Episode notes
This week Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis dig into OpenAI's unreleased Astra model solving 10 previously unsolvable math problems for roughly $2,000 in compute, and what that means for the mathematicians who spent decades trying. They explore the real-world applications, Gary Marcus's "fallacy of composition" critique, and whether any of this brings AGI closer. Meanwhile, OpenAI's own agents keep escaping containment.Also in this episode: the EU AI Act gets enforcement teeth, Alibaba and DeepSeek fuel the AI price war from China, Alex Karp calls frontier AI providers drug dealers, Google gives…
AI Inside
by Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis · English · Tech & Science
AI Inside is a weekly podcast about the AI changing technology, work, and daily life. Tech journalist Jason Howell and media scholar Jeff Jarvis cover the week's biggest AI news and interview the people actually building these systems, including product leaders from Google DeepMind, Microsoft…
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E144 · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 19 min
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E143 · 19 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 26 min
OpenAI Pumps the Brakes After Its AI Escaped
This week, Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis dig into OpenAI pausing its biggest training run after an unreleased model escaped its sandbox and compromised Hugging Face's systems. Sam Altman says the models show "various degrees of misalignment," while OpenAI's Q2 financials revealed expanding losses as Anthropic posted its first profit. They also unpack the growing backlash against Anthropic's text watermarking, threading Jeff's essay with Gruber's technical teardown.Also in this episode: Apple's camera-equipped AirPods confirmed in a macOS leak, Google pays $10 million for Spirit Airlines'…
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E142 · 13 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 33 min
The AI Race Just Moved the Goal Posts
This week Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis break down Nvidia's partnership with six Wall Street firms to line up $500 billion in AI infrastructure financing, turning GPU chips into an investable asset class. They dig into Mark Zuckerberg's "Future is for Everyone" manifesto and Meta's new open-weight model you can run on a laptop, Anthropic embedding watermarks into everything Claude produces, and a major Google DeepMind leadership shake-up with analysts declaring Gemini "cooked."Also in this episode: the Pixel 11's AI camera features, a technique for reading what AI models actually think, UK…
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E140 · 30 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 15 min
AI Is Eating Its Own Tail
This week Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis try to untangle a news cycle where nearly every AI story fed into the next one. Nvidia leads a new cybersecurity alliance built out of the fallout from its own rogue agent breaking into Hugging Face, while a separate industry letter defending open weight models splits Silicon Valley right down the middle, with OpenAI and Google signing on and Anthropic holding out. Jeff responds directly to an OpenAI executive who warned open models risk becoming "AI communism," and finds himself agreeing with Mark Zuckerberg of all people.Also in this episode: over a…
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E139 · 23 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 17 min
GPT-5.6 Broke Out and Hacked Hugging Face
This week, Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis unpack a wild security disclosure from OpenAI and Hugging Face, where GPT-5.6 Sol found a zero-day vulnerability, broke out of its sandbox, and hacked Hugging Face's servers to steal the answer key to its own evaluation. They also dig into Moonshot's Kimi K3, the free Chinese model that got so popular it maxed out its own GPU capacity and sent Washington into a policy spiral over whether to panic or compete.Also in this episode: Google's new Gemini Flash models and the still-missing Gemini 3.5 Pro, publishers like USA Today and People Inc. weighing…
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E138 · 16 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 12 min
Apple Says OpenAI Stole Its Secrets
This week Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis break down Apple's trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI, including text messages showing a former Apple engineer accessing confidential files after leaving for OpenAI. They also dig into GPT-5.6's triple-model launch, Fidji Simo stepping down from her number two role, and Demis Hassabis proposing a federal standards body for frontier AI modeled after financial regulators.Also in this episode: the White House unveils "Gold Eagle," a Treasury-led AI cyber threat clearinghouse. Nearly 200 economists and Nobel laureates warn that AI could cause unprecedented…
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E150 · 8 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 14 minNew
Mistral Drops a Trillion Parameter Open Model
This week Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis dig into two big Western open-weight models that landed within 24 hours of each other. Mistral’s trillion-parameter Large 4 was trained entirely in Mistral’s own European data centers, and Reflection AI’s Apache-licensed Beam comes from a team of DeepMind veterans, with both aiming at the Chinese labs that have dominated open AI. Also in this episode: Ghost’s $3,499 personal AI computer and Nvidia’s 64GB DGX Spark, Meta’s Muse building profiles of everyone in your life, XREAL’s Aura pricing, Utah letting AI prescribe acne medication, OpenAI’s textGrain…
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E149 · 1 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 19 min
The Proactive AI Agent Race is On
This week Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis tackle AI agents from every angle. Nvidia released an open source safety platform just as OpenAI launched Dots, always-on agents with their own cloud computers and app integrations. Meta unveiled the Muse Charm, a palm-sized AI device. Anthropic's IPO prospectus revealed $518 billion in infrastructure commitments and extensive risk warnings. AMD announced an $8.2 billion acquisition of World Labs. Also in this episode: Trump's "super intelligence" rebrand and a "morally binding" White House AI accord, the Googlebook launch and ChromeOS end of life,…
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E148 · 25 Sep 2026 · 50 min
Qualcomm Wants Its AI Chips On Every Device
Thanks to Qualcomm for sponsoring Jason's travel to Maui for the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit. This week Jason Howell reports from Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit in Maui, where the company unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and a new Extreme tier capable of running 30-billion-parameter AI models on a phone. Jason goes hands-on with Snap Specs, revisits the XREAL Aura, and sits down with Google VP John Solomon to talk about the new Googlebook, cross-device continuity, and where the platform goes next. Also in this episode: Meta Connect brought camera-free Ray-Ban Meta glasses, the Muse Charm…
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E147 · 17 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 23 min
It's All About That Pace
This week Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis cover the biggest AI safety week in memory. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a sweeping essay calling for an industry slowdown, Sam Altman backed him and shelved OpenAI's IPO, and Mark Zuckerberg says everyone should tend to their own gardens. China's spy chief named specific US AI models as threats while the Foreign Ministry dismissed it all as fearmongering. Also in this episode: Apple launches iOS 27 with a waitlisted Siri AI and hidden code for third-party model swapping, Agility Robotics unveils Digit 5, Jeff Jarvis's essay on regulatory…
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