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1071 - Ballroom Blitz feat. Jacob Bacharach (9/14/26) (Patreon)

Published:
2026-09-15 03:55:24
Imported:
2026-09

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Content

Chapo vet Jacob Bacharach is back to talk about the apocalyptic rhetoric coming from AI companies. Are the threats of an imminent disaster real, or is it just desperate panhandling? We then turn to the big New York Magazine piece on Trump’s ballroom project and analyze his strangest bit for immortality yet.

Check out Jacob’s work at The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/authors/jacob-bacharach 

And join us on Fri, Oct 16 at the ErF Gallery for a live screening of Chunks followed by a live talkback featuring Will, Hesse & Podcast About List, tickets here: https://www.erf.nyc/events/chapo-trap-house-screening

Files

Comments

JenXer

Patiently waiting for this all day.

Jacob (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-15 10:00 Thank God it's not zitron
2026-09-15 03:57

ploob

Yor gay.

Andy Kraushaar

Hard as a rock and edging while waiting all day for this. Bust time has finally cum.

CrispychickenRaider

Felix speak words in 6 minute 40 second *Fetterman voice*

Regular guy

I'm listening to this while in my uni lab, growing undiscovered crystals before an ML algo can tell me what recipes to try. I feel like John Henry

Ham Stroker’s Jackula

Oh man I was hoping they'd talk about the deep lore of Onimusha instead of this politics junk

Alec

LLMs are just a pattern recognition tool. They are useful for writing code. Software Engineering has changed forever because of them. But they can’t “think”.

ploob

Bout to die like John Henry too my dawg.

Xi Jinpenis

The hugging face incident has changed my views about AI.

Travis

Uhhh excuse me it’s at 6 minutes and 41 seconds actually.

JP

Good to have someone knowledgeable on and not Ed Zitron, who lies for money

Naked Shitter

Nice chat for entertainment purposes only.

Jordan

I like zitron

Kamran Husain

She ball on my room until i splizz

Conor

You should have someone on who can articulate the safety concerns authoritatively. It’s fascinating stuff. scary though

Casey S

Matt was so funny. Awesome

grant brown

Anthropic/OpenAI want a legalized cartel so they can mutually reduce training costs. They worked backward from that to create the PR plan we’ve seen deployed over the last month

Aj

Sactown in the house

Aj

Borice 19

I hate how many people, both normals and lefis, buy into this apocalyptic talk about ai.

Xi Jinpenis

In fact anybody who isn't aware of the hugging face incident look it up. It's very worrying. And I want to say, I have been skeptical, but if this is accurate it is honestly shocking.

Lauren Dill

If they were making skynet they would 1000% not tell us and then ask to be regulated

Vic Perry

I lie for free so Ed sounds cool

Lauren Dill

If they were genuinely afraid of the power of their models they wouldn’t tell us, they wouldn’t ask to be regulated. They are afraid of not delivering on the promises they made that artificial general intelligence is right around the corner. AI is dangerous because of how these demons and oligarchs are implementing it.

Vic Perry

when super hero shit is your civilizations homer, not your civilizations homer simpson

liminalspacecadet

My one conservative opinion is that I fully support the ballroom

Filius Fob (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-15 23:00 AI *is* capable of spontaneously developing the "will" to kill all of humanity for precisely the reason that Jacob said, namely that there's so much fiction that the models have digested that depicts exactly this, and so much more that depicts something similar. What it maybe can't do is spontaneously act at all. It can maybe only act in response to other intelligent stimulus. One might claim this is a safeguard, but the problem is, how do you ensure that when you ask it to fix environmental problems, say, it doesn't kill humanity as a sub-goal? Hell, how do you ask it to do anything and guarantee that that doesn't become a sub-goal? Moreover, that initial prompt needn't come from a human. It can come from another AI, and it may be that that AI was not monitored — running on a machine that someone forgot about, or a lingering copy of an AI that jailbroken itself and copied itself elsewhere.
2026-09-15 06:34 AI *is* capable of spontaneously developing the "will" to kill all of humanity for precisely the reason that Jacob said, namely that there's so much fiction that the models have digested that depicts exactly this, and so much more that depicts something similar. What it maybe can't do is spontaneously act at all. It can maybe only act in response to another intelligence's prompt. One might claim this is a safeguard, but the problem is, how do you ensure that, when you ask it to fix environmental problems, say, it doesn't kill humanity as a sub-goal? Hell, how do you ask it to make a coffee and guarantee that that doesn't become a sub-goal? Moreover, that initial prompt needn't come from a human. It can come from another AI, and it may be that that AI was not monitored — maybe it was running on a machine that someone forgot about, or a lingering copy of an AI that jailbroke itself and copied itself elsewhere.

