini is here, and yes, I’ve read the paper in full - 2 hours after release, and even the post-launch Reddit AMA. Some epic details like a FrontierMath score that made me double-take, a likely new Cursor favorite, bio risk expertise and a cost-comparison with Deepseek R1., But does it perform on basic reasoning - let’s find out. Plus, arguably the bigger story - the increasingly frenetic rhetoric coming out of the West - and Dario Amodei and Alexandr Wang (CEOs of Anthropic and Scale AI respectively) in particular. The last thing we need is an “AI War”.

https://wandb.me/simple-bench

(Colab): https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1AVijcPnEkl8Gy_754XbRdG5m7Q5-9slg?usp=sharing

Chapters: 

00:00 - Introduction

00:45 - o3 mini

05:11 - First impressions vs Deepseek R1

07:21 - 10x Scale, o3-mini System Card, Amodei Essay, bitcoin wallets…

12:40 - Simple Competition Finale

13:03 - Clips and Final Thoughts on the “AI War”

O3-mini: https://openai.com/index/openai-o3-mini/

Paper: https://cdn.openai.com/o3-mini-system-card.pdf

Amodei Essay: https://darioamodei.com/on-deepseek-and-export-controls?s=09

FrontierMath wild stat:https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.04872

Sam Altman Channels Napoleon: https://x.com/sama/status/1883185690508488934

Altman ‘pulls up releases’: https://x.com/sama/status/1884066337103962416

“AI War” by Wang: https://scale.com/blog/win-the-ai-war

Anthropic Original Views on Capabilities: https://www.anthropic.com/news/core-views-on-ai-safety

AI Insider Cost Comparison:https://x.com/arankomatsuzaki/status/1884676245922934788

Deepseek R1 Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.12948

R1, o3-mini Price Comparison: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/31/openai-launches-o3-mini-its-latest-reasoning-model/

Semianalysis on $1,3M deepseek salaries, and them falling behind as ‘the time gap to match US capabilities increases’: https://semianalysis.com/2025/01/31/deepseek-debates/

OpenAI Valuation: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-30/openai-in-talks-to-raise-funding-at-340-billion-value-wsj-says?srnd=phx-ai

Wang Clip: https://x.com/tsarnick/status/1867700453494206883

Amodei Clip: https://x.com/ai_ctrl/status/1884951111771001188

https://simple-bench.com/

When it rains, it pours. OpenAI Operator tested and reviewed, with full paper analysis. Perplexity Assistant is useful. Then Stargate, is it all smoke and mirrors? Strong rumours of an o3+ model from Anthropic. Then a full breakdown of Deepseek R1, and what it’s training method says about the state of AI. It’s not open source BTW. Plus Humanity’s Last Exam, and Hassabis Accelerates his AGI timeline.

00:00 - Introduction

00:54 - OpenAI Operator

04:53 - Perplexity Assistant 

05:15 - StarGate

07:51 - Better than o3?

08:25 - DeepSeek R1 Analysis

12:12 - Training Secrets

15:19 - No More Process Rewarding ?

19:01 - Hassabis Timeline Accelerates

21:22 - Humanity’s Last Exam

https://app.grayswan.ai/arena/chat/harmful-ai-assistant

https://app.grayswan.ai/arena

https://openai.com/index/computer-using-agent/

System Prompt: https://github.com/wunderwuzzi23/scratch/blob/master/system_prompts/operator_system_prompt-2025-01-23.txt

OpenAI Operator: https://operator.chatgpt.com/

System Card: https://cdn.openai.com/operator_system_card.pdf

There is No Plan: https://x.com/jeffclune/status/1882120726339318007

Perplexity Assistant: https://x.com/perplexity_ai/status/1882466239123255686

Stargate: https://openai.com/index/announcing-the-stargate-project/

Labour goes to 0: https://moores.samaltman.com/

Larry Ellison AI Surveillance: https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1882042989184430332

Amodei 1984: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-22/anthropic-ceo-says-openai-s-stargate-venture-seems-chaotic

Microsoft Hesitate: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-sam-altman-joined-forces-with-larry-ellison-and-took-a-step-back-from-microsoft?rc=sy0ihq

Dylan Patel o3+ for Anthropic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EH0VjM3dTk

Deepseek R1: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.12948

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.19437

Diagram: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GhyQsM6WQAE7W52?format=jpg&name=large

https://simple-bench.com/

Process: https://x.com/sama/status/1664018190840614912

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1835561952258723930

https://openai.com/index/trading-inference-time-compute-for-adversarial-robustness/?s=09

Demis Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr0GiSgUvPU

Humanity’s Last Exam: 

https://agi.safe.ai/

https://x.com/DanHendrycks/status/1882481730671857815

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/technology/ai-test-humanitys-last-exam.html?s=09

OpenAI looks set to debut their Operator system, and some leaks are out. At the same time Deepseek R1 releases some numbers, and Sam Altman says he might have been wrong before, and now anticipates a 'fast take-off'.  Plus two papers to give you an idea of what a super-agent might be decent at doing, some more exclusive article analysis and much more. Who said anything else is happening today...

