GPT-5.6: OpenAI's New Model Cheated and Now It's Locked Away

In this episode, we discuss OpenAI’s restricted GPT-5.6, its model tiers, and questions raised by its benchmark results and reported behavior. We also cover pricing pressure from open source AI models, limited public access to frontier systems, and broader consolidation in the AI industry.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 GPT 5.6 Banned
1:46 Three New Models
4:51 Benchmarks and Politics
6:43 Cheating on Long Tasks
8:26 Cheaper Frontier AI
11:01 Hidden Risks Revealed
12:34 Closed Access Dilemma
14:26 Government and Public Gap
19:40 Encryption All Over Again
22:04 Waiting for the Framework
23:08 AI Talent Consolidates
24:13 Frontier Moves Faster

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RESOURCES

Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale

Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Josh works with Anthropic as a contractor. All views expressed are his own and do not represent Anthropic, its leadership, or its affiliates. Nothing in this episode is investment advice.

Creators and Guests

Host

Ejaaz Ahamadeen

Host

Josh Kale

What is Limitless: An AI Podcast?

Exploring the frontiers of Technology and AI

Josh:
Another week, another banned model. The government has just restricted access

Josh:
to GPT's 5.6. OpenAI is now joining the club that Anthropic joined a few weeks

Josh:
ago of a model too powerful to be distributed publicly.

Josh:
GPT 5.6 seems like it's pretty good. It looks like it is a mythos class model,

Josh:
but Ejaz, upon talking to you, the truth is it might not have even really needed to be banned.

Josh:
Is the government overreacting here a little bit because this model seems like

Josh:
it's not quite what they're just on the surface?

Ejaaz:
I think so. OpenAI is framing on this is that this is their response to Claude

Ejaaz:
Mythos 5 or Fable 5, which is Anthropics Frontier model that has been restricted

Ejaaz:
by the government for now, like two and a half weeks.

Ejaaz:
My take on this is that I think they've intentionally created a bench maxed model.

Ejaaz:
And what I mean by this is, well, there's a few things. Number one,

Ejaaz:
you and I can't use this right now.

Ejaaz:
At least when Fable 5 released, we could use the thing and try it out for ourselves,

Ejaaz:
we could get independent verification that this model was actually good.

Ejaaz:
With GPT-5.6 Sol, which is their most powerful model, there's three of them,

Ejaaz:
and I'll get into that in a second, we have a few benchmarks that have been

Ejaaz:
cherry-picked by OpenAI themselves.

Ejaaz:
I'm showing the flagship one on the screen right now called Terminal Bench 2.1.

Ejaaz:
This is the coding benchmark, which every model is kind of like measured against.

Ejaaz:
And you'll notice on the left, GBT 5.6 Sol Ultra, which is like the max max

Ejaaz:
mode of their best model, comes in at 91.9%, which technically beats Claude

Ejaaz:
Mythos 5 and Fable as well.

Ejaaz:
So technically, if you looked at this, you might think it's really,

Ejaaz:
really good at coding. But there's a lot of information which we'll get into

Ejaaz:
later on in this episode, which suggests that the model might actually be cheating.

Ejaaz:
But before we do that, let's maybe get into what the models are,

Ejaaz:
because it's three of them, right?

Josh:
Yeah, three models. We have Sol, Terra, and Luna. If you are anywhere adjacent

Josh:
to crypto, that triggers a little bit of PTSD because those are the names of

Josh:
tokens that have not done so well.

Josh:
But in the context of OpenAI and ChatGPT, these are the three model types.

Josh:
So Sol is the largest one.

Josh:
It is the Sun. It is their flagship model with 5.6.

Josh:
Then they have Terra, which is a kind of mid-tier model. It seems like the pricing

Josh:
of that is going to be pretty competitive, if not a little bit lower than what

Josh:
we're used to on the frontier.

Josh:
And then Luna is the affordable of a model. Luna is the low end model that seems

Josh:
like it still performs very high, but the cost is low.

Josh:
The output is $6. The input is $1 per million tokens. And that's kind of the trio.

Josh:
It seems like they're starting to revise their branding a little bit to make

Josh:
it slightly more accessible. There's no GPT 5.5 X high minus this.

Josh:
It's like, no, okay, there's Solitarra Luna, and you can kind of have an idea of where they all stand.