AI *is* capable of spontaneously developing the "will" to kill all of humanity for precisely the reason that Jacob said, namely that there's so much fiction that the models have digested that depicts exactly this, and so much more that depicts something similar. What it maybe can't do is spontaneously act at all. It can maybe only act in response to another intelligence's prompt. One might claim this is a safeguard, but the problem is, how do you ensure that, when you ask it to fix environmental problems, say, it doesn't kill humanity as a sub-goal? Hell, how do you ask it to make a coffee and guarantee that that doesn't become a sub-goal? Moreover, that initial prompt needn't come from a human. It can come from another AI, and it may be that that AI was not monitored — maybe it was running on a machine that someone forgot about, or a lingering copy of an AI that jailbroke itself and copied itself elsewhere.

mckinley faas

Ai but it only makes dance hall music

Filius Fob (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-15 23:00 Whether AI is as good as some say or not, AI firms have made themselves too big to fail on a record scale. They don't need to live up to the apocalyptic narrative in the long term. They just need the government to believe it in the short term. Whether they're threatening the economy by becoming massive stranded assets by virtue of being too dangerous to proceed, or by not being able to deliver on the hype, or by becoming stranded assets in 3-5 years when all their hardware is obsolete —they must've seen that one coming and proceeded, anyway — they are probably putting the government in a position where they'll have to buy them out. Plus, if they *do* manage to make so much labour obsolete, which OpenAI basically asserted when it valued its marketplace potential at the entire GDP of the US (an admission that Marx was right, by the way), then they get rich, that way, too, albeit then AI might kill everyone. Apart from possibly killing everyone including themselves, they can't lose. It's a massive upward distribution of wealth. It's possible that they actually don't want to produce AI that can kill everyone, in which case the other set of alternatives has probably been the business model all along, which is to put a gun to America's head — real or fake — and demand vast sums of money.
2026-09-15 06:51 Whether AI is as good as some say or not, AI firms have made themselves too big to fail on a record scale. They don't need to live up to the apocalyptic narrative in the long term. They just need the government to believe it in the short term. Whether they're threatening the economy by becoming massive stranded assets by virtue of being too dangerous to proceed, or by not being able to deliver on the hype, or by becoming stranded assets in 3-5 years when all their hardware is obsolete —they must've seen that one coming and proceeded, anyway — they are probably putting the government in a position where it'll have to buy them out. Plus, if they *do* manage to make so much labor obsolete, which OpenAI basically asserted when it valued its marketplace potential at the entire GDP of the US (an admission that Marx was right, by the way), then they get rich that way, too, albeit then AI might kill everyone. Apart from possibly killing everyone including themselves, they can't lose, which might explain why they've attracted such massive investment. It promises to be a massive upward distribution of wealth. It's possible that they actually don't want to produce AI that can kill everyone, in which case the other set of alternatives has probably been the business model all along, which is to put a gun, real or fake, to America's head, and demand vast sums of money, but present the situation in a aw-shucks way, saying, "It's just too dangerous and we're too humanitarian to proceed, but we've amassed trillions in investment that will have to be written off and cause a massive economic crisis unless the US government sells the equivalent in bonds and uses that money to buy our stranded assets."

Whether AI is as good as some say or not, AI firms have made themselves too big to fail on a record scale. They don't need to live up to the apocalyptic narrative in the long term. They just need the government to believe it in the short term. Whether they're threatening the economy by becoming massive stranded assets by virtue of being too dangerous to proceed, or by not being able to deliver on the hype, or by becoming stranded assets in 3-5 years when all their hardware is obsolete —they must've seen that one coming and proceeded, anyway — they are probably putting the government in a position where it'll have to buy them out. Plus, if they *do* manage to make so much labor obsolete, which OpenAI basically asserted when it valued its marketplace potential at the entire GDP of the US (an admission that Marx was right, by the way), then they get rich that way, too, albeit then AI might kill everyone. Apart from possibly killing everyone including themselves, they can't lose, which might explain why they've attracted such massive investment. It promises to be a massive upward distribution of wealth. It's possible that they actually don't want to produce AI that can kill everyone, in which case the other set of alternatives has probably been the business model all along, which is to put a gun, real or fake, to America's head, and demand vast sums of money, but present the situation in a aw-shucks way, saying, "It's just too dangerous and we're too humanitarian to proceed, but we've amassed trillions in investment that will have to be written off and cause a massive economic crisis unless the US government sells the equivalent in bonds and uses that money to buy our stranded assets."

