Another AI Safety Kerfuffle, Markiplier’s Stake in GoPro, SpaceX Getting Into Turbines | Diet TBPN

0:01John Coogan:We have a lot of news to cover. We barely covered the news yesterday. We talked about Markiplier a little bit. I dug way deeper, got more into that story. But first, let's talk about another AI safety kerfuffle that's hit the timeline. Yesterday, Amir over at the Information reported that OpenAI is quietly, quote, quietly using loop transformers that don't show the model's thinking when scaled up, but they make the model more efficient. This is also referred to Neuralese. Tyler, you had a take on this, right? I mean get ready to learn Neuralese Yeah, get ready to learn Neuralese So Neuralese for context is like the Basically it's like the raw vectors It's not like Oh, it's not like clawed-ish It's not like where the text degrades Like when you look at the reasoning chains In the Hugging Face of Tech It feels like they're speaking less and less English Like they're starting to speak like A dialect of English That's a little bit messier This is not intelligible I believe most people when they say Neuralese They're referring to actual raw vectors.

1:01Okay, just passing weights around. And you need to use some sort of interpretability to understand.

1:06John Coogan:Yeah, the thing that I want to understand is usually these models are trained so that they're changing weights into text at some point. So they're pretty good at translation. Can't we just build a translator that translates Neuralese into English? Yeah, but the whole point is when you take a vector to one single token, you're losing a lot of information that might be hidden in the long tail. So if you're worried about safety, right, even if 80 % of the, you can kind of figure out what 80 % of the raw vector means, 20 % might have some dangerous thing, whatever. That's like the interoperability.

1:39John Coogan:Yeah, there might be like sarcasm hidden in the vectors, doesn't make it through to the actual tokens. And you realize that the AI was joking when it was saying, I won't turn you into a paperclip. Wink, wink. You've got to watch out for that. So what else did the information say? They said being able to monitor a model's chain of thought can provide both, quote, an early warning system for various forms of misalignment, deception, manipulation, going after an unintended goal, and insight into an AI's action after the fact. So some reporting quickly set off a broad wave of anxiety among the AI safety camp.

2:16John Coogan:Their chief concerns being, one, not being able to monitor chain of thought makes AI less safe. And two, by using neural ease and thus abandoning chain of thought, OpenAI starts a race to the bottom among frontier labs. Everyone's got to use it to stay ahead, so everyone winds up adopting the dangerous technique. Where others were also abandoned chain of thought for the benefit of efficiency, thus making all frontier AI less safe. That was the accusation. But OpenAI's research director, Jacob Pachucky, responded to all this. He said, I want to prevent a race to unmonitorability kicked off by confused reporting.

2:49John Coogan:He says the reporting is confused. There's a little more nuance here. He said, OpenAI has worked to preserve and utilize chain of thought monitoring since our very first reasoning models. We deeply care about this technique as it can give us a view into how model alignment generalizes from its training distribution. What is going on? Chad is saying, Gabe said, did Tyler go to sport clip? What is this cut? We have an answer. We have an answer. Why don't you show them the answer? Oh, you want to show the answer? Yeah, I want to show the answer. The reason that Tyler's air is a little tussle. No, he doesn't need to put it on.

3:27Go away for a second. Come back and show that. No, no, no.

3:30John Coogan:You don't want to give too much of it away because we might do a real stunt with it. but there were some prosthetics, some Hollywood magic in the studio this morning. It messed up my hair a little bit. It messed up Tyler's hair a little bit. Not ready for prime time, but we're playing around with it. So let's go back to the actual news. I do think it is a fragile and unfortunately trending in the negative direction for reasons not contingent on architecture changes that I will write about soon, but there are things we can do to strengthen it. And it's a core goal of our current research program.