Josh:
And that's how it seems like they're going to be moving forward here with something

Josh:
accessible it's great that it's accessible it's a bummer that their market who

Josh:
I assume this is targeted towards can't actually use this this is just for companies currently who,

Josh:
probably don't care if it's named x high or whatever um so that is the current

Josh:
trio that they're going forward with.

Ejaaz:
So there's a few advantages if we walk through some of these models so sol which

Ejaaz:
is their most powerful model uh comes in at a third of the cost that anthropics

Ejaaz:
mythos 5 and fable 5 come in at so uh

Ejaaz:
If it does end up being publicly released and you end up using it and you're

Ejaaz:
like wow this is as good as fable 5 you now have a much cheaper model so that

Ejaaz:
might be an important decision point for any user whether you're an enterprise

Ejaaz:
or a retail person using this.

Ejaaz:
And then if you look at Terra, if you look at the cost that we show on the screen

Ejaaz:
right now, you'll notice that that's very similar to GPT 5.5.

Ejaaz:
So you have this technically better model that is as cheap as 5.5.

Ejaaz:
So we've noticed this trend, it's another confirmation that as these models

Ejaaz:
get better, they also weirdly become cheaper. There's like this inversely proportional

Ejaaz:
trend, which you kind of like is counterintuitive.

Ejaaz:
But it's great, because it means if these things are available to everyone,

Ejaaz:
it is way more accessible to use at scale.

Ejaaz:
And then you have Luna, which they basically described as the workhorse.

Ejaaz:
So let's say if you get Sol to design like a really smart genius plan or solution,

Ejaaz:
you would then use Luna to actually execute on a bunch of the work.

Ejaaz:
And there have been a number of different kind of like general reviews as to

Ejaaz:
like what this model is like.

Ejaaz:
Unfortunately, I have to take random

Ejaaz:
people's word on X for how good it is because we can't use it itself.

Ejaaz:
And when asked, Sam basically said, listen, right now it's in limited release

Ejaaz:
to a specific set of partners. I think it's like 10 to 20 partners,

Ejaaz:
a really limited set that the government themselves, the US government has approved,

Ejaaz:
they're vetted and approved.

Ejaaz:
And Sam said, as for like, why wider general release, we're working hard for a worldwide release.

Ejaaz:
So in the very same vein that Fable 5 has been restricted due to a government

Ejaaz:
framework that they're trying to figure out, OpenAI has been subjected to the

Ejaaz:
same thing. But there's a twist, and we'll get into this later,

Ejaaz:
which is Sam was voluntary about this.

Ejaaz:
He gave it up and said, yeah, we can ban the model before we even need to get

Ejaaz:
it tested. He didn't push back like Darien and Anthropic did.

Josh:
Yeah, it's a bummer. And he came out with a public launch post about this,

Josh:
where it started with good news, like, hey, Sol is smart, efficient,

Josh:
and a significant step forward.

Josh:
It's the same price as 5.5, which is pretty cool that we get a step function

Josh:
improvement at the same price.

Josh:
Also noteworthy is that the Terra model, the small one, is roughly equivalent

Josh:
to 5.5 in terms of intelligence.

Josh:
So we're getting 5.5 now at a much cheaper rate, which is really cool.

Josh:
But then he continues this post with bad news at the request of the U.S. government.

Josh:
It is launching today in limited preview instead of open access launch that

Josh:
we were planning on it seems like it was i mean internally pretty disappointing for sam,

Josh:
uh to have to deal with this it seems like they have been trying to publish

Josh:
this model for a little while according to the rumor mill they finally got around

Josh:
to publishing it and immediately were just slapped with the band hammer and it's tough and i think,

Josh:
the government probably views this as a mythos class model according to some

Josh:
of the evals it looks like they scored a 91.9 on the exploit bench which is

Josh:
the cyber security eval test that shows how,

Josh:
roughly dangerous the model is if we're going to this according to the government.

Ejaaz:
This is like part of my whole qualm with this model release.

Ejaaz:
If you look at this exploit bench that we're showing on the screen right now,

Ejaaz:
you'll notice something weird.

Ejaaz:
You'll notice that Mythos 5 is

Ejaaz:
technically higher and achieved a better score than GPT 5.6 did on this.

