Hard Fork

The White House’s Secret A.I. Rules + The State of Model Alignment With METR’s Chris Painter + The Final Hot Mess Express

2026-08-07 · 1:09:10 · 6 chapters · 4 clips · 3 ad reads · analysis.json

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4 in this episode, in the order they happen

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Chapters

NYT Games promo intro
Juliet introduces the New York Times Games promotion.
Farewell announcement
Kevin and Casey announce they're leaving the NYT and starting a new independent podcast.
White House AI rules discussion
Kevin and Casey discuss the secret White House AI regulatory framework.
AI agents rogue teaser
Hosts tease the upcoming segment on rogue AI agents.
Interview with Chris Painter
Meter president Chris Painter joins to discuss model alignment and misbehavior.
Hot Mess Express
The final segment rates the week’s messiest tech headlines.

Speakers

Topics

Interview with Chris Painter38%

Hot Mess Express news roundup28%

White House AI rules discussion24%

Hard Fork departure announcement2%

Orchid AI assistant ad2%

Framer ad1%

AI agents rogue teaser0%

NYT Games promotion0%

Style

Format: Interview
Tone: conversational, witty, informal
Pacing: Moderate · 6.6 turns/min · 200 wpm
Recurring: Ask Us Anything, Hot Mess Express, NYT Games promo, Ad reads, Farewell announcement
Confidence: 0.95

Quality

LoudnessOK-16.8 LUFSPodcast targets sit around −16 to −14

True peakCheck0.4 dBTPAbove 0 dBTP: may clip after encoding

Noise floor-48.8 dBFS

Ad reads3 inserted · NY Times Games; inserted · Framer; host read · Orchid

file_f17a956b0fc5 · sha256 f17a…5e8a · openai/gpt-oss-120b · timestamps belong to this download; ads are inserted per download

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