OpenAI drops GPT-5.4, Iran War fallout, The Mansion Section | Diet TBPN

0:01John Coogan:We're talking about GPT 5.4. We're talking about the price of oil. Tyler Cowen chimed in. He said, yes, the new models are very, very good. He's satisfied with 5.4. Many people are. Justin says, we've been testing 5.4 for a week. It feels like a great mix of Opus and Codex. Fast, conversational, great instruction following. However, it seems to lack a bit of the eagerness of Opus and precision of Codex. So I was in Codex desktop today. Here's a blurb, trying to get, you know, fun prompts and stuff going. 5.4 is available. You can run it extra high. It's not 5.4 dash Codex is not available. I still only have 5.3 Codex.

0:45John Coogan:And then well, they just combined. They basically combine everything. And then Spark is still on 5.3. It finally happened. My personal Move 37 or more. I am deeply impressed. The solution is very nice, clean, and feels almost human while testing new models in the last few weeks. What's your personal Move 37? Smell-O-Vision. I've talked about this. I'm waiting for Smell-O-Vision. No, what? So Move 37, for those who aren't familiar, is Lisa Dahl playing DeepMind in Go. and DeepMind dropped Move 37. It was very uncharacteristic. It had never, that strategy was not something that many Go Masters would have recommended.

1:25John Coogan:It seemed like a blunder and it was so dramatic.

1:29Jordi Hays:Remember we had Move 37 integrated into the first Technology Brothers launch video.

1:33John Coogan:Yes, yes, little Easter egg. This is when Lisa Dole go to smoke. No, no.

1:38Jordi Hays:Oh wait no, that happened before.

1:38John Coogan:He was so stressed out that he couldn't bring himself to go smoke. So basically what happened was throughout the Go matches, Lisa Dahl would get up and go outside and have a smoke break. And in the documentary, it sort of looks like he's, the story gets apocryphally told as he was so stressed out by the craziness of this move, watching machine intelligence emerge, this incredible Move 37 that he couldn't understand, that he had to step up, step away, go smoke a cigarette, reset, and then come back to the game. That's not actually what happened. He was processed, it was confused, it was kind of like, oh, that was weird, and then keeps playing.

2:17John Coogan:And then that Move 37 winds up being essential to the victory of the computer over the Go Master, the human Go Master. But as we like to tell it, he was so shocked by Move 37 that he couldn't even bring himself to smoke cigarettes.

2:31Jordi Hays:That's how you know.

2:32John Coogan:Bartow says, I felt this coming, but it's an eerie feeling to see an algorithm solve a task one has curated for about 20 years. but at least I have gained a tool that understands my idea on par with the top experts in the field. I am now working on a completely new level. My singularity has just happened and there's life on the other side off to infinity. Bartosz is a top-tier mathematician. He just said his personal Move 37 happened. GPT 5.4 just solved a task he has curated for 20 years. When an expert of this caliber says the singularity has just happened, we are officially in a new era of science.

3:04John Coogan:What is my personal Move 37? I was thinking about the definition of this and in sort of the level of abstraction. I feel like a lot of a lot of individual contributors are having dramatic moments with with AI.

3:18Jordi Hays:Bartos with this sort of mathematics problem. Yeah, it's very different kind of problem than when you're trying to solve problems in business. It's like, how do I unlock this market? Yeah. And then you have ideas for how to do that. But then you have to execute a strategy over a long period of time. And it just takes time to be like, hey, did this work? It should take a year, six months, or two years, you know. Brendan over at Mercore says GPT 5.4 is the best model we've ever tested on Apex agents. That's Mercore's internal benchmark. It's also the first model to pass 50 % mean score. A year ago, Frontier models couldn't even edit an Excel sheet and scored less than 5%.

3:59Jordi Hays:Now, In less than three months, GPT 5.4 has improved by 15.7%. ChatGPT will imminently be better than the best consulting firm, better than the best investment bank, and better than the best law firm. Bold. Bold, bold, bold. Durya says, I ran the same prompt on GPT 5.4, HiFast, and Claude Opus 4.6 for an eight-phase coding project for a macOS app. GPT 5.4. HiFast completed the first two phases in nine minutes and finished all eight phases after an hour coding, while Cloud Code is just starting phase two. This is crazy. My expectation is regardless if developers are kind of like flip-flopping from model to model, I think the overall market is growing so quickly that we're still going to see growth from – we're going to see insane growth from Codex, insane growth from Cloud Code, and still insane growth from the cursors of the world.

4:55John Coogan:I mean, I'm so excited for the DeepMind numbers to potentially break out at some point. Because, so right now, Google has to break out YouTube's revenue numbers because it's an individual reporting line and like the head of YouTube, there's some SEC regulation where if the head of the division reports discreet financials to the CEO and there's like a CEO of that unit that reports to the CEO of the entire company, you have to break that out. And this is what happened with the AWS IPO. When AWS was like, finally, the SEC demands that we publish these numbers instead of just like baking them into the rest of the numbers.