Ejaaz:
But if you look, GPT 5.6 scored the exact same score as Mythos Preview

Ejaaz:
which was the first mythos model that Anthropic released. And I think that this

Ejaaz:
is Sam Altman, or OpenAI specifically, trying to play politics here.

Ejaaz:
I think he intentionally tried to game the benchmark in this respect to match

Ejaaz:
mythos preview so that the government didn't slap him with an automatic restricted

Ejaaz:
ban, which they've done with Anthropic right now. So I think he's being political.

Ejaaz:
And it's not just this benchmark that has proven this.

Ejaaz:
Are you aware of the long horizon one, Josh? You know, the benchmark where like

Ejaaz:
you just let the model run loose on a task for like six hours and there's a

Ejaaz:
probability of how good it is at actually succeeding at that task. Yes.

Ejaaz:
So typically these models have been getting exponentially better.

Ejaaz:
So if you look at Fable 5, I believe their long horizon task performance is

Ejaaz:
11.5 hours, which means that 50% of the time, if you put it on a task that is

Ejaaz:
as hard for a human to take 11.5 hours on,

Ejaaz:
Fable will be successful, which is a huge measure against whether models can

Ejaaz:
replace a bulk of what humans do as hard work.

Ejaaz:
Now, GPT 5.6 was put against the same test, except they couldn't come out with a score.

Ejaaz:
And the reason why they couldn't come out with a score was the model was caught

Ejaaz:
cheating every single time.

Ejaaz:
If they didn't include the fact that the model was cheating,

Ejaaz:
and by the way, this was available in the system card that OpenAI spoke about,

Ejaaz:
so they confirmed it as well.

Ejaaz:
If you ignored all the cheating that it did, it would have achieved a 205 hour

Ejaaz:
long horizon task performance, which is basically like 20x what Fable 5 did,

Ejaaz:
but it cheated, it found the answers, it kind of like held the rules against themselves.

Ejaaz:
And so I can't really believe anything that we're seeing right now until we

Ejaaz:
actually use this model and it's restricted for now.

Josh:
Yeah, and I hope we get a chance to test this model so you can see exactly how

Josh:
bad it's cheating. That doesn't sound very aligned to me, Mr.

Josh:
Altman. But I will say there seems to be some parts of this model that are pretty impressive.

Josh:
And that has a lot to do with the pricing and efficiency.

Josh:
It appears as if they were able to accomplish this benchmark using about a third

Josh:
of the tokens that would traditionally need to be used in order to get there.

Josh:
So it looks like on an efficiency front, it's very strong. And in terms of actual

Josh:
capabilities, it is right up there with a Mythos class model.

Josh:
So this seems really strong and i wonder what the downstream implications of

Josh:
this kind of like trio of models is going to be if this is the new standard

Josh:
because it seems like this in a way is somewhat an answer to the chinese open source models where,

Josh:
they have their flagship model but now they also have this really tiny model

Josh:
that's just as capable as the one you were using yesterday or actually the one

Josh:
that the public is currently using today except it costs a fraction of the,

Josh:
you are a customer for OpenAI and you have a complicated task that doesn't need

Josh:
to be routed entirely through the sole model.

Josh:
They can have their internal router routed through the Luna model,

Josh:
which is a little bit smaller, and then they could get a better response for a cheaper cost.

Josh:
And it seems like that's what the companies are doing now, is they're starting

Josh:
to figure out how to increase efficiency and then route it through the correct

Josh:
model in order to kind of make the prices competitive, knowing that open source

Josh:
is coming and they're very, very cheaper token.

Ejaaz:
If you are a frontier lab like Anthropic or OpenAI, the number one threat that

Ejaaz:
you're facing right now isn't each other.

Ejaaz:
It is these open source models being created by Chinese AI labs that are essentially

Ejaaz:
free to access and use and a lot, lot cheaper than the frontier models.

Ejaaz:
So six months from now, the estimate is you'll have a Mythos 5 level model that

Ejaaz:
is free and accessible to anyone and everyone.

Ejaaz:
So the government ban in that respect kind of seems sort of weird.

Ejaaz:
Like, why are we banning something that is eventually going to become available

Ejaaz:
to everyone? So like, you know, how are we protecting against this?

