Am I Even Needed Anymore? GLM-5, Agentic Loops & AI Productivity Psychosis - EP99.34

Meanwhile, we're having existential crises about whether we're even needed anymore. In this episode, we break down China's new frontier model that's competing with Opus 4.6 and Codex at a fraction of the price, why agentic loops are making 200K context windows the sweet spot (sorry, million-token dreams), and the very real phenomenon of AI productivity psychosis. We dive into why coding-optimized models are secretly winning at everything, the Harvard study confirming AI doesn't reduce work – it intensifies it, and the exodus of safety researchers from XAI, Anthropic, and OpenAI (spoiler: they're not giving back their shares). Plus: Mike's arm is failing from too much mouse usage, we debate whether the chatbot era is actually fading, and yes – there's a safety researcher diss track called "Is This The End?" CHAPTERS: 0:00 Intro - Is This The End? (Song Preview) 0:11 Still Relevant Tour Update & NASA Listener Callout 1:42 AI Productivity Psychosis: The Pressure of Infinite Capability 4:25 GLM-5 Breakdown: China's New Frontier Model on Huawei Chips 7:24 First Impressions: GLM-5 in Agentic Loops 9:48 Why Cheap Models Matter & The New Model War 14:09 Codex Vibe Shift: Is OpenAI Winning? 16:24 Does Context Window Size Even Matter Anymore? 22:27 The Parallelization Problem & Cognitive Overload 27:27 Mike's Arm Injury & The Voice Input Pivot 31:17 Single-Threaded Work & The 95% Problem 35:06 UX is Unsolved: Rolling Back Agentic Mistakes 38:45 Harvard Study: AI Doesn't Reduce Work, It Intensifies It 44:01 How AI Erodes Company Structure & Why Adoption Takes Years 50:14 My AI vs Your AI: Household Debates 50:43 The Safety Researcher Exodus: XAI, Anthropic, OpenAI 56:49 Final Thoughts: Are We All Still Relevant? 59:04 BONUS: Full "Is This The End?" Diss Track Thanks for listening. Like & Sub. Links above for the Still Relevant Tour signup and Simtheory. GLM-5 is here, your productivity psychosis is valid, and the safety researchers are becoming poets. xoxo