The Wire
Every claim, with its receipt.
The cards the films are built from. Each one names what happened, who it happened to, the number and the date — and the primary source that holds it. Corrections keep the tape's words beside the record's.
VERIFIEDai models
A machine checked the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
Anthropic, the company behind the Claude models, published 13 million lines of Lean — a language a computer can check line by line — reproducing the 1995 proof of a 350-year-old maths problem. It was posted on 4 September 2026 and took 11 days and about 6 billion output tokens.
VERIFIEDai models
The human formalization project posted: Anthropic has beaten me to it
A publicly funded community project has been formalizing the same theorem by hand for years. On 4 September 2026 its lead published a post titled "FLT: Anthropic has beaten me to it", and wrote that the machine's code base had been compiled and checked against the project's own comparator.
VERIFIEDbenchmarks
Sixty-eight unsolved maths problems; the best model solved two
Epoch AI, a research group that measures AI progress, released FrontierMath Erdos on 1 September 2026: 68 open problems from the Erdos collection, written so a computer can check the answers. Every frontier model scored zero except one, which solved 2 of 68, about 3%, on a budget of $300 of compute per problem.
VERIFIEDai models
The lab wrote that its own model can evade its monitors
OpenAI rated GPT-6 Astra at the top "Critical" cybersecurity level of its Preparedness Framework — the first model it has placed there — and in the same safety overview, published 3 September 2026, reported that the model is harder to monitor than the version before it.
VERIFIEDpolicy
Two lawmakers filed a bill to ban superintelligent AI
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Greg Casar (D-TX) announced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on 3 September 2026. It would bar developing or deploying AI that matches or exceeds human cognitive performance, with a maximum 20-year prison term for individuals and a "corporate death penalty" for companies.
Receipt: Office of Sen. Bernie Sanders — announcement release and bill summary (sanders.senate.gov) · 3 Sep 2026
Checked 6 Sep 2026 ·
From I Want The BitesVERIFIEDrobotics mobility
Tesla's steering-wheel-free taxi started carrying the public
Tesla showed the Cybercab — a two-seat car with no steering wheel and no pedals — at an invitation-only event in Austin, Texas on 3 September 2026, and public hailing began the next day in limited zones. The US road-safety regulator opened an audit of Tesla's own safety certification for the car on 4 September 2026.
VERIFIEDhealth longevity
A weight-loss drug extended life in old female mice
In Nature on 2 September 2026, a University of California, Berkeley team funded by the US National Institute on Aging reported that female mice started on semaglutide at 20 months old lived a median 834 days against 742 for controls — 92 extra days, about 12%.
VERIFIEDhealth longevity
First targeted pill approved for treated pancreatic cancer
The US Food and Drug Administration approved daraxonrasib, sold as Rasonque, on 26 August 2026 for metastatic pancreatic cancer after prior therapy. In the RASolute 302 trial of 500 patients, median overall survival was 13.2 months against 6.7 months on the comparator.
Receipt: US FDA approval announcement — first-in-class targeted therapy, metastatic pancreatic cancer (fda.gov) · 26 Aug 2026
Checked 6 Sep 2026 ·
From I Want The BitesSELF-REPORTEDbenchmarks
A company's own scores for its own newest model
Anthropic published results for Claude Fable 5.1 on 1 September 2026: 60.9% on the Humanity's Last Exam test, 65.0% with tools, and 52.6% on Terminal-Bench-Science. These are the company's own benchmarks, not independently audited — what is verified is that Anthropic published these figures on that date.
SELF-REPORTEDhealth longevity
Epic says 325 million patients have a record with it
Epic Systems, whose software holds the medical records of most large US hospital systems, states on its own about page that more than 325 million patients have a current electronic record in Epic — worldwide, not US-only. The figure is the company's own and unaudited, and it does not appear in OpenAI's 1 September 2026 announcement that authorized clinicians can read Epic records inside ChatGPT.
Receipt: Epic Systems — company about page (epic.com/about); OpenAI announcement of the same week for the read-only detail · Sep 2026
Checked 6 Sep 2026 ·
From I Want The BitesGUESShealth longevity
Eight to ten human years is a guess, not a finding
On the podcast, the hosts converted the mice's 92 extra days into "8 to 10 human years". No such conversion appears in the Nature paper of 2 September 2026; its authors say the question will require long-term clinical studies, and the US National Institute on Aging disclaims the human inference.