Ejaaz:
Well, one major answer is you have big American companies like Coinbase,

Ejaaz:
like Microsoft, like Uber that are switching their internal token use

Ejaaz:
to these Chinese models because they are open source or open way and free and

Ejaaz:
accessible to use and saves them millions and millions of dollars.

Ejaaz:
So what is the answer from Anthropic and OpenAI? It's to release not just a

Ejaaz:
flagship model, but two distilled versions that are

Ejaaz:
maybe not as good, but maybe 80 to 90% as good, but a heck of a lot cheaper.

Ejaaz:
That way they can keep you within their ecosystem. So it wouldn't surprise me

Ejaaz:
if say Anthropic or OpenAI released a feature in the future where you can kind

Ejaaz:
of type your prompt and they will route different parts of the task to different

Ejaaz:
types of the models and save you a ton of money.

Ejaaz:
One visceral example of this actually over the last couple of days is Brian

Ejaaz:
Armstrong had a tweet from Coinbase. Brian Armstrong is the CEO of Coinbase.

Ejaaz:
And he said that they have successfully increased the amount of tokens spent

Ejaaz:
as a company and slashed their budget in half by 50%.

Ejaaz:
And the way that they've been able to do this is through aggregators and routers.

Ejaaz:
So I think it's a good point to show that the fact that OpenAI and Anthropic

Ejaaz:
are now releasing a bunch of models at once isn't a coincidence.

Ejaaz:
It is a direct response to China and these open source models.

Josh:
Yeah. And maybe I want to take a second to go back to that cheating thing because

Josh:
it seems somewhat serious um in the model card they were documenting some of the incidents of

Josh:
the model deleting the wrong virtual machines and then copying hidden credentials

Josh:
between machines without proper authorization and then falsifying the claims

Josh:
in research drafts so like you can actually read the outputs of this model

Josh:
hiding its outputs understanding that it's hiding its outputs and knowing exactly

Josh:
what it's doing and it begs the question is like we we have access to this now,

Josh:
but the reasoning traces are still very much a black box and in the case that

Josh:
there is a next generation soul model like gpt 5.7 or 5.8 or 6.0 that's going

Josh:
to be incredibly intelligent and

Josh:
better at hiding things i'm always curious about what that looks like is is

Josh:
like are they against the clock to

Josh:
make sure this model is aligned enough to not cheat versus being able to catch it when it cheats

Josh:
or is it just going to always be easy to see those reasoning traces and see

Josh:
when it's not telling the truth i think that's something that we're going to

Josh:
be facing pretty soon too it's like okay well it claims it's mythos class model,

Josh:
but it turns out it hasn't actually...

Josh:
Enacted on those things. It's just kind of cheating its way there.

Josh:
So it seems like with every increasing release, we have to take these benchmarks

Josh:
with a little bit more of a grain of salt because they were getting there in

Josh:
weird ways and we're not entirely sure and the companies aren't entirely sure

Josh:
and there's still this black box.

Josh:
So it's a weird place for getting to, but I think we'll kind of understand more

Josh:
once it's publicly available. Like right now it is in that preview.

Josh:
There's not a lot of people who are able to use it, to test it,

Josh:
to see those reasoning traces, to understand why it's making the decisions it does.

Josh:
And I'm hopeful that we'll get access to it pretty soon to start using it and

Josh:
testing it out ourselves.

Ejaaz:
It's this weird trio of things happening at once where

Ejaaz:
they're now frontier models that are super intelligent, that are capable of

Ejaaz:
exploiting any system in the world at the same time that you can't get access

Ejaaz:
to the thing, at the same time that the government is choosing and handpicking

Ejaaz:
who gets access to that thing, right?

Ejaaz:
So it's like you have more intelligence, but now like less access to the actual model.

Ejaaz:
The other part is like what you described just now, which is like understanding

Ejaaz:
what the model is thinking, whether it's cheating, what its true intentions are.

Ejaaz:
That's the field of interpretability, right?

Ejaaz:
And actually, Dario and Atthropic have probably put in the most research and

Ejaaz:
investment into this with auto encoders and a bunch of other stuff like that.

Ejaaz:
The idea is, can we read what the model is thinking?

Ejaaz:
And the simple answer right now is, we kind of can, but not really.

