“AI #175: The Fable Continues” by Zvi

Fable's back. Back again. Fable's back. Tell a friend. Use your free week to its fullest. This is excellent news. The blip only lasted a few weeks. It was still a fiasco, and we have to deal with the fallout. Our system remains fully ad hoc. The precedent has been set that we may use export controls on models, or order them taken down on 90 minutes of notice based on a misunderstanding. At least some amount of counterproductive additional locking down has occurred to address Amazon's little demonstration and reassure the government. And for now GPT-5.6 remains in limbo, awaiting its verdict, while OpenAI talks about giving away 5% of the company as tribute. I’ll cover that continuing situation on its own. Whereas the weekly post is about everything else happening in AI this week. Table of Contents Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Exploratory science. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility You May Not Want. Google sees all. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Too dumb to get smart. Huh, Upgrades. GLM-5.2 faster, Nana Banana Lite 2, Claude Desktop on Linux. On Your Marks. Remote labor index shoots [...] ---Outline:(01:08) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(02:29) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility You May Not Want(04:32) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(05:59) Huh, Upgrades(06:33) On Your Marks(09:28) Get My Agent On The Line(14:29) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(14:58) Cyber Lack of Security(16:11) On Writing(21:34) You Drive Me Crazy(24:26) They Took Our Jobs(30:32) Get Involved(30:58) Introducing(31:21) In Other AI News(32:45) Show Me the Money(33:12) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(35:31) Quiet Speculations(39:37) Glorious AI Future(43:37) Three Pills(44:58) The Anthropic Economic Index(46:29) Leader Of The PAC(47:48) Theory Of The AI Firm(49:01) Chip City(50:32) The Week in Audio(53:29) People Really Hate AI(56:31) Rhetorical Innovation(01:00:31) The First Rule Of Functional Decision Theory Is(01:03:40) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:06:40) Names Have Power(01:07:40) Cooperative Alignment(01:15:21) People Just Say Things(01:16:46) Escape From The Permanent Underclass(01:29:51) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:31:07) The Lighter Side --- First published: July 2nd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WNvBxtbHuLreFe7af/ai-175-the-fable-continues --- 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.