AI #123: Moratorium Moratorium - by Zvi Mowshowitz

The big AI story this week was the battle over the insane AI regulatory moratorium, which came dangerously close to passing. Ultimately, after Senator Blackburn realized her deal was no good and backed out of it, the dam broke, and ultimately the Senate voted 99-1 to strip the moratorium out of the BBB. I also covered last week’s hopeful house hearing in detail, so we can remember this as a reference point. Otherwise, plenty of other things happened but in terms of big items this was a relatively quiet week. Always enjoy such respites while they last. Next week we are told we are getting Grok 4. Table of Contents. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Submit to the Amanda Askell hypnosis. It Is I, Claudius, Vender of Items. Claude tries to run a vending machine. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Gemini gets overeager. GPT-4o Is An Absurd Sycophant. A very good sycophant, excellent work there. Preserve Our History. We need to preserve access to key models like Opus 3. Fork I

The big AI story this week was the battle over the insane AI regulatory moratorium, which came dangerously close to passing. Ultimately, after Senator Blackburn realized her deal was no good and backed out of it, the dam broke, and ultimately the Senate voted 99-1 to strip the moratorium out of the BBB. I also covered last week’s hopeful house hearing in detail, so we can remember this as a reference point. Otherwise, plenty of other things happened but in terms of big items this was a relatively quiet week. Always enjoy such respites while they last. Next week we are told we are getting Grok