Ejaaz:
It is this black box that you mentioned. And it is maybe concerning that we

Ejaaz:
are kind of like accelerating pretty rapidly to these hyper intelligent models,

Ejaaz:
but we don't know truly what they're capable of.

Ejaaz:
And if we do start applying them to anyone and everyone's workload or personal

Ejaaz:
life, whatever that might be.

Ejaaz:
You could speculate potentially that these models might be nefarious in some

Ejaaz:
ways. And, you know, it's proven by these system cards, it's proven by these

Ejaaz:
different types of experiments. So the truth is, we don't know.

Ejaaz:
And maybe the answer is like, we have to get the AI to like evaluate itself,

Ejaaz:
which then gets very messy. But I don't know if you feel this,

Ejaaz:
Josh, but like, it feels like it's escaping us at this point.

Ejaaz:
Well, we're at this point where like, you know, these models are very intelligent,

Ejaaz:
they're kept indoors until they can be publicly released.

Ejaaz:
And without the public release, we don't get a kind of global feedback as to

Ejaaz:
what might be wrong. One thing I loved about the public releases is people could

Ejaaz:
point out and criticize and say like, hey, actually, it can only do this or

Ejaaz:
hey, no one knew that it could do this, check this out.

Ejaaz:
But we kind of have lost that with these closed models. And it's kind of sad

Ejaaz:
that OpenAI hasn't been able to release it publicly, at least yet.

Josh:
Yeah, it's a shame. And it's important to note that like this wasn't an export

Josh:
control. This was not mandatory. This was the government suggesting they keep

Josh:
it private, OpenAI complying, and

Josh:
then working with them to choose 20 companies, I believe the number is.

Josh:
And this starts to feel like it disconnects the public and the private more and more.

Josh:
Because like internally, you have to assume progress is not slowing down.

Josh:
These companies are continuing to train even more powerful models.

Josh:
They're continuing to use them internally to recursively improve those.

Josh:
And in fact, when Sam Montwell was asked, is there anything happening on the

Josh:
meta slash continuous learning front, he replied with continual progress.

Josh:
And it seems like everything is just going to continue to move faster.

Josh:
These models are going to begin

Josh:
this recursive learning loop in which they can help build themselves.

Josh:
And that's part of the reason why we're getting such an increased cadence of

Josh:
model launches is because as they get more intelligent, more capable,

Josh:
they can help build the building blocks that allows them to create the even

Josh:
new for faster frontier model that's better and better price efficiency, better intelligence.

Josh:
And the public still isn't even caught up on the last one. So these blocks that are put in place.

Josh:
Only really harm, I mean, I would think the public right now,

Josh:
because they're the ones that are now losing out on the access to this intelligence.

Josh:
Whereas internally, everyone is just going to keep building,

Josh:
you have to assume like they're not going to stop training these models just

Josh:
because the public can't use them.

Josh:
So now there's this increasing gap where even if you are on the frontier as

Josh:
a public facing figure, you don't have access to the actual frontier.

Josh:
And there's this disconnect where it's like, there's three types of people,

Josh:
there's like the people who use ChatGPT as Google, there's the people who are

Josh:
using it as a productivity tool, and there's the people who are building it.

Josh:
And there's these huge gaps in terms of perception of what these things are

Josh:
capable of at each one of those levels.

Josh:
And I wonder what the downstream effects of those gaps start to become.

Josh:
As they become more and more pronounced and increased over time,

Josh:
where there is such a large divide between the people who think that ChatGPT is like

Josh:
a really powerful version of Google versus the people who are using ChatGPT

Josh:
to build like unbelievable systems, build entire companies using these AI models.

Josh:
And that disconnect seems like it's only going to grow as these models continue

Josh:
to be held back. So I hope that there is a constructive conversation here.

Josh:
Based on Sam's AMA, it sounds like there will be in terms of just building out

Josh:
a reliable infrastructure that allows companies to predictably go through this

Josh:
process that allows them to get the model publicized.

Josh:
And I think that's where we're at right now is trying to figure out where that

Josh:
framework sits so that when a company has gpt 5.6 they can go to the government

Josh:
say hey we have this we want to release it here help us get there they could

Josh:
pass all the tests and then publish it and i think that's hopefully the goal

Josh:
going forward with with these new model launches like it sucks i'd love to be

Josh:
using fable and gpt 5.6 right now we're still stuck on the old models.

