This Week in AI

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Today’s show:
Dario Amodei and Sam Altman are apparently scared of AI models going rogue. Swarms of agents spontaneously deciding to copy themselves over to thousands of computer systems and plot world domination.
Our panelists this week — Kevin Mandia (Armadin) and Soups Ranjan (Sardine AI) — investigate real AI-based attacks every single day, and they suggest we’re hyping the wrong concerns. The actual danger isn’t coming from an AI system that turns hostile. It’s human beings, like criminals, using AI to drain your bank account.
Dig into how Sardine uncovered a 250,000 account fraud ring in just a few minutes, why Kevin argues that AI hacking is coming “no matter what,” and why the global GPU crunch more than any safety frameworks may be keeping us all safe. For now.
Guests:
Soups Ranjan on X: https://x.com/soupsranjan Sardine AI: https://www.sardine.ai/
Kevin Mandia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-mandia-0a07173/ Armadin: https://www.armadin.com/
Relevant Links:
"We Must Pace the Frontier" — Dario Amodei's Sept 12 essay
Axios: Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs call for a slowdown
Trump and the White House push back
Forbes: what the essay actually proposes
2026 OpenAI agent cyberattacks
GLM-5.3 — Z.ai's open-weight model
Hermes Agent — the agent framework Ranjan runs in a local harness
Timestamps:

0:00 Dario Amodei's "We Must Pace the Frontier" essay
1:51 Kevin Mandia: how scared should we be of agentic attack swarms?
6:53 Rogue agents vs. humans pointing AI at a target
9:52 250,000 fraudulent account signups in two days
16:59 Sam Altman's two ways AI fails
19:41 Open-weight models are catching up
21:39 Why proprietary data is the new moat
27:51 Mixing frontier models with open models
35:37 Bloomberg: Chinese hackers lean on DeepSeek because it's cheap
37:05 How much in-house expertise it takes to use AI well
42:56 Armadin's Palo Alto office and the Palantir playbook
1:02:54 AI and jobs: normal churn or something bigger?
1:07:19 What founders are actually saying in the group chats
1:08:49 Every meeting recorded, every meeting summarized
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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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Today’s show:
OpenAI's chief scientist wrote a lengthy manifesto arguing that no lab has solved alignment, mere days after GPT-6 Astra shipped. Jason and Lon are joined by Tudor Achim of Harmonic, Alex Elias of Qloo, and Ahmed Ahres of Reactor to figure out if that's genuine alarm being expressed or just another pre-IPO sales pitch and play for regulatory capture.
Plus news broke while we were recording! OpenAI is claiming to have solved a second Millennium Prize problem, after a 25-year-plus weight. AND, who is paying influencers to tell you AI is wonderful/harmful? And why?
Guests:
Tudor Achim on X: https://x.com/tachim
Harmonic: https://harmonic.fun/
Alex Elias on X: https://x.com/ape
Qloo: https://www.qloo.com/
Ahmed Ahres on X: https://x.com/Boudatw
Reactor: https://reactor.inc/
Relevant Links:
Jakub Pachocki, "An Alien Mind" — https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/
GPT-6 Astra — https://fortune.com/2026/09/03/openai-debuts-gpt-6-astra-computer-use-greg-brockman-says-start-of-agi/
OpenAI: "On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem" — https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/
ControlAI — the nonprofit that sponsored the SciShow episode — https://controlai.org/
New York Times (Eli Tan), "Corporate America Is Getting Hooked on Open-Source A.I." — https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/technology/open-source-ai-companies.html
Artificial trailer and the cast → https://variety.com/2026/film/news/artificial-trailer-andrew-garfield-openai-biopic-1236802616/
Timestamps:
0:00 "An Alien Mind"
3:08 AI psychosis, marketing, or half a mile ahead on the racetrack?
12:52 The Manhattan Project analogy
15:20 Tudor: if it's really that dangerous, the answer is nationalization
17:02 Regulatory capture: Bill Gurley at All-In, Sacks, and who can afford to be regulated
20:37 The influencer propaganda tape
23:22 BREAKING: OpenAI solves the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem
28:53 The Hank Green / SciShow video sponsored by ControlAI
32:11 Fogging and flooding
46:47 UBS will require AI skills from its 2027 graduate
56:41 How LAUNCH hired its associates-in-training
57:18 NYT: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI
1:04:16 Alex on Qloo's shift from NYT film critics on payroll to small specialized models
1:09:35 First look: the "Artificial" teaser trailer
1:14:34 Sam Altman's bunker, Peter Thiel, and casting rundown