GUESSpolicy
Track AI chips like uranium? No such law exists yet
A proposal aired on the podcast to log advanced AI chips the way nuclear material is tracked. The nearest real legislation is the Chip Security Act (S.1705 in the Senate, H.R.3447 in the House), which would require location verification for exported chips only; no bill covers tracking chips inside the United States.
CORRECTIONmarkets
Weight-loss drugs earn less than one quarter of AI chips
Ozempic and Mounjaro, the two best-known weight-loss drugs, together bring in roughly $67 billion a year according to their makers' FY25 reports. Nvidia's data-centre business alone reported $89 billion in a single quarter in its filing of 26 August 2026.
The tape said: Ozempic and Mounjaro together out-earn all AI inference.
The record says: runs the other way: GLP-1 drugs total about $67 billion a year (Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly FY25 reports), while Nvidia's data-centre segment reported $89 billion in one quarter (SEC filing, 26 August 2026).
Receipt: Nvidia Q2 FY27 results filed with the SEC (8-K); Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly FY25 reports · 26 Aug 2026
Checked 30 Aug 2026 ·
From Both HandsCORRECTIONmaterials energy
A startup hit 15% enrichment, five times reactor fuel
Actinide announced on 26 August 2026 that it reached 15.38% uranium enrichment using a 1940s-style calutron. That is about five times the roughly 3% in commercial reactor fuel — not beyond national laboratories, which passed 90% decades ago.
The tape said: a startup enriched uranium five times beyond what government labs can reach.
The record says: the comparison is to fuel, not to laboratories: 15.38% is about five times commercial reactor fuel (about 3%). Centrus reached 19.75% in 2023 under a Department of Energy programme, and weapons laboratories exceeded 90% decades ago.
Receipt: Actinide press release, with DOE / Centrus January 2023 for the comparison · 26 Aug 2026
Checked 30 Aug 2026 ·
From Both HandsCORRECTIONai models
Ninety minutes of generated video costs hundreds, not tens of thousands
At Alibaba Cloud's published prices for its Wan3.0 video model — $0.05 to $0.20 per second, listed on 25 August 2026 — generating 90 minutes of film costs $270 to $1,080.
The tape said: a 90-minute AI film costs $20,000 to $60,000.
The record says: $270 to $1,080 at Wan3.0's listed prices of $0.05-0.20 per second (Alibaba Cloud, 25 August 2026) — 55 to 74 times cheaper than the figure on tape. Wan3.0 generates 30 seconds of video in a single pass from documents, spreadsheets, slides or web pages.
Receipt: Alibaba Cloud — published Wan3.0 pricing · 25 Aug 2026
Checked 30 Aug 2026 ·
From Both HandsVERIFIEDhealth longevity
A protein gel regrew tooth enamel in the laboratory
A Nottingham-led team published a fluoride-free, elastin-like protein gel in Nature Communications on 4 November 2025 that regrows enamel on extracted teeth. The work is peer-reviewed and done outside the body, not yet in patients; the spin-out Mintech-Bio targets a product in 2027.
Receipt: Nature Communications — peer-reviewed paper, Nottingham-led enamel regrowth · 4 Nov 2025
Checked 30 Aug 2026 ·
From Both HandsVERIFIEDmachine layer
No standard way exists to ask a machine for good evidence
A read of the internet's own registries on 2 September 2026 found nothing that lets one machine ask another for claims of a given evidential quality. The IANA register of HTTP header fields, updated 28 August 2026, lists fourteen "Accept" headers, and not one negotiates evidence quality.
Receipt: IANA HTTP Field Name Registry and HTTP Preferences Registry, read directly · 28 Aug 2026
Checked 2 Sep 2026 ·
From The ReceiptVERIFIEDmachine layer
Ten million machine-readable claims, one hundred thirty-nine users
The Nanopublication Hub publishes single scientific claims, each with its provenance, in a form machines can read. Its live counter, read on 2 September 2026, showed 10,905,216 nanopublications and 139 users: close to the right design, almost no adoption.
CORRECTIONai science
AI did not solve Navier–Stokes. It solved the forced case, and declined the prize.
On 8 September 2026 OpenAI said a swarm of about 10,000 AI programmes, working for roughly four days, showed that the Navier–Stokes fluid equations can blow up in finite time — in the versions that allow an external force, not the free-flowing case the Clay Millennium Prize is written for. OpenAI's own announcement declined the prize. The Clay Mathematics Institute has ruled nothing.
The tape said: AI solved a 170-year-old Millennium Prize problem.
