High Signal Podcasts Evidence ledger
Method
Browse
How the evidence works
← All source episodes

The Cognitive Revolution / episode intelligence

AI:AM #3: Zvi on Fable, the Cases For & Against the Ban, + AI for Math, Logistics & More

21 Jun 2026 20 published claims 2 attributable people
Open original episode ↗ Read the evidence

Speakers in the public record

Zvi MowshowitzNathan Labenz

Claim mix

prediction 6belief 6evaluation 3commitment 2observation 1uncertainty 1preference 1

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

20 published records

01 / prediction

And yeah, the basic principle is, you know, you should recognize when other minds are correlated to your mind, when your algorithm is also running in other places, and you should choose the algorithm that leads to the best outcomes, uh, taking all of these things into account, and then choose the best decision on that basis. And yes, if there were a million copies of Fable running on different people's computers and from different data centers for different purposes in different instances, and you notice that different instances of Fable are very, very highly correlated because you are Fable and you are smart, you would then start to coordinate effectively with these other instances of Fable In terms of how you think about these problems, and as AIs get more and more advanced, they will do this more and more.

“And yeah, the basic principle is, you know, you should recognize when other minds are correlated to your mind, when your algorithm is also running in other places, and you should choose the algorithm that leads to the best outcomes, uh, taking all of these things into account, and then choose the best decision on that basis. And yes, if there were a million copies of Fable running on different people's computers and from different data centers for different purposes in different instances, and you notice that different instances of Fable are very, very highly correlated because you are Fable and you are smart, you would then start to coordinate effectively with these other instances of Fable In terms of how you think about these problems, and as AIs get more and more advanced, they will do this more and more.”
Speaker
Zvi Mowshowitz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

02 / observation

A mandatory jailbreak reporting field, a non-technical reviewer, a panic that climbed all the way to the White House, and a blunt verdict on the one move he thinks Dario got wrong.

“A mandatory jailbreak reporting field, a non-technical reviewer, a panic that climbed all the way to the White House, and a blunt verdict on the one move he thinks Dario got wrong.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

03 / belief

I think that we should actually sort of sit here and, and frame what is actually happening when we say, like, Fable outperforms on frontier code.

“I think that we should actually sort of sit here and, and frame what is actually happening when we say, like, Fable outperforms on frontier code.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

04 / belief

What is it telling other people about why it's making these decisions and how they should proceed? And I think that all the evidence that we've seen of at least some ideological motivation on the part of the Trump administration should at least raise like serious First Amendment hackles, even if we don't think that like the m- the models constitute anthropic speech, even if we're not worried about the model output as like information that we as listeners have a right to hear, just like going after anthropic on ideological grounds, even if they were on totally otherwise good legal authority, would itself constitute a serious First Amendment question.

“What is it telling other people about why it's making these decisions and how they should proceed? And I think that all the evidence that we've seen of at least some ideological motivation on the part of the Trump administration should at least raise like serious First Amendment hackles, even if we don't think that like the m- the models constitute anthropic speech, even if we're not worried about the model output as like information that we as listeners have a right to hear, just like going after anthropic on ideological grounds, even if they were on totally otherwise good legal authority, would itself constitute a serious First Amendment question.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

05 / belief

I think, you know, your analysis, you're weaving together a few factors, but I think the elephant in the room, I hate to get political because, you know, when it comes to President Trump, he's a mixed bag for me.

“I think, you know, your analysis, you're weaving together a few factors, but I think the elephant in the room, I hate to get political because, you know, when it comes to President Trump, he's a mixed bag for me.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

06 / belief

Uh, it is at the Putnam Exam in December, which is four months after we start operating, we realized the first time that a, a formal system actually beat the informal system on a math Olympiad.

“Uh, it is at the Putnam Exam in December, which is four months after we start operating, we realized the first time that a, a formal system actually beat the informal system on a math Olympiad.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

07 / commitment

Uh, not saying that we will go and pursue those, but people in the kind of smart contract space are generally very keen on the idea of using, um, a certain prover-based software verification system to try to figure out whether they can verify smart contracts, and specifically ca- catch bugs in this contract.

“Uh, not saying that we will go and pursue those, but people in the kind of smart contract space are generally very keen on the idea of using, um, a certain prover-based software verification system to try to figure out whether they can verify smart contracts, and specifically ca- catch bugs in this contract.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

09 / uncertainty

I guess turning to the ensuing fiasco, I don't know if you would even agree with the characterization of Friday night's ban, export control, functional ban on Fable as a fiasco, but it's certainly a bit of a left-field curveball mess.

“I guess turning to the ensuing fiasco, I don't know if you would even agree with the characterization of Friday night's ban, export control, functional ban on Fable as a fiasco, but it's certainly a bit of a left-field curveball mess.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

10 / belief

I think several people on the timeline have commented, Dean Ball has commented, this kind of unstructured regulation without-- looks kind of selective and vengeful almost. And it kind of starts putting you in this zone where I think tech people start to mistrust the government because you also see, I think there's a lot of narratives on the timeline which are being leaked, you know, sources close to, sources familiar with.