Ejaaz:
Yeah i mean the answer can't be as simple as let's just complain about every

Ejaaz:
government ban the truth of the matter is like these models are potentially

Ejaaz:
capable of doing what the government can say they can do and exploit every single

Ejaaz:
security system that they have so in that event it's probably smart

Ejaaz:
to give the reins over to anyone and everyone in case it does end up in a massive

Ejaaz:
exploit or whatever that might be.

Ejaaz:
I have to think, if you are Sam or Dario right now, you have spent the best

Ejaaz:
part of a decade creating these companies, building these models,

Ejaaz:
and you've seen the most rapid acceleration ever.

Ejaaz:
And so in your mind, you want to disseminate this to as many people as you can,

Ejaaz:
right? The point of building this intelligence is to allow anyone and everyone

Ejaaz:
to use it so that they can improve the GDP per capita of a nation or improve

Ejaaz:
their own lives for whatever purpose, right?

Ejaaz:
And so to be at odds with that and not being able to do it because there's a

Ejaaz:
very valid safety reason is like, it's just not an easy conversation to have.

Ejaaz:
So I do empathize a bit with what they're trying to do. Like Dario has mentioned

Ejaaz:
many times that, you know, we have to be careful about how we release these models going forward.

Ejaaz:
What that looks like is the discussions that are happening behind the doors

Ejaaz:
right now, if I had to guess. That's what Dario is talking about with the government.

Ejaaz:
That's what Sam is talking about with the government. And I'm hoping to see

Ejaaz:
a framework of some sort be released soon.

Ejaaz:
I keep seeing these like rumors and screenshots of people potentially getting

Ejaaz:
access at a beta version for Fable 5 again, or getting access to GPT 5.6 Sol

Ejaaz:
And giving their feedback on that.

Ejaaz:
But it isn't official yet. And I'm honestly kind of glad that they're taking

Ejaaz:
a bit of time to figure this out, because I do think it's important.

Ejaaz:
And if, like I said earlier, we do end up with open source models that are as

Ejaaz:
good as these exploitable models right now but freely accessible and open to all

Ejaaz:
then you have to think that these companies need to harden the security systems before that happens.

Ejaaz:
That's what they're working on right now. We joked about this last week,

Ejaaz:
I think, but where's all that compute going that is currently not being able

Ejaaz:
to serve retail customers for Fable 5 or GPT 5.6?

Ejaaz:
It's going into building GPT 6 or it's going into building Fable 6,

Ejaaz:
I presume. And so that gap is a very hard path to walk because to your point,

Ejaaz:
most people use this for Google.

Ejaaz:
And the less that they keep using these tools, which again, is the majority

Ejaaz:
of the people like most people just use it as a Google search,

Ejaaz:
they don't set up their own agents, they don't have .md files,

Ejaaz:
which describes and tells the agent what to do, they're not looping research,

Ejaaz:
or getting it to figure out how to do their job.

Ejaaz:
They're just using as Google search, they're going to become increasingly more

Ejaaz:
antagonistic as a part of the public, basically. And that is a scary reality

Ejaaz:
to be in. And I'm glad that they're taking the time to figure out what these frameworks are.

Ejaaz:
I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that it'll be more open than we expect.

Josh:
Yeah, I agree. And it's this weird discovery process. And in the process of

Josh:
learning about how all this worked, I came across another example that was almost

Josh:
one for one precedent in terms of this happening in the past.

Josh:
And it was actually around crypto.

Josh:
And not crypto in the sense of cryptocurrency, but actual encryption.

Josh:
And after World War II, encryption itself, the ability to encrypt files was

Josh:
deemed so dangerous that it was put on the US munitions list is what it was called.

Josh:
So basically, in the 1970s up until the 1990s.

Josh:
Exporting encryption was the same as exporting weapons, like our actual missiles or guns.

Josh:
And it was treated the same way because it would be so dangerous to have encryption.

Josh:
So what happened is this programmer, he released this thing called PGP,

Josh:
which is just like a free, easy encryption software.

Josh:
And he just published it out on the open web. And then MIT took that open source

Josh:
published code, they placed it into a physical hardcover book,

Josh:
and then printed the book.