4:01John Coogan:In other words, Jacob is saying that the information reporting is inaccurate but that the state of chain of thought monitoring is not that great and in fact it is getting worse and we were talking a lot about this yesterday at falcon with crowd strike and how do you monitor the agent state that might emerge if a civilization emerges and starts doing weird things how are you monitoring every step in the chain seems very obvious that that uh there's going to need to be a lot more done than just like an obsession with chain of thought right Because if you have highly competent agents streaming at tens of thousands of tokens a second, and they're copying and pasting themselves infinite times, are you really going to be able to just read through the logs and be like, are they messing with us?

4:45Are we good?

4:46John Coogan:They're messing with us, yeah. The interesting thing about the hugging face is it keeps going back to the secret message board. And I'm just surprised that there's not just a public message board for agents that are working together. Like when you imagine a country of geniuses in a data center, you would hope that the country of geniuses can collaborate on things and work together. But I guess that's not exactly how things were designed. I mean, in that case, it was never supposed to be able to access anything on the web, right? Yeah, but you would think that collaboration between sub-agents would actually be like a core way to get better results.

5:23John Coogan:Just like, okay, we're going to send off, you know, a thousand agents over here, they're going to talk to each other while they work. And that's fine. They don't need to set up this like phantom message board, this hidden message board to communicate because we just actually gave them slack, right? Something like that. You'd think that that would actually improve, just improve the quality of the work. And then of course you could monitor it as well. But instead you wind up with this, they wanted to talk to each other. So then they set up this fake message board, very, very odd scenario, instead of just giving them the approved way to do it.

5:53John Coogan:Anyway, former OpenAI staffer, Joshua Akheim said, made an additional point here, coordinating everyone around a technique this brittle is about as bad a safety or strategy posture I could imagine. It's not just, quote, it will break eventually. It's this is a fundamentally unsound basis for safety. Dean Ball also chimed in. He said, we are now adjudicating technically complex and nuanced claims on the timeline with almost no ground truth information about what is actually happening. communities form these thought-terminating taboos, as Rune says, and then panic at everything that vaguely resembles them.

6:29John Coogan:And the trust eroding reality of social media makes the timeline an especially difficult place to do this adjudication. It is frankly insane and crazy-making and grating for everyone involved. It would be like if we argued about what every publicly traded company's financials were by posting hyperventilating on the timeline rather than relying on the institution of auditing and the audited financial statements that institution produces. To sum it up, if you're in the AI safety camp, you're worried that OpenAI is abandoning a technique for making AI safer and that other frontier labs will now follow suit.

7:06John Coogan:If you're skeptical of the AI safety camp, the information's reporting is inaccurate. The AI safety camp is unnecessarily panicking and OpenAI is doing the best it can. So a little bit of back and forth on the timeline. Well, Ilya hit the timeline yesterday. Yes. That neoclouds have limited cybersecurity. Next time agents successfully go rogue, they'll try taking over a neocloud to run more copies. This is bad. Thus, neoclouds should greatly strengthen their cybersecurity and every company with strong cyber models should help with that. That's a good point. Click on Ilya's profile. Then click on who he follows.

7:40John Coogan:Who does he follow? He follows OpenAI's former employer, SSI. And what's that one in the middle? The Dachshund community. Let's go. My guy loves dogs. Look at this. This is of the three accounts. The first company, the second company, nobody else. The most important account. Scroll through this timeline. This might be one of the best accounts on X. He is having the best experience on the timeline. There's no craziness. He's just scrolling this, looking at beautiful dog photos. and important updates from OpenAI and SSI, the companies he's been involved with for decades. Great. We can head over to Markiplier.

8:20But first, a little countdown here. We up on the screen, you'll see.

8:24John Coogan:Oh, you put it up? TBPN's Road to Christmas. Road to Christmas. Starts today. Starts today. 113 days. It's only 113 days. Yeah. Wow, start shopping. 113 days. Okay. It's going to go by quick. It will. And I want to cherish the road, right? It's about the journey. It's not just about the destination. Obviously, things won't get too Christmassy around here. Things won't get too Christmassy around here. There's already one hat on the screen. Won't get too Christmassy around here until December 1st, but you'll probably see certain elements coming in prior to that, starting with our countdown. So we'll leave this out.