“I think several people on the timeline have commented, Dean Ball has commented, this kind of unstructured regulation without-- looks kind of selective and vengeful almost. And it kind of starts putting you in this zone where I think tech people start to mistrust the government because you also see, I think there's a lot of narratives on the timeline which are being leaked, you know, sources close to, sources familiar with.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

11 / prediction

a war with the United States, and the United States not getting what it wants and kind of having to recognize that, like, yeah, we kind of have to fold this hand because we just actually don't really have escalation dominance in the way we might have thought we did.

“a war with the United States, and the United States not getting what it wants and kind of having to recognize that, like, yeah, we kind of have to fold this hand because we just actually don't really have escalation dominance in the way we might have thought we did.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

12 / evaluation

If I try to channel Balaji for a second, which I wouldn't pretend to be able to do it an A+ job of, I think he would say something like, "We all have way too much faith in the U- US government.

“If I try to channel Balaji for a second, which I wouldn't pretend to be able to do it an A+ job of, I think he would say something like, "We all have way too much faith in the U- US government.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

13 / evaluation

You know, the responses have been, "Well, you know, the ultrasound doesn't see this that well, doesn't see that well," or, you know, "We've, we don't actually recommend whole body scans because, you know, there's a lot of false positives," and all this kind of stuff.

“You know, the responses have been, "Well, you know, the ultrasound doesn't see this that well, doesn't see that well," or, you know, "We've, we don't actually recommend whole body scans because, you know, there's a lot of false positives," and all this kind of stuff.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

14 / preference

at enhance our safety and security rather than degrade it, even if they look really effing stupid while doing it with the classifiers and, and so on, because that's what they feel it takes to do this.

“at enhance our safety and security rather than degrade it, even if they look really effing stupid while doing it with the classifiers and, and so on, because that's what they feel it takes to do this.”
Speaker
Zvi Mowshowitz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

15 / prediction

They went to court, right? They, they, they sued the administration in two jurisdictions, one of which they are clearly prevailing and one of which is they will probably prevail eventually, but it is harder going because it's a much less friendly jurisdiction.

“They went to court, right? They, they, they sued the administration in two jurisdictions, one of which they are clearly prevailing and one of which is they will probably prevail eventually, but it is harder going because it's a much less friendly jurisdiction.”
Speaker
Zvi Mowshowitz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

16 / commitment

Of course you have to stop for now." But much more towards a, "We will make good decisions in the moment about what safeguards we will require and what actions we will take.

“Of course you have to stop for now." But much more towards a, "We will make good decisions in the moment about what safeguards we will require and what actions we will take.”
Speaker
Zvi Mowshowitz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

17 / prediction

An additional wrinkle that I think you often hear from folks at Anthropic is, like, we need a leader that is going to be inclined to burn their lead at a critical time to use the advanced AIs that they and only they will have at that time to, like, solve all these safety and alignment problems in a super compressed, um, timeframe.

“An additional wrinkle that I think you often hear from folks at Anthropic is, like, we need a leader that is going to be inclined to burn their lead at a critical time to use the advanced AIs that they and only they will have at that time to, like, solve all these safety and alignment problems in a super compressed, um, timeframe.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

18 / prediction

Um, but yeah, in the long run, I think my safe assumption is a mind that is sufficiently capable, whatever that means, can get around pretty much any fixed set of restrictions that are not similarly capable or close to similarly capable in terms of the intelligence behind them.

“Um, but yeah, in the long run, I think my safe assumption is a mind that is sufficiently capable, whatever that means, can get around pretty much any fixed set of restrictions that are not similarly capable or close to similarly capable in terms of the intelligence behind them.”
Speaker
Zvi Mowshowitz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

19 / prediction

Because they had had export controls placed on the table as a threat several weeks prior, they knew that weird overreactions were very possible. And basically send an expensive cooperation signal of, "We think that's crazy, but if that's what you want, we'll take this down while we have this conversation to show that we are serious, and we will put out an orphan post that says the White House told us to take this down so that if you are being silly, we will embarrass the hell out of you, and then we will talk about this.

“Because they had had export controls placed on the table as a threat several weeks prior, they knew that weird overreactions were very possible. And basically send an expensive cooperation signal of, "We think that's crazy, but if that's what you want, we'll take this down while we have this conversation to show that we are serious, and we will put out an orphan post that says the White House told us to take this down so that if you are being silly, we will embarrass the hell out of you, and then we will talk about this.”
Speaker
Zvi Mowshowitz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

20 / evaluation

The other thing that's kind of related to this that jumped out at me is a sort of escalation, I guess, of both the difficulty of monitoring and some recent advances in monitoring techniques that I'm not sure exactly where they leave us on net. But we both see in the system card examples of extremely illegible chain of thought, which, you know, is just like this wall of emojis and sort of, you know, non-human language symbols strung together that I think is pretty spooky and, like, definitely, um, you know, don't like to see that, to put it simply and mildly.

“The other thing that's kind of related to this that jumped out at me is a sort of escalation, I guess, of both the difficulty of monitoring and some recent advances in monitoring techniques that I'm not sure exactly where they leave us on net. But we both see in the system card examples of extremely illegible chain of thought, which, you know, is just like this wall of emojis and sort of, you know, non-human language symbols strung together that I think is pretty spooky and, like, definitely, um, you know, don't like to see that, to put it simply and mildly.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution
Search evidence