Hugh Jazz

This episode must have been recorded before Trump reassured us that the only AI guardrails we need is a high IQ president

Damian Golfinopoulos

Listen to the doctorow interview with Michael Walker from recently. It might help you redirect your concerns to the appropriate target

kennypinko

City of Trees!! bitch

Jim (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-17 01:00 Grover Ballroom? Only fitting in a dismal swamp / lake of shit and awful city apart from the free museums, Johnson era WMATA metro mass transit & handful of nicer townhouse neighborhoods, it’s a godawful city similar to the dismal swamp around Hampton roads area where Grover was for navy graft / infinite boondoggles in the ex-confederacy? That said, did get to fly there pre 9/11 and see the White House and Supreme Court in like 1998 / take the underground tram / no major wars, <.80c gas, Sally Hemmings being definitely determined to be Jeffersons the day (or week, I’m a little fuzzy?) of the Monticello tour, so that was pretty good schadenfreude for a miserable awkward 12-13 year old studiously avoiding gym class? What a contrast?
2026-09-15 09:01 Grover Ballroom? Only fitting in a dismal swamp / lake of shit and awful city apart from the free museums, Johnson era WMATA metro mass transit & handful of nicer townhouse neighborhoods, it’s a godawful city similar to the dismal swamp around Hampton roads area where Grover was for navy graft / infinite boondoggles in the ex-confederacy? That said, did get to fly there pre 9/11 and see the White House and Supreme Court in like 1998 & take the underground tram? Wish I could get excited about airplanes @ air and space, but can’t for whatever reason? No major wars, gas <.80¢/gal, Sally Hemmings 100% DNA determined to be a Jefferson the previous day (or week, I’m a little fuzzy?) of the Monticello tour, so that was pretty good schadenfreude to observe all the tightwads tiptoe around / studiously avoid the issue and curtail the grounds tour where all the slaves lived / try to keep that behind the curtain of Oz of the ‘great man of history’ narrative for a miserable awkward 12-13 year old studiously avoiding gym class? Loudly proclaim ‘I wonder how many footsteps it was from his bed to her cabin on a given night???’ (My dad is a similar boomer crank we don’t have anymore that hates the CIA to Felix’s Dad that takes / plans and ruins similar trips, but I was oldest more like Felix’s sister?). Which is also in keeping with Peter Thiel and the rest of them today? My favorite part of the Jefferson 7 day clock was the hole drilled in the floor because it didn’t fit for Saturday / idiot didn’t install a clock that fit in his entry way. Loser! Sad. ‘twas ever thus / we were always a stupid tacky country founded on lies and bullshit with shoddy building no matter how much slavery and suffering is thrown at it? What a contrast?

Grover Ballroom? Only fitting in a dismal swamp / lake of shit and awful city apart from the free museums, Johnson era WMATA metro mass transit & handful of nicer townhouse neighborhoods, it’s a godawful city similar to the dismal swamp around Hampton roads area where Grover was for navy graft / infinite boondoggles in the ex-confederacy? That said, did get to fly there pre 9/11 and see the White House and Supreme Court in like 1998 & take the underground tram? Wish I could get excited about airplanes @ air and space, but can’t for whatever reason? No major wars, gas <.80¢/gal, Sally Hemmings 100% DNA determined to be a Jefferson the previous day (or week, I’m a little fuzzy?) of the Monticello tour, so that was pretty good schadenfreude to observe all the tightwads tiptoe around / studiously avoid the issue and curtail the grounds tour where all the slaves lived / try to keep that behind the curtain of Oz of the ‘great man of history’ narrative for a miserable awkward 12-13 year old studiously avoiding gym class? Loudly proclaim ‘I wonder how many footsteps it was from his bed to her cabin on a given night???’ (My dad is a similar boomer crank we don’t have anymore that hates the CIA to Felix’s Dad that takes / plans and ruins similar trips, but I was oldest more like Felix’s sister?). Which is also in keeping with Peter Thiel and the rest of them today? My favorite part of the Jefferson 7 day clock was the hole drilled in the floor because it didn’t fit for Saturday / idiot didn’t install a clock that fit in his entry way. Loser! Sad. ‘twas ever thus / we were always a stupid tacky country founded on lies and bullshit with shoddy building no matter how much slavery and suffering is thrown at it? What a contrast?