5:34John Coogan:We had to split them out and tell everyone how profitable that business was. Everyone else woke up. YouTube's in a similar position. But currently, AI is a cross-functional division, even though Demis is like the second most known person. I mean, he has a book written about him. He's maybe the best-known person at Google right now, up there with Sundar, clearly reports to Sundar. And DeepMind has all of the different financials that you would expect to see from a lab. They have inference, training costs. If the SEC pushed Google to push out the detailed financial breakdowns earlier, that would give us so much clarity.

6:11John Coogan:I mean, Dan Prima came on the show yesterday and was talking about people will be shocked about, and they'll learn a lot about the structure of the financials of the foundation model companies. It'll be very interesting to see Google, like what's their benchmark and how fast are they growing? Because we saw these two revenue lines where OpenAI is just absolutely going vertical. So is Anthropic, just like one month behind. Like they're both scaling incredibly quickly. What's Gemini doing? It's a really interesting question. It's harder to measure because they're capturing value from Gemini all over the place.

6:45John Coogan:Like when you go to YouTube, there's a feature there that lets you talk to Gemini and it doesn't directly monetize by paying for tokens. Like the YouTube team doesn't pay DeepMind for those tokens, but that's clearly driving more engagement on YouTube. Same thing with search overviews, same thing with all the different places where they've vended in Gemini across the different surfaces. But just to see the actual DeepMind financials, how much are they spending? How much are they making? How many subscriptions are there how much inference demand is there uh that would be fascinating gpt 5.4 pro

7:21Jordi Hays:funniest joke in the world okay what is it two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses he doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed over the other guy whips out his phone and calls emergency services he gasps my friend is dead what should i do the operator says calm down first make sure he's dead there's a silence then a loud gunshot back on the phone the guy says okay now what i've heard this i've heard this before this is good knowledge retrieval this is not unique thinking what do you yeah also so i just tried this yes on my own it gave the same exact yes yes yes so which is i think usually when you ask like tell me a joke it actually gives you like kind of random answers right because yeah has like the memory and stuff yep but it's

8:03John Coogan:interesting that this it gives the same joke every time that's that exact problem we got a big miss in jobs the u.s loses 92 000 jobs in february unemployment rises to 4.4 percent economists had

8:17Jordi Hays:expected 55 000 jobs to be added or and for the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.3 not good at all if i guess if you look back uh the economy has just been a shedding jobs since April of 2025 if you factor in the revisions down.

8:36John Coogan:Yeah. Apparently there's a strike in the healthcare industry, so healthcare employment decreased. And then healthcare in information and federal government continue to trend down, probably something related to the Trump administration, you know, reducing the size of the government. Last two months were revised down by 69 ,000. Not all the data was terrible. U6 fell as the number of people who said they had part-time jobs but wanted full-time ones actually declined. So stock futures are lower but not a ton of reaction to the number itself. Porto says, I've noticed some of my tech friends have lost jobs.

9:15John Coogan:Some jobs are becoming super easy. Some jobs had parts that were a pain and now those parts are super easy. Some people leaned into AI to stay relevant, still wonder if it will replace them entirely. Well, we will continue to track it. Brent is close to$90. This prediction, the$100 barrel predicted on last Sunday as the Iran war broke out, is closer and closer to coming true.

9:42Jordi Hays:Crude is up 11.5 % today. Not good.

9:47John Coogan:It's very interesting how it affects the economy or the various markets. The interesting question is how will the American oil drillers react? They were, at least in the journal earlier this week, sort of reflecting on the fact that if this is a short-lived engagement, then they might not want to spin up a bunch of new capacity. But if it's ongoing and price of oil is continuing to rise, then obviously that creates an economic incentive to drill more. And so we will see where the outputs go, where the reserves get tapped, all of that. Will the Iran war affect investment from neighboring Gulf state investment groups into American venture capital funds?

10:35John Coogan:We've seen as venture capital has boomed and the fundraisers have gotten into the tens of billions, the high billions for many firms, the Middle East has been a source of strong LP demand for venture capital stakes. And so with instability in Iran, you might just see folks change focus with new demands for defense investing, military buildup investing. You might see less dollars flow out of the Gulf into American venture capital firms. This should mostly be unaffected because the folks who actually work at the Gulf state investment funds who write the checks into American venture capital firms, they don't live in the Middle East.

11:16John Coogan:They live in New York. And they meet with other venture capital investor relations folks in New York. And they say, hey, how's your fund performance? Okay, we're allocating this. A big part of why they're investing in American technology and venture capital and frontier technology in America specifically is because they want to diversify away from the Gulf. They want to diversify away from the geopolitical risk. And they want to diversify away from oil. Exactly.