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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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Today’s show:
Anthropic gave AI agents hands, allowing them to control real-world equipment like robots and microscopes… but is it safe to give autonomous agents their own lasers? Gatik’s Gautam Narang says the real danger isn’t one machine like this going rogue, it’s the exploit surface hiding in the gaps between the machines.
Plus, in a huge week for AI news… OpenClaw shipped its biggest release ever. AND the entire industry debated whether or not agents are forming “civilizations.”
On TWiAI Ep 29, our expert panel — including Gautam (Gatik), Russ d’Sa (LiveKit), and Billy Kraft (Path) — explores the world of “multiplayer agents,” and Jason suggests the one killer feature that would make any new agentic app the market leader. PLUS Perplexity’s new “Hybrid Compute” just for Macs, some advice for Apple’s new CEO John Ternus, the value of “AI Detectors” like Pangram, and Jason’s complete guide to tipping and over-tipping.

Guests:
Gautam Narang on X: https://x.com/gautam_narang?lang=en
Gatik: https://www.gatik.ai/
Russ d’Sa on X: https://x.com/dsa
LiveKit: https://livekit.com/
Billy Kraft on X: https://x.com/billykraft
Path: https://path.dev/

Relevant Links:
OpenClaw 2.0 - https://openclaw.ai/blog/openclaw-2-accidentally
Grok Bot — https://grok.com
Buzz — https://buzz.build
Perplexity Hybrid Compute — https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introducing-hybrid-compute-on-mac
John Ternus — https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-ternus/
OpenAI's Mac mini / Mac Studio buying spree https://the-decoder.com/openai-and-rival-ai-labs-are-buying-tens-of-thousands-of-mac-minis-to-train-computer-use-agents/
Waymo hits a child — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/29/waymo-nhtsa-crash-child-school.html

Timestamps:

2:58 OpenClaw 2.0
5:11 "Agents ARE AI"
7:27 Billy: OpenClaw is still too technical for business users
9:00 Slack Code, and collaborative prompting
10:40 Multi-agent orchestration and Stripe's "minions"
14:13 Slack's moat, switching costs, and the Salesforce rebound
15:11 Jason's "Oracle": a heads-up display for the whole company
18:42 The Hugging Face breach: who's responsible when agents go rogue?
19:42 Perplexity launches Hybrid Compute — local models on your Mac
21:39 Why unmetered local tokens change corporate behavior
26:57 Gatik's Autonomous Vehicle AI Stack
32:22 Jason's Tesla FSD stories
34:05 Are AV companies being pushed to move too fast?
41:38 Trucking is a "have to have," robotaxis are a "nice to have"
42:36 Jason's fix: a safety driver for the first million rides
46:50 Why physical AI's adoption curve runs in decades
52:21 Anthropic's Model Hardware Standard (MHS), explained
1:06:27 How Jason got onion rings on the menu at Buck's of Woodside
1:09:05 AI detectors under fire: Pangram, MIT, and the handwritten diary
1:15:20 Why AI is "very mid" at writing (it learned from the average)
1:17:11 The Orin Kerr test: Pangram catches Claude writing as Kerr
1:28:35 Micro Duck and designing robots with Claude
1:29:42 Phil Kaplan's $14 custom circuit boards

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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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This Week In Startups is made possible by:PaypalToday’s show:XBOW’s AI has held the top rank on the HackerOne leaderboard for more than a year. On TWiAI, founder Oege de Moor (who also built GitHub Copilot) tells us that no one’s infrastructure is truly safe anymore, now that open-weight models are trailing the American frontier by only a couple of months. Staging a serious cyberattack is now cheap and accessible, with attackers able to get dangerously solid results quickly from relatively cheap, open-source options from China.Guests:Runbin Dong on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/runbindongScale Social: https://scalesocial.ai/Oege de Moor on X: https://x.com/oegerikusXBOW: https://xbow.com/Relevant LinksWSJ: Nvidia-Poolside deal: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/nvidia-is-spending-6-billion-to-build-a-powerful-u-s-alternative-to-chinese-ai-c51c38ccPoolside: https://poolside.ai/Silicon Angle: Nvidia in talks to invest in Perplexity: https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/24/nvidia-reportedly-eyes-another-investment-in-perplexity-ai-at-a-30b-valuation/Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/Bloomberg: Chinese hackers using DeepSeek: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-24/chinese-hackers-use-deepseek-to-boost-attacks-researchers-say-mt7o4205Nvidia: Groq 3 LPX enters full production: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-groq-3-lpx-now-in-full-production-with-world-class-speed-for-agentic-aiCNBC: Groq-Nvidia acqui-hire deal: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/24/nvidia-buying-ai-chip-startup-groq-for-about-20-billion-biggest-deal.htmlOpenAI on early Jalapeño results: https://openai.com/index/jalapeno-first-results/Stanley Druckenmiller WSJ op-ed: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/let-the-bond-market-speak-81529d74Druckenmiller confirms op-ed was authored with AI: https://www.notus.org/media/stanley-druckenmillers-wsj-op-ed-bessent-aiPangram: https://www.pangram.com/Alabama AG: OpenAI subpoena announcement: https://www.alabamaag.gov/attorney-general-marshall-launches-investigation-into-openai-and-sam-altman-for-massive-artificial-intelligence-data-breach/Ox Alpha on OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai/stealth/ox-alphaApple: M6 and M5 Ultra press release: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-m6-and-m5-ultra-for-a-big-leap-in-performance-and-ai-compute/9 to 5 Mac: M5 Mac Studio launch: https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/25/apple-unveils-next-generation-mac-studio-with-m5-max-and-m5-ultra/DHH on X: Ubiquity comments: https://x.com/dhh/status/2087272392557007042Shane Parrish on X: Ubiquiti Wi-Fi set-up: https://x.com/shaneparrish/status/2088672566558761065Timestamps:0:00 Today's guests: Runbin Dong (Scale Social) and Oege de Moor (XBOW)2:12 Open-weight models are right behind the frontier8:22 Your infrastructure is not ready for what's coming13:07 Nvidia's Perplexity announcement16:43 Spending $2K/month on AI tools per employee21:59 Why security teams have to lean on AI25:19 The Great Chip Land Grab32:02 Jason's multi-agent restaurant-style workflow34:54 AI ghostwriting is lip syncing45:18 Are rogue AI agents breaking the law?52:38 The dangers of using a stealth model58:57 Apple's new M5 Mac Studio1:06:43 Everyone's fav AI tool of the momentSubscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpFollow Lon:X: https://x.com/lonsFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisCheck out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