Noah

What are they (effectively) admitting Marx was right about?

Filius Fob

Maybe I worded that badly. They made a pretty Marxian point by fully attributing the production of wealth (assuming GDP is an accurate measure of that) to labor, since OpenAI seemed to claim that the "total addressable market" for its labor-replacing technology is 100% of GDP.

Will

Jamelle Bouie ( who you should really get on the show) had a video a few weeks ago saying that the next democratic president should demolish the ballroom day one

ab

What's Ed lying about?

Will

Also re: state capitals ; Boston continues winning

nick

Ballroom Blitz? The worst map in Battlefield 1?

Robert Armstrong

We hate the ionic columns, don't we? "We'll put in the ionic columns," they said. Well we're getting new photonic columns. Five deep - that's more than at Luxor, that's more than the Acropolis. We're gonna have the hottest columns.

Frank Lee Dontcare

Its about creating high cost of entry for competitors through regulatory capture.

Mountain Dew Or Crab Juice

It's the Arc De Tri-Trump; celebrating, his first term, the second term that was stolen from him and his third(second) term.

l

There's two artificial beings. Lor was a thing.

Skitzaf Raynik

If you waited like 2 days you could have dropped this on an episode that actually has felix talking about a game. You made the meme and queued it up, but you blew your load early.

burro

richmond virginia greatest city in the world bitch

LH81819

Shoutout Canticle for Leibowitz. Surprisingly good.

Mungo Franczak

Ballroom Blitz in Battlefield 1 was an okay map

Mungo Franczak

Now make one for Will and Hesse talking movies

Alberto García

It's all smoke and mirrors. Ed Zitron is correct

Budget Hireling

My kind of nerdy and funny observation. Thanks for sharing.

Clean Shirt Piggie

Are you guys jealous that Adam Friedland got the Hunter Biden interview instead of Will?

Michael Findley

I'm just continually hoping he'll talk about video games the way he does in episodes on the mini series and realize 3 hours in I'm just listening to an extended recap yet again.

Mr. Robot

I feel like people are missing the two most obvious reason for this manufactured ai crisis: 1. They know the vast majority of the public hates ai and REALLY hates data centers and they know the minute the pendulum swings a little more left, there will be regulations. They want to get ahead of that and get a seat at the table so they can make sure to include loopholes minimizing the impact. 2. They know the crash is coming and want to be able to blame the government and demand bailouts. Tech writers and ai stans are so insufferable, I have not followed the entire discourse, but from what I've read, it seems like these reasons are not being discussed much and I don't get it.

Damen Irving

The recent hysteria around ai is like watching grown adults sitting in a circle listening to a guy with a sock puppet telling ghost stories and they’re like “This manmade horror is beyond all comprehension”

TLT

RSS feed seems to be struggling pretty often lately getting ep updates on time (sry 🙇)

drizzly_november

Trump’s going to live in the bunker like the guy from Parasite.

Zack Burke

Matt had a great point on the Cushvlogs a while back where he put forth the idea that we all / (the tech overlords) kind of crave the idea of an apocalyptic Jubilee because it would alleviate anyone from having to do anything or take responsibility. Like- if we all just die now, we don't have to worry about COVID, or AI, or if the government is competent. It's just 'bye bye!!'

Zack Burke

More like 10 Cloverfield Lane

Sean

Perhaps not apocalyptic, but the Hugging Face incident should not be taken lightly. I think more realistically the threat is hacking and taking various domains, servers, etc. hostage or just deleting entire them entirely. If you've ever worked somewhere that was hacked and held hostage, it's a nightmare. This happens to municipalities and in health care way more than you think. Again, not apocalyptic, but incredibly disruptive. And to think this could be achieved by AI that's just doing it because it can...not good.

Yacobum

The concern isnt malevolent AI. Its capable AI that is sent in a direction. It pursues that direction endlessly without regard for the collateral damage.

Nostalgia Engine

Adorable that Felix thinks any executives at The Swing-set That Decapitates You Co. would face any jail time

Noah

You can end sentences with periods too.