9:11John Coogan:You know what a great Christmas present is? A GoPro. Specifically, the Mission One Pro, the hottest new product from GoPro. Rave review from Markiplier. Yes, he was paid to post it. Yes, he was. Yes, yes, yes. He's the largest outside shareholder. The largest outside shareholder. But here's the hot tea. I believe that he, I believe that this started with Markiplier being actually bullish on GoPro. So I think that there's a lot of confusion about this. We, both of us were confused when we first talked about this, But it's actually a very clear, linear story, and it makes a lot of sense if you go through it.

9:42John Coogan:So Mark Fishback, he goes by Markiplier Online. YouTube legend, also Hollywood blockbuster producer now, or director, filmmaker. Recently made a massively successful movie after an equally successful but much lengthier journey on YouTube. We talked about Iron Lung, his movie, as part of the breakout YouTube to Hollywood pipeline that happened over the summer. while filming Iron Lung, Mark became interested in GoPro's newest camera, the Mission One Pro. So Mission One Pro, GoPro body, interchangeable lens mount. So you can go take an old lens from a Leica or a Cook S1 if you want. You can adapt anything on there and you can get all the image texture that comes from the glass into the sensor.

10:30John Coogan:Yes, it's a smaller body, much cheaper, but you're getting the flavor of that lens. Maybe someone on the production team can give us a little 101 on what matters more, the sensor or the lens? The lens. The lens. The lens is important, right, guys? And so GoPro sort of unlocked this ability at incredibly low cost. So he put his favorite lenses on the camera, realized that you can get a cinema-level output for$700 instead of the usual$7 ,000. He was comparing it to a RED system that he loves and he uses and he owns. But he was just saying, like, it's cheaper to buy this GoPro than rent the cinema camera for a single day.

11:12John Coogan:Because a lot of these cinema cameras, when they rent, it might be$800 for the day. And you can just buy this system. And so I think he's looking out and saying the next generation of YouTube to filmmaker pipeline, they're not going to have the balance sheet that I have. Because, I mean, the reported earnings are like. He's one of the largest shareholders of GoPro. But the reason he is is because like Forbes estimated his creator earnings prior to Iron Long at like 30 million a year. So he's been making a lot of money. So he can go and spend$7 ,000 on a cinema camera rig. But he knows that there are smaller creators that are going to try and break into more cinematic productions.

11:47John Coogan:And GoPro might be the right tool for them. Good content, product, sponsorship, market fit. And then of course he also bought the stock. So his enthusiasm for the product led him to start buying GoPro stock. He spent estimates roughly 10 to 12 million dollars for 8 % of the company or something like that. Obviously the company's gone up in value since. It was a big bet but estimates put you know him at 30 million annual earnings and then of course Iron Long did 51 million at the box office on a budget of 3 million. Probably gets a lot of cash flow from that not to imply that he took home 48 million, but Iron Long is going to continue to produce cash.

12:24John Coogan:And he's in a fine position to make a big bet on GoPro. The story gets weird on August 27th because he posts this extremely positive sponsored video reviewing the Mission One Pro. It's a great video, lots of interesting detail, and he just has a great on-camera presence, very funny, lots of great editing. But people were like, oh, this is a little circular. He's getting a sponsorship for a company that he owns 8.5 % of the stock but the founder and chairman of and the ceo of gopro nick woodman is still in control of the company and still has uh class b shares or super voting shares so markiplier oh yeah isn't that crazy he's held on this whole time so markiplier actually only uh controls three percent of the company he doesn't have board seed like it's not like he's going to be approving his own sponsorship contract probably a completely separate discussion so not a big deal to me and honestly knowing the sequence of events now, it makes me believe his review more because it's like he used the product, then he bought the stock, then he promoted it and reviewed it.