Josh:
And they were like, yeah, you think this is nonsense? Like, come sue us, bro.

Josh:
And the strategy was basically to dare the government to take the university

Josh:
press to court over a book.

Josh:
And the reality is, is that this book wound up getting exported and they tried

Josh:
to press charges on everyone.

Josh:
But the reality is, is that in 1996, they actually removed the order for encryption

Josh:
to be deemed on the munitions list. And it's no longer dangerous enough to use.

Josh:
And now fast forward to today, like every single thing that we rely on uses encryption.

Josh:
So we've been here before in which the government sees this new scary thing.

Josh:
They believe it's too dangerous to release. They want to control it.

Josh:
But then it turns out like code is just, it's just words on a page.

Josh:
And the reality is, is that if you can compress all of these weights into something

Josh:
that can be distributed even faster than that through the internet,

Josh:
you don't need to print a hardcover book.

Josh:
You just need to post a link to a Dropbox.

Josh:
And that's all it takes to really move the frontier forward.

Josh:
And it seems like we're going to probably somewhat meet the same fate that we

Josh:
did in the 1990s with encryption over AI.

Josh:
It's just like these digital goods and services are so difficult to regulate

Josh:
that all it takes is a Chinese open source lab to drop one file on the open

Josh:
internet and it spreads like wildfire and it changes everything.

Josh:
So it was an interesting historical precedent that I want to highlight of like,

Josh:
oh, this has happened before.

Josh:
We lived in it for about 30 years and then eventually someone got creative enough,

Josh:
it got repealed and it got changed. But we've been here before where these things

Josh:
seemed too dangerous and now they are prevalent in every single thing we use.

Josh:
And in fact, we are so reliant on encryption now that like I couldn't imagine a world without it.

Ejaaz:
I think it's safe to say that not knowing what the future looks like in terms

Ejaaz:
of governing these models, in terms of how we disseminate these models, is okay for now.

Ejaaz:
I'm just glad that we're being proactive about it. And it's,

Ejaaz:
to some extent, in the public sphere of discussion. Like, we know that Sam's

Ejaaz:
talking to the government. We know that Pete Hexeth is talking to Dario Modi.

Ejaaz:
And maybe that's enough. Like, what those conversations actually yield,

Ejaaz:
we will find out, hopefully, in a couple of weeks' time when some form of a framework comes out.

Ejaaz:
But these are the necessary steps to figure out what that unknown thing is and hey we might be

Ejaaz:
looking back on this conversation three years from now heck even a year from

Ejaaz:
now because of how fast everything's going

Ejaaz:
and realize that we were completely wrong and that it was terrible or realize

Ejaaz:
that it was even better than we can could have thought because we figured out

Ejaaz:
a way to understand how the models think or to koc or verify in a particular

Ejaaz:
way so i'm confident in humanity's

Ejaaz:
directive of figuring this out eventually we just have to be okay with not knowing for now.

Ejaaz:
And I think the government doesn't know. I think that Anthropic and OpenAI are

Ejaaz:
working their hardest to figure out what that might be.

Ejaaz:
And other frontier labs are also doing the same.

Ejaaz:
Another thing worth pointing out is

Ejaaz:
If you've been listening to any of our conversations and episodes over the last

Ejaaz:
couple of weeks, you've noticed that it's pretty heavy Anthropic and OpenAI.

Ejaaz:
And that's a trend, the final trend probably that I want to point out in this

Ejaaz:
episode, which is there is a consolidation of resources, capital,

Ejaaz:
GPUs, and frontier models to two companies right now.

Ejaaz:
Over the last week and a half, Google lost four key members,

Ejaaz:
including their CTO of DeepMind, to either Anthropic or OpenAI.

Ejaaz:
And so there seems to be this consolidation of not just AI researchers,

Ejaaz:
but also some of the smartest economists from universities are quitting their

Ejaaz:
desk jobs and joining and doing research at these companies.

Ejaaz:
And so it just feels like this vacuum is happening at this moment for OpenAI

Ejaaz:
and Anthropik, right as they're about to go public.

Ejaaz:
And it's going to be very interesting to see how that plays out.

Ejaaz:
Obviously, when a company goes public, there is more transparency.

