Down Round

For today's free ep, we examine the current spat between Anthropic and Trump's Department of War over use of their AI model Claude.

Should a next-token prediction model be allowed to make decisions in the heat of battle? Should the snuffing out of a human life be prompted by a computer? Is Mark Zuckerberg losing his white boy swag? These are all important questions which WILL be answered in this episode.

If you like the pod, chuck us a review on your podcast player of choice, or go to downround.net to sign up for PREMIUM to get ad-free listening PLUS an extra episode every week.

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When one thinks of impossible futures, they often think of a luxurious, technological wonderland. An unimaginable utopia where humans live in perfect harmony, their every want and need being fulfilled through meteoric advances in artificial intelligence. A prosperous society of abundance and civility.

But what if these same technological strides lead humanity to a different, more sinister outcome. One in which our dependable world economies simply evaporate as organic beings are removed from the equation. One where only next-token prediction engines are granted access to wealth, and those who clairvoyantly bought reasonably-priced Macintosh computers before the uprising rocket skyward into an insurmountable upper crust.

Some researchers have written a piece of speculative fiction which describes one of these two possibilities arriving by in 2028. Listen to the podcast to find out which one they foresaw, and hear two of DM Research's finest alum examine this theory in great depth.

If you like the pod, chuck us a review on your podcast player of choice, or go to downround.net to sign up for PREMIUM to get ad-free listening PLUS an extra episode every week.

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Some have argued that doing Q&A episodes is just a way of farming out the hard bits of doing a podcast to your audience. Not around these parts, buster.

If you like the pod, chuck us a review on your podcast player of choice, or go to downround.net to sign up for PREMIUM to get ad-free listening PLUS an extra episode every week.

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Gossip episode alert. The OpenAI/Anthropic rivalry is boiling over.

We sip on the most piping hot tea around OpenAI and Anthropic's ad spots at the Super Bowl and the growing animosity between the two giants.

If you like the pod, chuck us a review on your podcast player of choice, or go to downround.net to sign up for PREMIUM to get ad-free listening PLUS an extra episode every week.

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Keen-eared listeners may remember when Elon bought his own company X (formerly Twitter) with his OpenAI spite company xAI.

Well, he's done it again, folks. This time SpaceX has bought xAI, meaning that SpaceX now owns xAI and X as part of the largest private company on Earth.

We discuss.

If you like the pod, chuck us a review on your podcast player of choice, or go to downround.net to sign up for PREMIUM to get ad-free listening PLUS an extra episode every week.

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You asked, we answered. We're doing a much-requested episode on "Australian" fintech Airwallex, which has gotten a lot of untoward attention of late — anti-money laundering audits, accusations by American VCs of being a financial backdoor to China. But there's a bigger story here: the proliferation of payments companies doing a big land grab from traditional financial institutions, and quickly learning that regulation and bank policy exists for a reason.

We take a crash course of Airwallex, its current controversies, and where it fits into the bigger payments story.

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As somewhat of a follow up to our Claude Code/Coworker episode last week, today we regroup to evaluate what it could mean for YOUR favourite SaaS products. That's right, folks, AI is coming to take away your precious QuickBooks and you're going to watch and clap as it rips and tears it to pieces. We also touched (if briefly) on the Siri x Gemini announcement.

If you like the pod, chuck us a 5 star on your podcast player of choice, or go to downround.net to sign up for PREMIUM to get ad-free listening PLUS an extra episode every week.

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New year, new studio, same red hot takes.

This episode covers the typhoon of AI-generated filth created by Grok, Elon Musk's AI venture, currently flooding X. We also touch on the general state of X as a platform.

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We're joined by friend of the pod and Rear Window columnist Mark Di Stefano for a loose chat covering a swathe of topics from capital-J Journalism, the tech oligopoly and AI in politics. This is our final dispatch from our Christmas recording.

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We're joined by Rowan "Joyride" Dix and Becky "Becky Lucas" Lucas for another round of our annual community shark tank, where we listen to our listeners pitch their startup ideas and decide whether we're going to invest.

Go to https://www.downround.net/ to sign up for PREMIUM to hear the other 45 minutes of Shark Tank, get ad-free listening PLUS an extra episode every week.

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