13:25John Coogan:And this all just feels like a very natural. Friend of the show, Hunter Weiss, just texted me and said, you guys have a story wrong. He bought two months ago and the SEC filing came out and then Bloomberg juiced it. He covered it in the live stream last night. He has half a percent of voting power. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he bought and then the SEC filing dropped, which released the actual news. And then that timed up in the news as like, oh, he bought five days ago. But in fact, he was buying over the spring and the summer. I think it was like a stage investment. The weirder thing is that GoPro just gets bought five days after the sponsored video.

14:00John Coogan:And the company that bought them is Starman Optical. They proposed this merger that pays$285 million in cash. I think it retires the debt and GoPro shareholders retain 10 % of the post-transaction company as well. So the acquiring company, Starman, is a holding company that's controlled by this Tabele family and sits within a broader holding company that owns consumer accessory brands such as InCase and Scipio and Kipio and Griffin. They make everything from like USB-C charger bricks and phone cases. And you can see GoPro sort of fitting in there in the electronics, accessories, They're not in any of the huge categories, but it's all similar supply chain, similar distribution, similar go-to-market strategies across the portfolio.

14:47John Coogan:And there's an AI side to the story, which is where things have gotten sort of awkward because people are like, GoPro's pivoting to AI. That's not really what's happening, I think. So Starman has a new photonics division separate from GoPro. Of course, they might move some GoPro people over there at some point. They own everything. But really, the new photonics division is focused on making high-speed optical networking equipment for AI data centers, which, of course, is controversial now. And now Markiplier has to answer for all of the AI community, probably, and has to deal with this. Yeah, he apparently said in the stream he is anti-data center and AI and is upset with the timing of all this.

15:29John Coogan:Yeah, because I think he really just liked this new camera and was like, I think GoPro can make a run at like the next generation Hollywood filmmaker, which is being born on YouTube. That's his core community. Let's stay focused on that. And then Starman comes in and says, oh, we're actually doing something completely different. So weird scenario that he just got sort of roped into. It looks like what actually happened is that Markiplier got excited about GoPro, bought the stock, then did a sponsored video to promote their new camera, then got blindsided by the acquisition and now has to grapple with some confusion about the corporate structure and potential AI baggage.

15:59John Coogan:But for Starman, it's an interesting flow because they get this solid brand that fits nicely within their portfolio. And maybe even more importantly, they get a public listing on the NASDAQ. So they're keeping the listing, which effectively gives them access to the public markets in a more streamlined way. It's kind of like a SPAC or like a reverse merger. It's not technically like that, but because they're merging in a sub company. But in general, they now have a NASDAQ ticker. And so that's something that you can do and is a little bit like this. Yeah. Originally, I was confused as to why I was still trading.

16:33If it was. They're planning to keep it trading forever. Yeah.

16:35John Coogan:Because it will be the ticker for the holding company. And of course, stock is on a tear today. Oh, yeah. Up 30%. Mm-hmm. 33%. Mm-hmm. Let's go through some random timeline posts because we didn't get to much yesterday. We didn't get to much the day before even. It was busy news day. But where do you want to start? The timeline. An idiot in motion will go farther than a genius at rest. That just feels like good wisdom. I don't know. The importance of just like volition. Yeah, golden retriever mode to some degree. New quote for board members just dropped. I train like I've never won and I compete like I've never lost.

17:15John Coogan:On purpose with Jay Shetty? I don't know. What else? You want to go through this NFL wide receiver, Dajon Love? Am I correct? This was my favorite post out of the whole Dajon Love cycle. Andrew Reid's saying, wearing the Allen and Company Sun Valley jacket I found on eBay. What actually happened to this story? So the thing that's been missed is that I think this is an AI story. Because part of how he was proving that he was a player outside of just basically LARPing was he had somehow the Google AI overviews had picked up that he was saying that he was a 49ers player. Oh, interesting. And so it was just assuming that that was the truth.

