“AI #169: New Knowledge” by Zvi

Even in a relatively quiet period, AI is out there creating new knowledge. The new knowledge in question is OpenAI getting us the first truly impressive math result that comes from an AI, a solution to the unit distance problem. We’re about to learn a different kind of knowledge later today when the White House issues its executive order, or when the judges rule in Anthropic's DC case. And then there's the other kind of new knowledge, which is the knowledge that things are fake slop, such as a particular formerly supposedly prestigious literary prize. Meanwhile, METR issued a risk report on frontier models, concluding that they don’t yet have the means, motive and opportunity to cause the big issues, but that this would not obviously last so much longer. Andrej Karpathy has joined Anthropic, explicitly to do recursive self-improvement. He plans to later return to his education work, but if he succeeds at his new task there might not be anything left to return to. Congratulations to both sides, but also yikes. Elon Musk's case against OpenAI has been dismissed, because he waited too long. Table of Contents Language Models [...] ---Outline:(01:18) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(02:57) Do The Math(03:58) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(04:34) Huh, Upgrades(04:50) The Prior Restraint Era Begins(06:47) On Your Marks(07:16) METR Frontier Risk Report(11:03) Choose Your Fighter(11:51) Overcoming Bias(12:29) Get My Agent On The Line(13:42) Your Prize Is Slop(20:44) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(24:19) Cyber Lack of Security(26:06) Copyright Confrontation(26:17) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(28:34) Unprompted Attention(28:53) They Took Our Jobs(34:23) Get Involved(35:20) Introducing(36:06) In Other AI News(37:43) Show Me the Money(40:09) Show Me The Compute(41:29) Quiet Speculations(45:26) Time's Up(46:46) People Just Say Things(49:49) OpenAI PACs Just Say Things(53:11) The Quest for Sane Regulations(56:26) Chip City(01:00:05) Pick Up The Phone(01:00:34) The Week in Audio(01:00:52) Rhetorical Innovation(01:07:11) Missing Mood(01:13:22) Americans Really Hate AI(01:15:55) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:20:53) Greetings From The Department of War(01:25:31) Messages From Janusworld(01:25:51) The Lighter Side --- First published: May 21st, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xWsBwrboYDEMdj8TC/ai-169-new-knowledge --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.