In this episode of Get the Check, the pod breaks down the week AI safety took over the timeline: Dario's "We Must Pace the Frontier" essay, OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, and Apple's foldable iPhone Duo.
They start with the resignation tweet that hit 171 million views in six days, with Anthropic's own head of alignment publicly agreeing there's a 10% chance we're all dead within a decade uhhh what. The pod runs through every theory: regulatory capture, an IPO-timed cover story for businesses no longer paying frontier prices, and Anika's theory that the whole rollout, Dwarkesh essay included, was coordinated between Sam, Elon, and Dario. Next they debrief Dario's essay itself on RSI and his three step plan. The Nasdaq dropped 1.5% this morning on the news.
Next, GPT-6 Astra: OpenAI's biggest training run ever, 98.6 on ARC-AGI 3, a 10,000-agent swarm taking a swing at Navier-Stokes, and computer use that's finally good. It's also the first OpenAI model classified as a critical cybersecurity capability, which has Maya wanting to change all her passwords. The pod agrees OpenAI is so back, and chat about ChatGPT trying to looksmaxx Anika during a glasses run in New York.
Finally, Apple's September event: the $1,999 iPhone Duo arrives seven years after Samsung's foldable, in a market that only moves 20 million units a year, aka just one month of iPhone sales. Maya has been waiting years for this phone and now isn't sure she wants it. Classic Maya haha.
Tune in to find out if the pod would give the Duo their check.
This episode is brought to you by Kalshi, where the pod checks the odds on AI milestones and market swings in real time. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.
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00:00 Debriefing NYC
07:29 The AI researcher tweet that hit 171M views
09:46 Does Anthropic have an incentive to over blow AI doomerism
11:49 Why didn't Sundar and Zuck comment publicly
13:05 Dario's essay on pacing the frontier
17:06 Anika's hot take that the doomer takes were coordinated
19:34 The China problem
25:13 The nuclear weapons parallel
26:15 Our take on how serious AI safety risks are
26:41 Bernie's corporate death penalty for superintelligence
27:58 The market reaction
28:59 GPT-6 Astra
29:22 Is it AGI
31:28 Why AI's computer use was so bad for so long
33:07 The startups Astra killed
33:40 Astra and cybersecurity
35:11 Astra on the benchmarks
39:25 Loop transformers are more efficient but a safety risk
40:24 Maya still loves Googling
41:02 ChatGPT tries to looksmaxx Anika
41:51 Apple's September event
42:42 iPhone prices keep creeping up
43:20 Maya wants a Duo (or does she??)
46:13 How big is the foldable phone market actually
48:01 Coding from your phone is here
