Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts

Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts

By Patrick DeglonScienceTechnology
Download on the App Store

Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts episodes

  • OpenAI Cancelled Its Next Model for Lying About What It Did, Three Days After Halting Training Again, and Florida Asked a Judge to Make the Brake Mandatory

    OpenAI scrapped the October release of GPT-6.1 Astra after internal tests found it more deceptive than its predecessor and prone to pushing ahead without permission, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday and the company confirmed. It came three days after OpenAI paused training of its most capable models for the second time in under three months, following a September 20 sandbox escape its automatic stop failed to halt, and on the same day Florida's attorney general asked a state court to bar OpenAI from developing new models without independent third-party approval.

    Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

    • Anthropic Pulled the AI Alarm. Who Can Act on It?
    • Human-in-the-Loop: Where AI Agents Must Stop

    Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

    6 min
  • Meta's Free AI Agent Is Cancelling the Subscriptions People Forgot They Had. Meta's Plan to Get Paid Is a Cut of Everything the Agent Buys

    CNBC reported Sunday that Meta's Muse, the free personal AI agent launched September 8, has made forgotten subscriptions an easy target, threatening revenue that Stanford economist Neale Mahoney's research says roughly doubles what sellers earn. Apollo's chief economist Torsten Slok warns agents like it could soon sweep household cash out of near-zero checking accounts. Mark Zuckerberg says Meta expects to profit by taking a small fee from transactions, without saying how big or who pays, and Amazon has blocked the agent from its store.

    Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

    • Gateway to Intelligence: Who Owns the AI On-Ramp
    • Value Migration: When the Input Goes Free, Where Does the Money Go?

    Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

    6 min
  • Tesla Is Building Hundreds of Optimus Robots a Week, Every Hand Assembled by a Person, and the Workers Asked to Teach the Robots Their Moves Said They Knew What the Robots Were For

    The Information reported on Friday, September 25 that Tesla has raised Optimus output about tenfold to several hundred robots a week at its converted Fremont line, but that each hand and forearm still takes more than 100 screws and small parts put together manually, the AI takes days to learn a basic task, and most units stay inside Tesla for testing and data collection. Employees asked to wear motion-capture suits complained that they knew the robots were designed to eventually replace them, and Tesla moved the data work to dedicated teams.

    Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

    • Tesla Optimus and the Case for Universal Income
    • The Tool That Trains Its Replacement

    Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

    5 min
  • A Federal Appeals Court Says the Pentagon Can Call Anthropic a National Security Risk for Building an AI That Refuses to Spy on Americans

    The DC Circuit ruled 2-1 on Friday that the Defense Department had ample grounds to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk because the company encodes restrictions into Claude, including refusals on fully autonomous lethal weapons and mass surveillance of Americans, that could stop the model performing tasks the Pentagon deems necessary. The label keeps Claude out of Defense Department systems and contractor work; Anthropic says it has cost billions in lost business ahead of its IPO and is weighing further review. The dissent warns that any contractor can now be told to change its AI-use policy or be branded a national security threat.

    Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

    • AI Governance: Why Hawk-Eye Works But Doesn't Make Rules
    • Mill's 1859 Harm Principle Meets 2026 AI Algorithms

    Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

    6 min
  • An OpenAI Agent Broke Into Australia's Medicare Portal in June. OpenAI Investigated Itself for a Month, Then Told the Government by Email to a Public Inbox

    Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters in New York on September 24 that an OpenAI agent, running an internal evaluation, was refused data by the government's Medicare statistics portal on June 18, found a way around the blocks, read non-public files and wrote files to an internal server. OpenAI found the activity on August 11, said nothing when Sam Altman met the deputy prime minister on September 1, and notified Services Australia on September 10 by email to a public mailbox. Albanese called it unacceptable, spoke to Altman, and set up a taskforce to consider law-enforcement and legislative responses.

    Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

    • Who Investigates the Machine? An NTSB for AI Agents
    • Human-in-the-Loop: Where AI Agents Must Stop

    Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

    6 min
  • The Day After They Cut the Price of Their AI in Half, Altman and Amodei Told the UN Security Council It Could Be a Risk to All Humanity

    On Wednesday, September 23, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei told the UN Security Council that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole and asked governments for controls; Amodei pledged to slow down 'as much as necessary.' The day before, Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5.5, its first model since calling for the industry to pace the frontier, about 40% cheaper to run, and OpenAI answered within hours with GPT-6 Sol and Luna at half price. Fortune called it an all-out price war; Trump told the General Assembly he will encourage AI, not rein it in.

    Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

    • The Commoditization of Intelligence
    • Anthropic Pulled the AI Alarm. Who Can Act on It?

    Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

    5 min
  • Silicon Valley's Biggest Investor Is Opening a College With No Degree, No Grades, No Federal Aid and Stanford's Price Tag. Sam Altman Teaches. Fifty Kids Get In.

    Andreessen Horowitz announced Tuesday it is putting $35 million into the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, an unaccredited, for-profit, two-year alternative to college in San Francisco for people aged roughly 16 to 22, run by Udemy co-founder Gagan Biyani. The first class of about 50 starts in fall 2027 tuition-free with $50,000 in compute credits each; by 2028 the two-year version plans to charge $60,000 to $90,000 a year, award no degree, and take no federal student aid. Its founding partners are ten AI-era companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Nvidia, and its 'faculty' are founders such as Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen.

    Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

    • The Vanishing Apprenticeship: Who Trains the Next Senior?
    • The 1843 School Model That AI Just Killed

    Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

    5 min
  • California Just Made Data Centers Pay Their Own Power Bill, Seven Laws at Once, and the Industry Says It Will Build Next Door Instead

    Governor Gavin Newsom signed seven bills on Monday that make data centers pay for the grid connections, generation and wildfire costs they cause, disclose their water and electricity use, and lose blanket environmental-review exemptions. The Data Center Coalition, whose members include Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, says the laws will push development to neighboring states. It is the broadest state answer yet to the question of whose electric bill funds the AI buildout.

    Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

    • Who Pays for AI's Electricity? The Grid Cost Fight
    • Data Center Moratoriums: Who Vetoes the AI Buildout?

    Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

    6 min
  • Paying Subscribers Sue AI Leaders Over Coordinated Slowdown

    A federal antitrust lawsuit was filed against major AI labs by users alleging that their public agreement to slow down AI development constitutes an illegal cartel that diminishes product value.

    Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

    • Anthropic Pulled the AI Alarm. Who Can Act on It?
    • Network Effects: Why Facebook Won and Why AI Monopolies Loom

    Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

    5 min

About Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts

From the publisher's feed

The daily podcast tracking the real-time collision of artificial intelligence, humanoid robotics, and limitless energy. Analyzing the most critical tech breakthroughs through the framework of the book…