METR and AI Regulation, Zuck Pushes Back on AI Slowdown, Fed Hikes Rates | Diet TBPN

John Coogan (0:01)

Well, we have a fantastic show for you today, folks. I made it to San Francisco and back since the last show. This is a new thing. I like this. I'm able to get out from the show, go do something in San Francisco, get back. Very excited. Why didn't you want to stay? I don't know, I like doing the show.

It's pretty simple. Good to be here in the TBPN UltraDom. We have a great show. We have a bunch of great folks coming on the show. What was on my mind last night? I was listening to China Talk. Jordan Schneider was talking about evaluators, third-party evaluators, and I was noticing this discourse around, it feels like we funneled into very clear camps super, super quickly, and it feels like, I don't know, too calcified for how fast it happened. The Dario essay comes out, and he throws out meter, says he's bringing in meter, and the backlash is like a media. The New York Post is crashing out, saying these are hand-picked AI watchdogs. Martin Casado, a Martin Casado over at A16Z, he's pushing for the Department of Energy. He's like full nationalization now, and both of those have their advantages, disadvantages. They both do good work.

They are the extremes. And so I was just sort of wondering a few things. First, what other regulatory bodies can actually work? How do they work in other industries? It's very interesting because the revolving door is something that's common like in financial regulation, you get people that work at banks and then they go and work at the regulator and then they go back and forth. I mean, this is the story of many people in the crypto industry where the regulators who are regulating it, they go back and forth. Like revolving doors exist, but I think the pushback to meter is very much like the door is like too revolving or it's too close, I guess. But the more interesting question to me is...

Jordi Hays (1:49)

Yeah, the defensive meter is that I don't know many groups that are qualified at all to even understand what's going on at the frontier, right?

John Coogan (2:01)

Is that true, though? I see that's the thing I disagree with.

Jordi Hays (2:04)

I would say that there are not that many groups that have been this invested in understanding frontier model behavior for this long.

John Coogan (2:13)

That's a separate thing.

Jordi Hays (2:13)

It's just a small group right now.

John Coogan (2:15)

That's a separate thing. So I think there's two separate things. There's one which is like super forecasting, seeing the future, predicting what's going to happen. I think that's important. I think taking that seriously is important. But then there's the other side, which is like doing the work, reading the logs and being like this violated this rule. This hack happened. Here's how it happened. And I think that those are actually two separate disciplines, two separate jobs. And you can just tell the regulator if it's someone, you don't need to tell, like if you hire someone and they are able to get up to speed on how these systems work and evaluate them and look at logs of different incidents, see what's happening, assess the risk level, assess the liabilities. If you can get those people up to speed, you can just be like, it is your mandate to take this seriously. And the example that I'm pulling from is like, you can be 22 years old, not graduate from college, go into the Navy, enlist in the Navy, not even in the officer training program. And in 18 months, you can be responsible for the security of a nuclear power plant on a summer. You do six months in nuclear field A school, about six months of nuclear power school, and then six months of hands-on prototype training before arriving in the fleet. Nuclear power school covers math, nuclear physics, reactor principles, health physics, materials, thermodynamics, electrical systems, and reactor technology. There's no part of that that's like, you need to really, at a deep level, understand that nuclear annihilation is bad and could happen. You don't need to be able to forecast out, well, what happens if China and geopolitics and Iran gets the bomb and then these people and then Pakistan, you don't have to understand that to just know, don't let it blow up. That's your job. Here's how you don't let that happen. We've created a plan for you. You're 22 years old, but we know that you can do this job and you are enlisted to do this job. And doesn't matter if you think nuclear war is impossible or doesn't matter if you think it's gonna happen tomorrow. Your P-Doom on nuclear is completely irrelevant to you doing this job, right? And I think that that's something that is maybe being missed here a little bit. There's like, there's like, well, you have to take it seriously. You have to have seen it coming. And I actually think that like, super forecasting, super important, awesome. Also just like fun read, really cool. And if you take it seriously, you make a lot of money, you work on interesting stuff, you get amazing technology. There's so many things that come downstream of that, that are really, really positive, really important. But I don't necessarily know that it's actually a prerequisite. And then the other thing is, yeah, Tyler.