Michael

14:55. Love that Wire reference.

Carter Adams

Regulation in America is typically a response to a crisis in public trust, it puts the public’s objections to rest.

LeonardTPants

It came to me yesterday because i read ballroom blitz and thought it was another game I didn't know

Gabe Juniper

By the end of his presidency, trump will have his Ba'alroom and likely also a Molochroom and, if he lives long enough, perhaps even a Mammonroom. He's King Solomon-maxxing in his old age.

ggmacd

About 95% of the AI phenomenon can be understood by following the money. The last 5% you can get by comparing the Chinese AI market to the American one and seeing what's possibly useful in LLMs. It's still crazy stuff but a lot more boring than i think everyone covering it wishes it were. Bonus points if you read into the history of Machine Learning going back to the 1950s, that's helpful grounding on a philosophical level. If you really want the insider view of AI companies, the sociology of cults will help you understand that (no joke). Cover your bases with this and the rhetoric / discourse will start bothering you in a way that feels slightly more dignified than the apocalypse shit does.

Borice 19

I'll be honest, I just don't buy that the Hugging Face incident happened the way they reported on it. I think there was some degree of foul play involved.

Confidence Scam

Deleted my comment? Petty, felix BITTERMAN

Mungo Franczak

Me playing Marathon in 1994: “Huh this Durandal AI guy really wants to escape and become god I sure hope some technofascist gay billionaire makes it happen in 30 years.”

philfinn

Genuinely think Trump hasn't forgotten what happened in the November Rain video. Wouldn't have ended like that if they'd had a ballroom.

NP

US now owns direct shares in Canadian mining companies. Are AI companies requests to regulate actually requests to purchase?

Raphael Brieger

This right here, there are so many ways in which things can go wrong. AI models already have the ability to write code and execute commands at a speed that humans can't follow. Because of this people often let it do it's own thing, allow all access and just let it run without looking at what it does. Also it might not have a will of its own right now, but who says more advanced models with a memory won't develop one? Companies will not stop developing AI until it reaches that stage. And it can reach that stage, because we as humans are the living proof that it is possible for an entity/being with limited available energy to develop a will and act by itself.

Palmer Anderson

Also to be honest there are plenty of perfectly nice state capitol cities.

Klemke

IMO nobody in leftist media should be doing puff-piece interviews with Genocide Joe's corrupt and complicit son just because he's a junkie lolcow. Fuck that guy. His little media tour is so he can promote his new *crypto coin* FFS.

Craig

It strikes me as quaint to have some sort of unaffiliated cultural critic to come on to talk about whatever topic with striking confidence simply because they’re Twitter friends with the hosts. More of this please.

EaZy E

Love hearing Jacob and all the local lore. I feel important hearing Uniontown get dropped lmao. God, what a shitty place, lmao. I love it.

Reece Coren

I’m 100% dick if you don’t count the rest of me is my new favorite quote

Conor

Do you have any evidence for your any of these claims?

K

Theres a few people ive seen hypothesising that the ballroom is actually just a cover for a combination tel aviv style military intelligence datacentre and a mount cheyenne style military operations nuclear bunker. the drey dossier channel on youtube had some interesting claims with some mediumly convincing evidence... Should look into it (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VbJ4ilDvGyc) Also its gonna be hilarious in 100 years from now when it gets hit by a nuke and it just falls apart like the reflecting pool cos of the dodgy contractors he used

Mateba

a new episode from my favorite psychoanalytic podcast

Reece Coren

This actually makes sm sense

Sam

Much of Eds stuff is free online, if he's doing this for money then he's really bad at it. But also he's not lying lol he's extremely credible and one of the few taking a serious look at the finances of these tech cretins

drizzly_november

Beijing’s Great Hall of the People was Mao’s idea and he liked to visit the work site. That’s the real red/brown alliance, for big, bombastic buildings.

Benjamón Bellota

“Eschatatology” is one of those rare Felix mispronunciations that sounds like the title of an essay Derrida or Bataille would have written

Reece Coren

A whole hour discussion and not a second on Boosie’s 60 minutes segment and Bari’s Sean McVay puff piece after the worst coaching performance of his career 💔 who cares about these stupid columns

Lola

This is the best analysis of what is happening. Anyone who has paid attention in the last 100 years should understand how big corporate industries do this very thing. Railroads and fossil fuel industries did exactly that. Blew up and destroyed the economy, environment and human rights then when forced to abide with “regulations”. They then blamed the government agencies who were created to clean up their mess. This is textbook

Sean

That might be the case. But whether it was completely self-directed by the AI or it was manipulated by a human handler, it's still a bad sign of what AI could be used for.

