Down Round

Some higher-up from Anthropic tried to talk the Pope into conceding that AI agents have a consciousness. Your hosts, Henno and The Riph Raph, discuss why they would make this claim, whether it's a possibility, and what it really means to be sentient.

Get your tickets for the Richard Cooke Book launch AKA Down Round LIVE: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1647769

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OpenAI "hacked" an Australian Government website and said NOTHING!? Well, sort of?
Albo pulled up his big boy pants and stormed up to New York on Thursday to tell the world and Sam Altman that he was displeased with OpenAI's recklessness in allowing their bots to scrape the "Medicare statistics reporting service portal". But, it didn't necessarily break any laws - it didn't use any passwords or workarounds - it just found some unprotected files and took them for research. Raph and James hike up some big boy pants of their own to get to the bottom of what really went down, and whether or not we should be freaking out about it. 

Get your tickets for the Richard Cooke Book launch AKA Down Round LIVE: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1647769

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Raph and James sit down to answer a simple question: what the hell does an average person need an AI agent for?

This question arises from the recent launch of Joe Schmoe-targeted agentic AI platforms like Instinct and Meta's Muse. Until now, AI agents have been the pipe dreams of techno sickos, who aim to use them for nefarious means like booking pickleball courts. Are the normies ready to start agentically booking holidays?

Richard Cooke Book launch AKA Down Round LIVE: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1647769

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After a former Anthropic employee went on a press tour telling everyone he quite because the stuff they're cooking up is big and scary, a whole new round of discourse has hit the proverbial fan. Many of the big players have come out to say "yes, we SHOULD be pumping the breaks!" but only in a particular way and without too much government intervention? There's a whole lot to dig through and a whole lot of ulterior motives at play here, and Henno and The Riph Raph are here to get to the bottom of it.

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Artificial General Intelligence. Computers using computers. Computers getting Raph a coffee because he yelled "me coffee". Computers curing diseases before we even discover them. Computers discovering the infinite money glitch and creating a work-free utopia. Sound familiar? Well, it should! Because clearly, since the release of OpenAI's GPT-6: Astra, Artificial General Intelligence has been achieved! We're here! Take-off! Well, kind of?

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In the past few years, Flock Safety have peppered the United States with their license plate reading cameras. Together, they form a lattice network capable of tracking anyone with pinpoint accuracy across a wide area. Lately, they have become the subject of widespread backlash, as citizens raise numerous concerns including privacy, misuse by law enforcement (including ICE), and the cameras being left up despite their contracts not being renewed. Is this the beginning of the end for individual privacy? Or did it already die years ago?

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That damned rumour mill is spinning up again with word that the next AirPod Pro model will feature cameras in the ear buds. Is this really true? Kind of, but probably not the way you think. James and Raph sat down to discuss the prevalence of cameras and surveillance in modern tech/our lives. But first, Raph gives James a gift?

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The EU is making AI companies put identifiable markers in their AI generated content, so that they can be easily spotted as such. A lot of the big hitters have played ball, but it opens up an interesting discussion about how much AI use earns the title of slop, who stands to benefit from it, and whether or not the models' outputs are going to be worse as a result.

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Demis Hassabis has stepped up/down/around from his position as CEO of Google Deepmind, becoming Chair of Deepmind and Chief Scientist at Alphabet. "Henno and the Riph Raph" discuss how this reflects on Google and it's AI landscape as a whole.

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Eminent babychild/investor Leopold Aschenbrenner has been in the news lately as his over-leveraged AI fund "Situational Awareness" collapsed in a dramatic fashion. Interestingly, the portfolio shares striking ideological similarities with the Down Round Investment Fund™️... 

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