AI:AM: Was Trump-Xi Anything? What Counts as Utopia? + AWS GPUs Cost 3X & AI Diagnoses Rare Diseases

Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan examine rapid shifts in technology, diplomacy, and medicine with guests Jeremie and Edouard Harris, Steve Hou, Joel Borgen, and Daniel McKinnon. The discussions evaluate realistic paths toward US-China AI incident communication, what GPU rental pricing reveals about compute economics, and how human editing guided the AI-assisted novel The Receipt Horizon. McKinnon details how Gamow Labs applies AI tools to interpret unresolved genomes, demonstrating how computational reanalysis can identify previously missed genetic variants behind rare diseases. Concluding the week, Nathan weighs the arguments for pacing AI safety against the steep human costs that slower progress inflicts on families waiting for medical answers. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-was-trump-xi-anything-what-counts-as-utopia-aws-gpus-cost-3x-ai-diagnoses-rare-diseases/ Sponsors: Athena: Athena matches you with a dedicated, top 1% executive assistant to handle your inbox, calendar, and daily workflows so you can save an average of 15 hours a week. Get matched with your EA today at https://athena.com/cognitive Parallel: Parallel provides enterprise-grade web search APIs for AI agents, offering the optimal balance of quality, speed, and cost. Get started for free at https://parallel.ai/tcr Deepgram Flux TTS: Deepgram Flux TTS is a streaming text-to-speech model built for voice agents with natural tone, context awareness, and interruption handling. Try it free until September 12 at https://deepgram.com/keep-talking OutSystems: OutSystems is the leading agentic systems platform, helping enterprises build, modernize, and operate mission-critical applications at the speed of AI. Learn more and start owning your agentic future at https://outsystems.com/tcr Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator for problem solvers, helping with writing, coding, financial models, strategy, and more. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) Weekly episode highlights (03:44) US China AI diplomacy (08:12) Verifying compute and compliance (Part 1) (12:46) Sponsors: Athena | Parallel (15:37) Verifying compute and compliance (Part 2) (19:57) Reading diplomatic green flags (Part 1) (27:46) Sponsors: Deepgram Flux TTS | OutSystems | Claude (31:44) Reading diplomatic green flags (Part 2) (31:46) The economics of compute (34:06) Hyperscaler cloud pricing premiums (42:02) OpenAI Dev Day takeaways (47:30) Cowriting novels with AI (52:02) Human judgment in art (58:10) AI diagnosing rare diseases (01:04:01) Testing uncertain genetic variants (01:12:20) Model harnesses and evals (01:22:14) Costs of pacing progress (01:24:09) Episode Outro (01:27:19) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing