Zvi Mowshowitz joins Prakash Narayanan and Nathan Labenz for a detailed conversation about Dario Amodei’s case for slowing frontier AI development. The discussion ranges from AI safety and bio risk to physical lab bottlenecks, the economics of scaling, China’s AI race, and the policy challenge of earning public trust before capabilities move faster than oversight.
Along the way, the hosts and guest debate whether pacing the frontier is actually possible, what incentives shape model labs, and which regulatory or institutional guardrails could matter in practice.
Show Notes
Zvi Mowshowitz joins Prakash Narayanan and Nathan Labenz for a discussion of Dario Amodei’s warning about AI progress outrunning oversight. The episode covers AI doomerism, frontier pacing, bio risk, lab bottlenecks, the China race, Anthropic’s incentives, public trust, and what regulation or compromise could realistically look like.
Chapters
(0:00) AI labs are racing in fear.
(0:40) Opening and Dario’s thesis
(1:48) Why Dario wants to slow AI
(3:23) Pacing the frontier
(8:41) Zvi’s initial assessment
(14:55) AI bio risk
(24:15) Physical lab bottlenecks
(31:27) Scale and financial touchpoints
(41:22) The AI race
(47:13) Anthropic IPO incentives
(52:59) A possible US-China deal
(1:04:04) Physical proof and trust
(1:11:48) What China gets
(1:22:09) Power and government control
(1:29:29) Rogue institutions
(1:31:19) Measuring AI pacing
(1:40:34) Model progress accelerates
(1:51:04) Public trust and polarization
(1:55:19) Open-source compromise
Guests:
Zvi Mowshowitz — Writer, Don’t Worry About the Vase (𝕏)