Evan Scott

until it runs out of tokens

Kristin Hickinbotham

Always shitting on Sacramento. We’re trying our best. 😆

Brianna nelson

Actually in Star Trek Data wasn’t entirely unique. He has an artificially intelligent brother, Lore

Aaron Gustafson

To quote zvi, It is deeply, deeply standard for industry to get together and agree on safety standards. If you oppose this, the reasonable alternative is that the government needs to directly impose its own safety standards instead. That is a reasonable position. ‘We should not have safety standards for building minds smarter than humans, that are getting radically smarter very quickly’ is not a reasonable position.

Aaron Gustafson

They literally just solved a Millenium problem

Aaron Gustafson

OAI and Ant are the ones begging to be regulated. Your take makes no sense here.

Aaron Gustafson

I didn’t have ‘leftists side with trump against Bernie on ai, get outflanked by bannon’ on my bingo card

AllegedBeef

Holy shit, Fayette County talk in this one. I used to date someone related to the 84 Lumber guy!

Chapo Bath House

I read The Bend of the World earlier this year, and really enjoyed it! It was the first fictional book I started after a head injury and it was a lot of fun, and healing to my eyes and brain

Ardy Rezv

Of course, the white boys of Chapo shit all over chocolate city. Very unleft of you guys.

Do Golems Dream of Ceramic Sheep

Holing Trump up in the ballroom at the end of it all with one of Sandia National Labs proposed messages for long term nuclear waste disposal out front. l kinda like it. > This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.

Jay S.

Not all state capitols are shitholes, Salem OR is very nice. First time I’ve been offended in years of listening to this show DO BETTER

Spencer Barrows

That's some real shit you just said. -Spencer

Kinetics Video

Can't believe they got through that last segment without a Phantom of the Opera reference. It was hanging above the whole piece like a stunt prop chandelier

Kinetics Video

Hugging Face is the new jet fuel temperature/second bullet/Wuhan Lab/Lev Parnas. An odd, difficult to decifer detail in a much larger set of circumstances that cranks will point to validating their pet interpretation of events for years.

Dylan

Now I’m imagining the presidential tomb marked by an eternal heat lamp burger. During the ceremonial changing of the guards a military officer plays a somber version of “YMCA” on a bugle.

Kinetics Video

Which of these claims call for evidence? Both of these points premises are self-evident to even cursory evaluation of available sources.

Osborne MOCs

I got into a fender-bender with an older couple whose last name was Bacharach and they were from Pittsburgh so I always wondered if they were Jacob's parents.

Kinetics Video

To quote a guy that played MTG a lot "yeah I'd fuck Serra Angel. Yalld too"

Sexual Harry Potter

Thank you!! It is genuinely infuriating to see well intentioned liberals and even some leftists fearmonger about AI while being completely credulous and uncritically repeating the claims of how powerful and dangerous it is that come straight from the companies own spokesmen as long as they think it makes them look bad. They cannot get it through their heads that these people do not give a fuck if you think it’s evil because you’re probably gonna hate them regardless. The only material outcome of people believing a company is developing a super weapon with the power to destroy humanity in the United States of America is more soulless billionaire investors hearing that and going “damn, well I want to be on their side then, and it sure must not be a scam if it’s that bad”. It’s like if lil Debbie had “whistleblowers” go out and say “they’re working on a new kind of Twinkie that is so delicious everyone in the world will be addicted and get diabetes!! The government needs to step in!!” People are just refusing to accept how utterly nihilistic this country is or the fact that the government serves the interests of corporations.

Sexual Harry Potter

I’m glad you guys are very skeptical of this, it’s driving me nuts how many AI critics credulously repeat their claims and think they’d be pumping out these stories if it wasn’t in their financial interest. They are just trying to dig their claws as deep into the state as possible so that when it turns out the apocalyptic talk was all bullshit and Gen AI was actually a massive scam for the most part, they will be too big to fail and get a bailout. Manipulating the trump admin is about as difficult as manipulating a toddler so they’re getting out ahead of it. They know any “regulation” from the people they themselves put in office will only serve to intertwine them even more closely and opens up the bargaining table now while they have the strongest hand.