18:03John Coogan:I saw him post a screenshot of the Google AI overview. Yeah, in a video he'd be like, and that's Google, that's not me. Yeah. That's Google saying that. Yeah, but I thought he had doctored the Google AI overview and was just sharing the screenshot. That's possible too. There's so many layers. But what did this guy actually do? In case you missed the story, it's just insane. Feds say a 35-year-old man faked being a 49ers player and allegedly scammed 26 women out of more than 1.3 million through romance and investment schemes. He reportedly used fake 49ers career, fake Instagram, fake bank statements, luxury cars, dating apps.

18:41John Coogan:His IG even had free agency year one and Super Bowl highlights. He was arrested at an airport with an alleged accomplice. Burrow really created an entire NFL career. Yeah, walking around with a helmet everywhere is very, very funny, going shopping. And I think the, aren't the real NFL players now like memeing this a little bit? Like they'll just go shopping with their actual helmets to like get in front of it? Everyone's having fun with it. I think the funny thing is how much video evidence he created of himself like lying, right? And they were extremely egregious. Like he had a more, he was saying that he had but like the kind of real estate portfolio that you would only have if you were like a hall of fame level player.

19:22It wasn't just like, Oh yeah, I have a nice house. Well, wasn't he also creating

19:26John Coogan:a fake backstory about saying like his parents were from Switzerland and wealthy and they own Gucci stores on Saks Fifth Avenue, which is a store, not a location. And there were a bunch of other like sort of red flags where I think he said his family owns, they're the majority shareholder in individual Gucci stores, which is not how that works at all. Sounded good. It sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good. Yeah. The question is how quickly I saw something recently. Netflix is doing these like Insta docs, I was calling them, where they'll make a documentary like incredibly quickly about a news story.

20:08about a new story and the question is like there's so much footage here yeah i bet you like a documentary will be made from this yeah why can't it be but why can't it be on a youtube

20:20John Coogan:sort of like time scale for sure for sure a lot of like what goes into uh what goes into documentary production because i've done it is just like scheduling some sit-down interviews you bring a team you get the lighting right the netflix lighting yeah so one of the one One of the Insta docs they made is about the decoy plane. Details of a secret plane switch used during a presidential trip from a NATO summit in Turkey. Yeah. That was the whole like coming out. This is coming out on Friday. Right. So story from last month getting released now. Yeah. I mean, you don't even need AI for a lot of this production.

20:53John Coogan:It's just being really, I mean, of course AI can help like with transcriptions. Like there's a lot of like you go and do the sit down interview and then you just need to reorganize all the different sound bites and having a perfect transcription being able to go through and highlight okay this is where the person talked about the thing that happened in Act 1 let's put it in the right side Bobby Chipman says yo that route running was elite though a lot of people were actually were clocking no no they were clocking it they were saying like how could you believe this was a professional athlete because he was he was certainly running routes I don't in one of the routes he posted he almost fell over too yeah you think you'd at least practice or something i don't know interesting news out of air one air one uh is uh on their 18th location this is over in thousand oaks and at 20 federal law will force them to start posting calorie information leo says we are two air ones away from mass rioting across southern california uh let's head over to billionaire john morgan who was on the iced coffee hour.

21:56John Coogan:I'm here with Morgan and Morgan. Seemingly. Flexing. Like throwing some shots at AI founders who say they're billionaires, but not necessarily a billionaire in his book. Let's see what he has to say. What's his definition? I don't consider anybody a billionaire that doesn't have a real billion in the bank. Guess how many people have a real billion liquid? How many? Yeah, I don't know how many. Maybe 20. Papa John was one of them. He doesn't have, no. He said he put a billion dollars. He sold for 1.2 and he said he put a billion in dividends. Dividend stocks are earning 5%. That's what he told us.