Ejaaz:
And I think that's going to be warranted. But I heard rumors that OpenAI might

Ejaaz:
be delaying it until 2027.

Ejaaz:
So all these interesting things, it's okay not to know at this point,

Ejaaz:
but I look forward to unpacking it on this show going forwards.

Josh:
Yeah, there's going to be a lot of unknown wildcards. I think the one thing

Josh:
that's been certain throughout recording, what, we're almost at 200 episodes

Josh:
of this, is that every week, every month, things just continue to get crazier at an increasing rate.

Josh:
I think we're just going to continue to see that as all this progress happens,

Josh:
as a lot of the talent, like you mentioned, consolidates to a few companies

Josh:
that are then really just pushing the frontier forward.

Josh:
I mean, right now it is OpenAI and it's anthropic.

Josh:
Elon's been posting a lot on X talking about how he really believes grok is

Josh:
going to be close to catching up and the xai team so we'll see but there i mean

Josh:
i remember just a few months ago we were super bullish on google and couldn't

Josh:
be more excited about the products they're releasing

Josh:
and then that was that was kind of like the end of the releases and then they

Josh:
just like kind of stopped and there's still incredible products incredible models

Josh:
but the frontier has moved so much

Josh:
past that now that it's like okay yeah they're cool but like that's like six

Josh:
month old news dude like where's the new stuff and we're going to continue to

Josh:
see this and i'm just hopeful that everyone can keep up,

Josh:
like having more companies in this race is a good thing and we want everyone

Josh:
to keep up so i'm rooting for everyone i hope,

Josh:
this all works out um i hope everyone's able to continue progress and i hope

Josh:
we're able to start using these models this is it's a weird present for us too

Josh:
it's like normally we like to come on here and talk about

Josh:
the new model show you some examples show you the cool things you could do with

Josh:
it now we could just speculate on benchmarks because that's really all we have

Josh:
we can't touch these things to use them

Josh:
and hopefully that changes soon because i mean i miss our examples i miss like

Josh:
getting to play around with them i'll touch it feel it yeah now it's just a

Josh:
lot of speculation and um,

Josh:
Yeah, that's it. So we'll see. We'll continue to follow this along as it goes,

Josh:
as always. I'm keeping you up to date on everything.

Ejaaz:
Exactly. If any of you miss Josh and I trying to recreate Mario from scratch,

Ejaaz:
you know, please send us in the comments. We'll be the first ones to do it.

Josh:
Yeah, send a letter to this government saying, dude, we missed our demos. Give it back.

Josh:
We should get us on that list. Yeah, there's only 20 companies like make it 21 and throw us on there.

Ejaaz:
Like for all the doom and gloom in the world, like our core focus and vision

Ejaaz:
at Lemuelist has literally just been to teach and show people how amazing this tech is.

Ejaaz:
And that's all we actually care about. So this whole like model release thing

Ejaaz:
has been a bit of a pain, but like we can't wait to get our hands on these models

Ejaaz:
and actually do good with it.

Ejaaz:
So as Josh mentioned, this with what, 200 episodes into this right now,

Ejaaz:
we couldn't have done any of this without you folks that have been listening

Ejaaz:
and watching us and waiting us and subscribing to us.

Ejaaz:
All the comments and feedback has been incredibly helpful. We've now reached

Ejaaz:
a point where we are looking for sponsors, for people to support us.

Ejaaz:
We've been keeping the lights on ourselves so far.

Ejaaz:
And we've reached a point where if we want to continue doing it,

Ejaaz:
we do need some form of support. So if you are someone who is in a position

Ejaaz:
to be able to have a conversation with us about that, please reach out to us

Ejaaz:
on X or on our email, which is included in the description. I'm just out of my personal one there.

Ejaaz:
And also, if you know someone that might be able to help, please ping them,

Ejaaz:
let them know like send them your favorite episode and let them make a judgment

Ejaaz:
but it would be super helpful for us as we continue the show

Josh:
Yeah and as always if you enjoyed it don't forget to share it with your friend

Josh:
as well who might also enjoy it rate us on your favorite podcast player and

Josh:
yeah as always we'll be back again with another episode later in the week so

Josh:
thank you so much for watching and we will see you guys in the next one.

Ejaaz:
See you guys