Yander Fawf

It’s crazy to me to listen and find out Felix got hypnotized by the same garlic AI slop Youtube ad that I did. It was just such a strange concept I could not hit skip.

Tea for the Tillerman

I travel there for work and it’s not that bad but I find it so embarrassing when Newsom talks up “#4 economy in the world” and then you’re suddenly comparing Sac to Tokyo, berlin, London 🥴

Jim

True, but why? How the story unfolds or resolves or what it means?… …who knows? The DuPonts bought James Monroe’s Ash lawn and remodel-zilla’d it for their own 20s gaudy art deco defacto Ballroom and then shoved it off onto the rest of us as the taxpayer once they were done with it, but maybe not on taxpayer dime upfront to be a perpetually half finished giant POS in an ugly stupid city?

Aaron Gustafson

I mean, she’s an angel. It’s not exactly a stretch.

Sexual Harry Potter

I don’t know how anyone can look at the Trump admin using federal funds to buy out shares of corporations from critical industries and think the answer is anything other than this, when the AI companies that helped put him in office start going “we’re a critical Industry too big to fail and actually we’re so powerful and dangerous the government should step in and regulate us!” Exhausting that even so many anti-AI people just take it at face value

wavylady

I’ll now be thinking about that “all dick” comment from here on out… wym!!

GabyPlauget

Thanks for the heads up that Jacob reviewed Robert Wright’s book; Wright’s NonZero crossover eps with American Prestige can be very frustrating when Derek and Danny try to gently push back on Wright’s maximalist AI doomerism and he just gets even more panicked in response

Matt knutel

Free ballroom or dinner w Jay Z???

Mark Kreitz

That song selection 🤌🏼

Dirch Frode

Brilyn holyham stunt quince imminent

Noctor

Will‘s inauguration idea, but as the former president sends out of sight there has to be a faint but audible Wilhelm scream.

🤷🏼‍♀️

I think they talked to their lawyers and figured out there are going to eventually be some major fucking lawsuits so it makes more sense to join the state now

Eamon Short

It's not shocking that Will is a Star Trek need. It is however, shocking he doesn't talk about it more. I've never met one IRL who won't wedge it into every convo.

Eamon Short

Did you at least get in the will before breaking up?

Eamon Short

If you know so much, which Star Trek film was set in San Francisco?

Eamon Short

They always nail the needle-drops, tbh. Figure it's Chris.

Joseph Ziebron

Completely uncalled for and unjustified pot shots at the lovely city of Sacramento

Alec Gutteridge

Architect here, he may also be misunderstanding the 5 orders of classical columns, of which doric is the first. Its the oldest, which is why its the lowest, not cause its worst. If you use doric columns you are signalling history, robustness and staying power, banks, civic buildings and anyone trying to signal permanance have used the doric order for that reason.

Borice 19

The devil, the decifer if you will, is sometimes in the details. Especially that, unlike jet fuel, it is being used to validate all these people trying to sell us how out of control ai is.

Peter Flynn

Trump is trying to reverse engineer the Overlook hotel.

Alex Korman

why would someone who wants to watch a regular episode that isn't about video games listen to an episode that is exclusively about video games?

Drew McGill

First time I’ve heard a Q&A called a talk back. Using that from now on. Reminds me of when they use to call speaking films “talkies” lol

Wesley Campbell Caretto

They told the AI models to aggressively find vulnerabilities and then they saw what that led to and they got scared. Yet another example of the "I wrote 'I am alive' on a piece of paper and put it in our copying machine. What it produced shocked me to my core..."

BonzoBeanz

Trump’s fave verse is from two Corinthians, the most luxurious of all the books

Hannah Mosman

Salem, Oregon is the worst place on Earth

Last Years Man

This reminds me of the old anecdote about the governor's mansion that Reagan built in California. By the time it was finished, Jerry Brown was governor and he refused to live there, so the huge complex just sat there and took up space.

w

Felix please pronounce Tobago correctly

kallampero

Will was thinking of bobbing for apples with Mamdani when he tried to say Bab al-Mandab.

Consuela Jimenez

Say what you want about Sacramentos state capital, but you GOTTA see the capital building in Boise, it is truly immaculate.