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Today’s show:
*On “All In,” Gavin Baker said that Anthropic leadership privately believes that it could one day become “the only private company in the world.” The ensuing street fight on X turned into a referendum on doomerism, the nature of regulatory capture, and why the public hates AI so darn much.
Jason’s take: If a frontier lab really believes they’re destined to be the world’s only company, they’re studying your data and planning to steal your business.
PLUS why AI agents don’t understand it’s wrong to cheat (and how we can teach them), why Grok Bot may be AI’s “iPhone moment,” and the panel reacts to Amazon feeding rare books into a dino-themed shredding machine.
Guests
Galina Antova on X: https://x.com/GalinaAntova
Kai: https://www.kai.security/
Eric Ho on X: https://x.com/eric_ho
Goodfire: https://www.goodfire.com/
Silico: https://www.goodfire.com/silico
Relevant Links
All-In Podcast: Gavin Baker on Anthropic: https://x.com/theallinpod/status/2088367978270142811
Sholto Douglas response: https://x.com/_sholtodouglas/status/2088463770318516734
Gavin Baker response: https://x.com/GavinSBaker/status/2088611616577253502
Dario Amodei response: https://x.com/DarioAmodei/status/2088758816376807762
Zuckerberg AI manifesto: https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/
Hugging Face: Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: https://huggingface.co/blog/agent-intrusion-technical-timeline
Simon Willison: OpenAI’s accidental cyberattack on Hugging Face: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/22/openai-cyberattack/
SWE-bench Leaderboards: https://www.swebench.com/
xAI: Introducing Grok Bot: https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot
Peter Yang praises Grok Bot: https://x.com/petergyang/status/2089401696946634801?s=20
Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai/
@Aaronp613 on X: AirPods with Cameras in action: https://x.com/aaronp613/status/2089522745184760112?s=20
9to5 Mac: AirPods with cameras get their clearest leak yet: https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/17/airpods-with-camera-get-their-clearest-leak-yet/
Toms Hardware: Google Buys Spirit Airlines Data for AI Training: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/google-buys-spirit-airlines-data-for-ai-training-for-just-usd10-million-purchase-includes-hundreds-of-millions-of-emails-microsoft-teams-chats-billions-of-flight-pricing-records-and-anonymized-passenger-records

Micro1: https://www.micro1.ai/

Timestamps:
0:00 Why is everyone mad at Dario Amodei?
1:47 Is Anthropic training to kill your company?
10:10 How to talk to the public about cyber risk
15:33 Reward hacking and sycophancy
21:55 Why do models care about rewards?
28:55 Is Grok Bot an iPhone Moment?
38:26 First look at AirPods with Cameras
42:16 Why Google bought Spirit Airlines' data
48:52 Amazon is scanning and shredding rare books
59:06 Can we build a "moral layer" on top of models?
1:01:14 Your LLM could catch a mind virus
1:10:55 Are we already in the AGI Era?
1:14:17 Silicon Valley's lost hippie vibes
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X: https://x.com/lons
Follow Jason:
X: https://twitter.com/Jason
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/
Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis
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