Researcher Quits: “Gambling With Our Lives,” Altman Calls for Slowdown, and Labs Race

Peter Diamandis and a panel including Emad Mostaque, Salim Ismail and other guests debate AI acceleration, safety messaging and the economics of scaling. A central segment focuses on a viral resignation post attributed to Jacob Conix, described as an Anthropic researcher, and a separate claim from an Anthropic alignment lead that the chance of “kill all humans” outcomes exceeds 10% in a decade; one panellist says they discount such exits as performative but alleges the post’s reach could indicate a foreign influence operation. The group also discusses Sam Altman’s reported call to “pace progress” after OpenAI’s claimed Navier–Stokes breakthrough and broader expectations that AI will rapidly solve major maths and science problems.

On governance, Diamandis cites an FT report that Anthropic declined to provide a new model to the UK AI Security Institute for pre-release testing, which the panel frames as evidence that model weights and evaluation access are becoming national-security sensitive. In geopolitics and competition, Diamandis cites Bloomberg reporting that ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is personally overseeing a real-time spatial “world model”.

The episode covers market signals of compute scarcity, including a claimed 22% month-on-month rise in H100 rental prices, and discusses Chinese model releases and memory-efficiency techniques as pressure on Western inference economics. In health and longevity, Diamandis highlights Insilico Medicine’s AI-designed drug rentosertib moving into Phase 3 for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and cites Phase 2a biomarker analysis suggesting multi-clock shifts consistent with reduced biological age. The panel also highlights DeepMind’s Alpha Genome Atlas as a precomputed map of variant effects across billions of potential single-letter genome mutations.

• A panellist alleges the virality of Jacob Conix’s resignation narrative could reflect manipulation, while discounting the underlying ‘rage quit’ as performative.
• Diamandis quotes Sam Altman arguing the Navier–Stokes result is evidence for urgency in pacing AI progress for safety.
• Diamandis reads a claim attributed to Noam Brown that high-cost evaluation/capability results can rapidly collapse to consumer subscription prices.
• Diamandis cites an FT report that Anthropic withheld its latest model from the UK AI Security Institute’s pre-release testing process.
• Diamandis cites Bloomberg reporting ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is overseeing a real-time spatial AI ‘world model’.
• Diamandis says H100 rental pricing rose 22% month-on-month, arguing compute scarcity is reversing normal chip depreciation dynamics.
• Diamandis highlights Insilico’s AI-designed drug rentosertib entering Phase 3 for IPF and cites a Phase 2a analysis reporting aligned shifts across six proteomic ageing clocks.