Ep 9: The Token bill has arrived

The White House just signed an order that lets the government test the strongest AI models up to 30 days before you can. The labs said yes. Safety, or a backdoor? We make the call. Human In the Loop is a weekly podcast where two builders cut through the AI hype cycle. No hype, no doomerism, no recaps. SIGNAL OR NOISE - Trump's frontier-model order, a 30-day government early-access window with the NSA deciding what qualifies - GitHub Copilot flips to token billing, devs report 10x to 50x jumps - Microsoft and Google crash the AI coding party with cheaper models - ChatGPT crosses 1 billion users, and why Claude's 640% growth is the real story - Anthropic calls for a global pause on frontier AI NO JARGON REQUIRED The three words on every AI invoice, explained for anyone who signs off on the bill. 1. Tokens, and why your bill went usage-based 2. Inference vs training, and what "inference-efficient" buys you 3. Evals and benchmarks, and why the leaderboard lies HOT TAKES Oscar: The executive order is a distribution deal. Every frontier release now has a 30-day government waiting room. Matt: The Copilot billing meltdown is the best thing to happen to engineering leaders this year. The meter was always running. Key links: - White House AI order: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/promoting-advanced-artificial-intelligence-innovation-and-security/ - Copilot usage billing: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/github-copilot-is-moving-to-usage-based-billing/ - The token bill comes due: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/05/the-token-bill-comes-due-inside-the-industry-scramble-to-manage-ais-runaway-costs/ Hosts: Oscar Gallo (AI Engineer & Entrepreneur) and Matt Wozniak (Builder, Operator). New episodes every week.