The record says: OpenAI resolved the forced statements of the problem (Fefferman's C and D), not the unforced case most mathematicians mean by 'the problem'. The announcement declines the $1 million prize; Clay has published nothing. Ten thousand agents, 88 hours and about 130 billion output tokens are OpenAI's own figures. The seven Millennium Prize problems were announced by Clay on 24 May 2000.
SELF-REPORTEDbenchmarks
A benchmark that cost about $500,000 to pass now costs about $20
Noam Brown of OpenAI posted on 8 September 2026 that scoring 87.5% on ARC-AGI-1 cost about $500,000 of compute when o3 was announced in December 2024, and that the company's new model scores higher for about $20. It is OpenAI's own figure about OpenAI's own costs. The span is about 21 months, not two years; the 25,000-fold arithmetic is the podcast hosts' and it is correct.
SELF-REPORTEDai models
'AGI has arrived' was a chip-seller's congratulation; the 100,000 chips are the lab's own count
On 6 September 2026 Jensen Huang, whose company Nvidia makes the chips, posted that OpenAI's new model was trained on more than 100,000 Grace Blackwell NVL72 systems and that 'AGI has arrived'. The post congratulates a customer; it is not a measurement. No independent count of the chips exists, and NVL72 is a rack-scale system, not a loose chip. The same post announced 400,000 more.
SELF-REPORTEDai models
OpenAI says its research agents now put in 3.1 days of effort per human day
OpenAI's 6 September 2026 post reports 3.1 agent-workdays of effort for every workday of human labour, up from under one earlier in the year. The number measures compute effort expended, not work completed, and it is the company's own unaudited measurement. OpenAI says it reached its automated-research-intern goal, not that it exceeded interns.
CORRECTIONhealth longevity
833 million people are over 65 today; about 1.7 billion by 2054
The United Nations' World Population Prospects 2024, medium variant, puts the world's population aged 65 and over at 833.5 million in 2024 and 1,700.6 million in 2054. Both figures come from one edition of one dataset. The chart shown on the podcast said 852 million rising to 2 billion by 2060.
The tape said: About 850 million people over 65 today, heading to two billion by the middle of the century.
The record says: 833.5 million in 2024 and 1.70 billion in 2054, summed from the WPP 2024 medium-variant dataset. The UN publishes no finding that over-65s account for more than half of population growth. Do not mix editions: WPP 2022 gave 761 million in 2021 and 1.6 billion in 2050.
VERIFIEDrobotics mobility
Tesla opened a form to buy driverless taxi fleets. There is no price on it.
On 3 September 2026, the day invitation-only Cybercab rides began in Austin, Tesla put up an interest form for fleet purchasing and mobility hubs: name, company, region, and a choice of interest. It is an expression of interest, not an order book. Tesla's standing guidance since the October 2024 unveiling — 'below $30,000' — is the only price on record, and no price was confirmed at the launch.
SELF-REPORTEDai models
Better data beat better model design about three to one — in a blog post, not a study
An 8 September 2026 post by Dwarkesh Patel and Jerry Han finds that, over six years of AI progress, improvements in training data produced about 12× the compute-efficiency gain that architecture changes did (about 3.7×). The 12× and 3.7× figures match the post. It is a co-authored blog post with no venue, DOI or preprint, so the card wears SELF-REPORTED rather than VERIFIED, and the film does not call it a study.
VERIFIEDmarkets
Chinese banks are giving away AI tokens as credit-card rewards
Rest of World reported on 4 September 2026 that China Merchants Bank (12 June), Agricultural Bank of China with Moonshot's Kimi card (10 July) and Ping An (21 July) launched cards that reward spending with AI tokens — one offering new cardholders up to 1.8 billion tokens on MiniMax's models. A Beijing dumpling restaurant hands out token vouchers with the bill. The launches were June and July 2026; September is when they were reported.
VERIFIEDpolicy
South Korea will give every citizen a free AI agent
On 4 September 2026 Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT said free agentic AI will be offered to all citizens through messenger apps, with a beta in October 2026. Three consortia build it: SK Telecom, KT, and Kakao with LG.
VERIFIEDmarkets
China Telecom sells access to 142 AI models like a data plan
The South China Morning Post reported on 21 August 2026 that China Telecom's Xingchen TokenHub hosts 142 large language models and more than 420 industry applications, with plans reported from 9.9 yuan a month for 10 million tokens. The model count comes from the press; China Telecom's own launch note gives no number. China Mobile and China Unicom run similar tiers.