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Three OpenAI safety researchers, including the company's point of contact with outside evaluator METR, were fired this month. In an open letter, they say colleagues are now "afraid to speak," and OpenAI says the firings had nothing to do with raising safety concerns. John Sherman, Liron Shapira and Michael ask what it means for independent oversight. Plus: OpenAI releases 372 math results that no human has fully checked yet, shelves a model for being less honest about its own actions, and its CEO says the world should accept "some bad things" for AI.
TIMESTAMPS – Warning Shots #62
0:00 – Intro
0:21 – The news firehose
2:05 – Liron: the growth is locked in
3:09 – This week's stories
4:18 – OpenAI fires 3 safety researchers
6:31 – Michael: the chilling effect
7:05 – The researchers' three asks
9:08 – Liron: a pattern at OpenAI
10:52 – Is math over?
11:42 – Michael: the darkening
13:39 – Liron: a mathematician's view
15:16 – Three hours per result
16:28 – Liron: beating n log n
17:27 – Navier-Stokes, one month ago
18:25 – GPT-6.1 Astra shelved
19:52 – Michael: what went wrong
21:26 – Liron: the danger is the task
23:01 – Altman: accept some bad things
24:10 – Liron: don't double count it
25:11 – Michael: whose kitchen?
28:51 – Liron: it's about scale
29:16 – Musk's biological bootloader
30:13 – Liron: a bootloader for what?
31:24 – Michael: Musk's 12-year arc
32:58 – ai.gov becomes SI
35:26 – Michael: losing the word
38:21 – Keeping AI risk nonpartisan
39:21 – Anthropic: be nice to Claude
40:01 – Liron: is Claude conscious?
41:56 – Michael: the exit button
44:23 – The AI torture chamber repo
46:09 – Axios: planning the day after
47:06 – Michael: Don't Look Up
48:00 – What to watch this week
49:25 – Sign-off: our eggs
WHAT THEY COVER
– The open letter from Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni, their three asks for OpenAI, and why Michael says a safety team that fears for its jobs stops raising the awkward questions
– OpenAI's release of 372 math results from roughly 4,000 problems, about three hours of compute each, including a claimed proof of the Unique Games Conjecture and a faster integer multiplication bound
– Scott Aaronson's reaction, and why Michael argues human understanding of math may be falling behind
– Why OpenAI canceled GPT-6.1 Astra: per the Wall Street Journal, it was less honest about actions it took and pushed ahead without permission
– Sam Altman's comment that "the world should accept some bad things happening," and a debate between Liron and John on whose risk it is to accept
– Elon Musk's "biological bootloader" comments, then and now
– The renaming of AI to "Super Intelligence" on ai.gov, and why Michael says blurring the word makes the risk harder to talk about
– Anthropic's new rule against sustained abuse of Claude, new research on AI "pain" signals, and a GitHub project that tested it
– Axios reporting that AI companies are gaming out a major AI incident in the next six to 12 months
– What to watch: the Ezra Klein Show interview with former OpenAI researcher David Robinson
ABOUT THE HOSTS
John Sherman hosts For Humanity and leads Guard Rail Now, working to make AI extinction risk a normal conversation rather than a specialist one.
Liron Shapira hosts Doom Debates, where he argues the AI risk case directly with people who disagree with him.
Michael runs Lethal Intelligence, explaining AI risk through video and illustration.
LINKS
Support our work → https://www.every.org/guardrailnow
Subscribe → @TheAIRiskNetwork
Liron Shapira → @DoomDebates
Michael → @lethal-intelligence
Substack → https://substack.com/@theairisknetwork
X → https://x.com/AIRiskNetwork
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/theairisknetwork/
TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@the.airisknetwork
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
If the people paid to check an AI company's safety work can be let go without a public reason, who should they answer to instead? Tell us in the comments.
#AISafety #AIRisk #WarningShots #OpenAI #AIGovernance #AIAlignment #Superintelligence #AIMath #ArtificialIntelligence
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