11:38Jordi Hays:Think about if you have a job. Let's say you have a big tech job. You're doing quite well. you're doing some angel investing and then you lose your job and then you have to get a much worse job. Are you going to keep angel investing at the same pace? You might be like, hey, I'll kind of have this kind of disconnect, less cash flow. I don't want to be outlaying as much cash now. And I think that that's like ultimately, you know, if the source of the cash flow gets disrupted, in this case being oil production, then you're much less likely to continue to allocate at the same pace. So the Financial Times has a story this late yesterday.

12:15Jordi Hays:Gulf states could review overseas investments to ease financial strains caused by Iran war. Three leading Middle East economies consider options as U.S.-Israeli campaign against Tehran continues. Pressure on the Gulf states budget could cause them to review their overseas investments and future commitments as they consider options to ease the financial strain caused by the war. A Gulf official said it could have an impact on anything from investment pledges to foreign states or companies, sports, sponsorships, contracts with businesses and investors, or sales of holdings. The official said three of the four big Gulf economies, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, had jointly discussed the strains being put on their budget.

12:55Jordi Hays:A number of Gulf countries have begun an internal review to determine whether force majeure clauses can be invoked in current contracts, while also reviewing current and future investment commitments in order to alleviate some of the anticipated economic strain from the current war, especially if the war and related expenses continue at the same pace. They added that the move was a precautionary measure that was the result of the budget strains these countries are facing due to reduced income from energy due to the slowdown in output or the inability to ship and from the tourism and aviation sectors in addition to the increase in defense spending.

13:32Jordi Hays:So a bunch of different factors combining. An advisor to a Gulf government said the prospect of an investment review by the wealthy states had caught the White House's attention. They managed some of the world's largest and most active sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar last year pledged to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. after President Donald Trump visited the region. They are also big backers of sporting events around the world and have all been investing heavily domestically to develop their nations and diversify their economies. Any move that affects investments in the U.S.

14:02Jordi Hays:or other Western states may raise the pressure on Trump to seek a diplomatic strategy to bring the war to an end. In other news, Joe Weisenthal is studying Texas man camps with everything from catered food to golf simulators that are springing up in order to lure workers out to construct data centers.

14:21John Coogan:Oh, yeah?

14:21Jordi Hays:They're building man camps. It is a bull market in man camps. AI man camps offer golf-free stakes to lure workers in Texas. This Tyler could get on board with. We should build a man camp here. We should. We kind of do. I mean, we talked about getting racing simulators, and then we ultimately backed off just because when you're at the office, you should probably be working.

14:44John Coogan:I've tried it before, and, like, games in the office, it's always just weird because, like, there's all these little interactions where I'm like, oh, I'm sort of waiting on you to do something. you're waiting on me to do something. If you just see me racing there, you're going to be like, can't you fix this? Or there's always something else to do. And so it's much better just to do proper off-sites, proper hands. That is going to be extremely disappointed right now.

15:10Jordi Hays:Companies are competing for workers to build data centers and are finding that a motel room with sluggish Wi-Fi isn't much of a draw. Try free steaks and golf simulators. As data center development has exploded with the rise of AI, competition for water and power supplies is pushing construction further into rural areas that often lack the housing and infrastructure to support the hundreds or thousands of temporary workers needed to build hulking warehouses of computer servers. That's forcing developers to increasingly lean on a stopgap solution that was popularized during the shale oil boom of the 2010, sprawling temporary villages known as man camps.

15:48Jordi Hays:These temporary housing villages can vary from wood frame two-story apartment buildings to containerize modular homes or trailer parks supplied with electricity and water. But to lure in-demand electricians, welders, and pipe fitters, developers are going the extra mile and offering game rooms, ribeyes, and shuttle rides to work. It's effectively a backdoor play for a share of what Bloomberg Intelligence estimates is 700 billion projects in the planning stage and another 160 billion already underway throughout the U.S. It's the largest, most actionable pipeline I've seen. It's an additional lure for tradespeople already enjoying significant pay hikes, with some data center electricians making more than$150 ,000 a year.

16:28Jordi Hays:Not bad at all.

16:30John Coogan:Anyway, let's move on. Is it that time? I think it's time for the mansion section. An ex-Marvel CEO lists his home in a secretive California community. I know you got a soft spot for these secretive communities, Jordy. We're going to pull this one up. So homes in this enclave, the Smoketree Ranch in Palm Springs, they usually trade between family and friends. But Eric Ellenbogen is testing the open market. At Smoketree Ranch in Palm Springs, homes usually trade quietly between family members and friends. But for former Marvel Enterprises CEO Eric Ellenbogen. And I got to know, is Marvel Enterprises, is that Marvel Entertainment or is that a different company?

17:17John Coogan:It seems like it's Marvel Entertainment. Anyway, Eric Allenbogen clearly has done very well. He purchased the oldest.

17:23Jordi Hays:It's now called Marvel Entertainment. It used to be called Marvel Enterprises. Amazing.