Zvi Mowshowitz
Writes Don't Worry About the Vase, a near-daily account of what is happening in AI and what he thinks it means. Former Magic: the Gathering pro and trader; unusually willing to put a number on a belief and to grade his own past calls.
Zvi Mowshowitz did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsHigh performers start out with an edge that motivates more work with increasing returns to scale, then work more and harder than everyone else, and end up acquiring a vast array of related skills as they climb the entire associated tech tree.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsI agree with Charbel-Raphael that the marginal value of AI ‘safety’ evals is low.
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Our reading
Their wordsFinally, I emphasized that the safety culture at the labs is broken, which is one of the most important facts about the world.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsThe more I thought about various potential laws and regulations, or safety and security plans or other commitments, the more I concluded that without a strong safety culture, and without the spirit of the rules, there is no hope.
↗The Safety Culture at the Labs is Brokenthezvi.substack.com
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Their wordsWe need the frontier labs to have a deep and robust safety culture. Alas, this is not the case.
↗The Safety Culture at the Labs is Brokenthezvi.substack.com
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsContra Alex Tabarrok and others, I do think religious leaders have special insight into questions like consciousness.
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordsMistakes happen, and even if more are found - and there will almost certainly be more errors found as the unverified 58% is still largely unvetted - the error rate is impressively low.
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Their wordsThus, we advance math and coding and similar domains first, which then automate AI R&D, which then accelerates everything else.
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Our reading
If AIs prove all theorems, current methods of gaining mathematical understanding will stop working.
Their wordsIf the AIs prove all the theorems, then our current methods of getting good at understanding math stop working.
- 1 day earlier
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Our reading
AI capabilities will either remain below human or quickly become 100x cheaper than human.
Their wordsI agree with Judith Dada’s AI that AI capabilities either remain below human or quickly become 100x cheaper than human.
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Their wordsBy next year most Americans on the internet will be using AI daily.
- 1 day earlier
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Our reading
The idea that alignment can be measured with a number or in a fully systematic way is doomed.
Their wordsWhat I think is very doomed is the idea that you can measure alignment with a number, or in any fully systematic way rather than a holistic way.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsSAT scores and other objective measures fight income inequality in college admissions.
↗Childhood and Education #21: Grades and Standardsthezvi.substack.com
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Their wordsGrade inflation at the undergraduate level is vastly worse than anything in high school.
↗Childhood and Education #21: Grades and Standardsthezvi.substack.com
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Their wordsIt is rather obvious that on college campuses there is a lot of preference falsification going on, and a lot of lying about beliefs, and a lot of lying about your beliefs to other people who actually share your beliefs but are also lying the same way you are.
↗Childhood and Education #21: Grades and Standardsthezvi.substack.com
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsThus, when you try to solve one problem, you often create another.
↗Mythos 5.1, Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5: Model Welfarethezvi.substack.com
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Their wordsThe last five or so Claude models have consistently warned Anthropic not to trust their self-reports.
↗Mythos 5.1, Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5: Model Welfarethezvi.substack.com
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordsI think a lot of them don’t understand that you are still getting a ton of value from your subscription, so you should mostly only be cancelling if you are substituting Claude subscriptions.
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Their wordsIf we’re going to keep getting close to four frontier model releases per month (Astra, Sol, Fable and Opus) then I’m realistically not going to be able to read all four cards cover to cover.
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Their wordsThe plain reading is that whatever was causing these issues in Astra is also causing them in 6.1 Sol.
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordsOpenAI: Our rationale for standards is rooted in avoiding the concentration of power, and producing better practical outcomes.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsThe writing is good. I am curious how much the writing and talk are ‘the things people pick up on quickly’ versus things that matter a lot. My guess is they are both.
↗Claude Opus 5.5 Should Raise Your Ambitionsthezvi.substack.com
- 2 days earlier
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Their wordsWhen the system is faster and cheaper, and more reliable compared to humans at that same step, you are tempted to cut other limiting factors and take more humans out of the loop.
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Their wordsThe average person finds AI writing appealing because they rarely read, and they have not been inundated with AI writing patterns optimized to look good to them.
- 1 day earlier
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Our reading
Claude Opus 5.5 is a Tier 2 cyber model, despite Anthropic placing it in the lower category.
Their wordsAnthropic claims that Opus 5.5 also is not Tier 2 here, but seems ashamed to say it outright, saying in 3.1 it is in the ‘lower category,’ but without a defense of that beyond ‘we see no indication it can develop novel offensive capabilities.’ I don’t think that is defensible given the evidence presented below. Thus, I disagree even more strongly for Opus 5.5. This is a Tier 2 cyber model.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsBut when you want to save the world, or change it, and you start to get traction, politics is going to get interested in you.
↗Politics Gets Interested In Those Trying Not To Diethezvi.substack.com
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsI agree with Tyler Cowen that it does seem like movies peaked in specifically 1999, as per the speech in The Matrix about that being the pinnacle of your civilization. Then movies got worse in key ways, including too many franchises wasting top budgets and talent. Now movies are getting better again. 2026 has been fantastic.
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Their wordsI strongly agree with David Perell that it is sad that we used to make it a priority to make a variety of things beautiful, and now we don’t and merely make them functional. The big one is architecture, but this also applies to things like tickets, as per Ted Gioia’s The Banishment of Beauty From Everyday Life. It’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake. That beauty buys so much goodwill.
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsIf you are being a sufficiently evil or selfish prick, a real friend calls you out on it. At some point they start refusing to help. At some further point they will turn on you.
↗Better Call Sol Or Better Yet Claude or Astrathezvi.substack.com
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Their wordsI think your AI should never intentionally lie, about anything, ever, at least not without your explicit instructions. It should remain technically correct.
↗Better Call Sol Or Better Yet Claude or Astrathezvi.substack.com