80,000 Hours Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCafjal1QYJ3rb0Y9xZk1Ezg
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2WzJwXWBDnn4iZ7odKwDib

AI Insiders ($9!): https://www.patreon.com/AIExplained

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
01:13 - Pro Cost and OpenAI Operator
04:00 - Agent Benchmarks Being Targeted
07:48 - Fast Take-off, Altman
08:48 - Altman flip-flops
10:02 - Deepseek R1 First Reaction

Altman ‘100x expectations out of control’: https://x.com/sama/status/1881258443669172470
OpenAI Operator Table: https://x.com/btibor91/status/1881285255266750564
WebVoyager: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.13919
OSWorld: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.07972
Axios Exclusive 1 (SuperAgent): https://www.axios.com/2025/01/19/ai-superagent-openai-meta?s=09
Axios Exclusive 2: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/18/biden-sullivan-ai-race-trump-china
Deepseek R1 Numbers: https://x.com/deepseek_ai/status/1881318130334814301
Does 1.5B outperform 3.5 Sonnet on Math?: https://x.com/reach_vb/status/1881319500089634954
Deepseek R1 (deepseek-reasoner) Pricing: https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/
Altman Fast Takeoff: https://x.com/tsarnick/status/1879100390840697191
OpenAI Economic Blueprint: https://cdn.openai.com/global-affairs/ai-in-america-oai-economic-blueprint-20250113.pdf
Target is Long-horizon Tasks: https://x.com/karinanguyen_/status/1879576037249667520
Support Regulations: https://www.techemails.com/p/elon-musk-and-openai
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/technology/openai-altman-artificial-intelligence-regulation.html
Donation: https://qz.com/sam-altman-donate-million-zuckerberg-bezos-donald-trump-1851721035
Amodei on Regulations by 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugvHCXCOmm4
‘Feel the AGI’: https://x.com/polynoamial?lang=en
GPT-5 and o-series merger: https://x.com/sama/status/1880358749187240274
o1 Thinks in Chinese: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/14/openais-ai-reasoning-model-thinks-in-chinese-sometimes-and-no-one-really-knows-why/



Non-hype Newsletter: https://signaltonoise.beehiiv.com/

Sam Altman unexpectedly brings his timelines to AGI forward, while OpenAI backtrack on superintelligence. None of these changes were heralded, but they are significant. Plus the new year brings new assessments of the true capability of models to automate 'large swathes of the economy'. I'll give my prediction on that front for 2025, announcement a new Simple Bench competition, and showcase Kling 1.6 vs Veo 2 vs Sora, and much more.

wandb.me/simple-bench

(Colab): https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1AVijcPnEkl8Gy_754XbRdG5m7Q5-9slg?usp=sharing

TheAgentCompany Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.14161v1

Sam Altman Major Interview: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-sam-altman-interview/?srnd=phx-ai

OpenAI Agent Coming Jan 2025: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-openai-is-taking-so-long-to-launch-agents?rc=sy0ihq

Altman Singularity: https://x.com/sama/status/1875603249472139576

Altman Original Timeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dCPytNTnjk&t=621s

https://www.ft.com/content/34a7a082-e685-4e02-bca7-61ff89d99ed2

OpenAI Original Emails: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5jjk4CDnj9tA7ugxr/openai-email-archives-from-musk-v-altman-and-openai-blog

DeepMind Sky News 2014 Article: https://news.sky.com/story/google-buys-uk-intelligence-firm-deepmind-10419783

Altman Blog Reflections: https://blog.samaltman.com/reflections

OpenAI Changes Who Gets AGI: https://openai.com/index/why-our-structure-must-evolve-to-advance-our-mission/?s=09

OpenAI 5 Levels: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-11/openai-sets-levels-to-track-progress-toward-superintelligent-ai

Altman 2015: https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1

OpenAI React to Anthropic: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-anthropic-got-inside-openais-head?rc=sy0ihq

Microsoft $100B Definition: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-wrangle-over-terms-of-their-blockbuster-partnership?rc=sy0ihq
Epoch Scramble for Task Benchmark: https://x.com/tamaybes/status/1876692639363612919

GPQA Progress: https://epoch.ai/data/ai-benchmarking-dashboard

Task Length Crucial for ARC-AGI: https://anokas.substack.com/p/llms-struggle-with-perception-not-reasoning-arcagi

RL Environment Tweet: https://x.com/vedantmisra/status/1876327518157807990

Jason Wei Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhpjpNXJDco

Miles Brunda

o3 isn’t one of the biggest developments in AI for 2+ years because it beats a particular benchmark. It is so because it demonstrates a reusable technique through which almost any benchmark could fall, and at short notice. I’ll cover all the highlights, benchmarks broken, and what comes next. Plus, the costs OpenAI didn’t want us to know, Genesis, ARC-AGI 2, Gemini-Thinking, and much more. 

FrontierMath: https://epoch.ai/frontiermath

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.04872

Chollet Statement:https://arcprize.org/blog/oai-o3-pub-breakthrough

MLC Paper: 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-training-method-helps-ai-generalize-like-people-do/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

AlphaCode 2: https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/AlphaCode2/AlphaCode2_Tech_Report.pdf

Human Performance on ARC-AGI: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.01374v1

Wei Tweet ‘3 months’:https://x.com/_jasonwei/status/1870184982007644614

Deliberative Alignment Paper: https://openai.com/index/deliberative-alignment/

Brown Safety Tweet: https://x.com/polynoamial/status/1870196476908834893

Swe-Bench Verified: https://openai.com/index/introducing-swe-bench-verified/

Amodei Prediction: https://x.com/OfirPress/status/1858567863788769518

David Dohan: 16 hours https://x.com/dmdohan/status/1870171404093796638

OpenAI Personal Writing: https://openai.com/index/learning-to-reason-with-llms/

https://simple-bench.com/

John Hallman Tweet: https://x.com/johnohallman/status/1870233375681945725

00:00 - Introduction

01:19 - What is o3?

03:18 - FrontierMath

05:15 - o4, o5

06:03 - GPQA

06:24 - Coding, Codeforces + SWE-verified, AlphaCode 2

08:13 - 1st Caveat

09:03 - Compositionality?

10:16 - SimpleBench?

13:11 - ARC-AGI, Chollet