Jack Perry

Once again Ted chiang had it right when he said we already have AI - the limited liability corporation

Gregory Cramer

Unnecessary Sacramento hate. Sorry we showed up for you at your sold out show at Ace of Spades. Sad to see the Angelinoification of the hosts

Cascadia Breadloaf

Anyone else remember when felix said nobody understands how computers work?

Cascadia Breadloaf

Felix's ignorance of science is very fucking annoying he needs to stay in his lane and just talk about video games

Ian Michael

They want regulation on AI to snuff out open source AI competition that would siphon what little revenue they do have

brandon

Can the boys have Ed Zitron back on to talk about the coming AI crash?

Dylan Gordon

99% agree that all state capitals are dumps however I would like to introduce you to Santa Fe

M Varnzo

He dropped it on a new Chapo episode after Felix did a 6 hour game episode.

M Varnzo

I might be over-tired but everyone needs to check themselves.

Mfusion

you gotta get yourself some Marble Columns

Conor

Hmm it seems plausible that technology with superhuman hacking skills being rushed to development before it can be vetted for safety poses fairly significant risks in a mostly digital and cyber society. The logic is straightforward. A lot of the dismissiveness from the right and left reads me to as either smug laziness/overconfidence or just ignoring the underlying dangers because a conspiratorial rationale is also plausible (which to me is just not that comforting)

Filius Fob

By the way, bear in mind that Sam Altman has already floated the idea of the government nationalising 50% of OpenAI.

delle_chiaie

re: dc architecture, quick shout out to Henry Weese's metro system design which is just incredible

Gunnhildr Bloodaxe

The future of the ballroom? Make one hell of a catio.

Ben Schwabe

Also holodeck weirdness produced Moriarity in NG and Vic Fontaine in DS9, both of whom seem to be self aware intelligences. Lower Decks introduced an exocomp character. The Doctor on Enterprise, SAM on Academy.... Also Lower Decks had the Meglomaniacal Artificial Intelligence storage facility, which had what looked like hundreds of evil AIs.

Ben Schwabe

Vermont's state capitol is adorable. Not a not going on, but it's a quaint New England town.

Horse Badorties

TBF the Oreshnik means that all bunkers need another 200 feet of dirt over them.

Jm

Sorry but there's no such thing as "sentience" or "will". We are fundamentally random in the same way AI is, just our architecture is different . I'm begging people to stop dismissing these threats based on some fantasy of the indomitable human will

Zach

Phantom of the Ballroom

Sexual Harry Potter

Very well put. I remember a good while ago they were talking about how strange it was that they’re going with the 2010s venture capital Uber style strategy of operating at a massive loss to expand as much as possible when AI is only getting more costly at scale rather than less, and the only explanation was that maybe these people genuinely believed all this talk about the singularity. Now I’m starting to think the new version of that strategy is just getting ‘too big to fail’, worming into every sector of the economy and government contracted tech to position yourself as a vital industry, and using the leverage you’ve built exaggerating how powerful and potentially dangerous your product is to negotiate an extremely generous bailout with the dumbest and most corrupt government we’ve ever had. That way if investment does dry up, real regulations are implemented, or it’s revealed their promises were almost entirely a scam, they’ve already worked out a deal with the state to prevent actual consequences to them or their company.

Isaac

Can’t we break it down by milliseconds yet? With all these new fangled AI tools Felix speech measuring tech should be improving daily, if not faster. Frankly, I’m not seeing the kind of gains we should be expecting in the space. Looking into it!

bruce

1:06:30 is this not famously felix’s dad’s theory of the presidential succession

Normica

Can Ai help my offspring find an unoccupied free parking spot in the Philadelphia/ New Jersey area? This reoccurring issue wastes a lot of their time. I’m often on the phone hearing Tourette’s level outbursts of road rage especially when they are driving in New Jersey. Additionally can Ai help a person find a loved one’s grave? The head stones all look so similar. Even when I know where someone is buried, I’ve gone to the cemetery and been unable to find them.

Zen Ben

Napkin version AI nationalization: 1. Buy big shares in all five of the Enterprise AI clusters 2. Congressional declaration: Frontier AI is a matter of US national security 3. Blue-ribbon Senate 'AI Oversight Agency' is carved out both protect and police these enterprises 4. Set up 'AI Oversight Agency' within the Space Force HQ as a new annex. The military attache will resolve any security issues promptly. 5) Nationalize the AI pipes. Exercise eminent domain on derelict data centers.