Phoebe Gate’s Phia scandal, viral AI 2027 team is back, Meta's new model

<p>In this episode of Get the Check, the pod breaks down Meta's comeback model launch, the AI 2027 team's new AI 2040 paper, and the cookie stuffing allegations against Phoebe Gates' shopping startup Phia.</p><p>Muse Spark 1.1, the first big release from Meta's superintelligence lab. Meta stock jumped 13% on the launch, and the model is on par with GLM 5.2 while priced slightly cheaper, plus 4 to 6x cheaper than the Opus models. One year after the Llama 4 disaster and $14B for Alexandr Wang, the turnaround is real: Semi-Analysis called Meta the only hyperscaler on track to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic on frontier coding models. Alexandr tweeted "compute daddy has spoken," and Dylan Patel's reply ("when a bi man calls you daddy, it hits different") was not on our 2026 bingo. The pod digs into why Meta is winning: they converted 3,000 new grads into internal data labelers, their recorded-workflow data beats anything Mercor or Surge can simulate, and they're building five one-gigawatt Titan clusters. Plus, OpenAI is hiring an investment banker (Maya’s banker BF’s verdict: "dude, it's a data labeling job"), and Gemini 3.5 keeps getting delayed because it reportedly can't beat Opus 4.6.</p><p>Next, the pod gets into AI 2040, the follow-up to the paper that made Maya crash out a year ago. The AI 2027 team is back and they’re outlining the best way AI could play out going forward. Plan A is a verified slowdown where the US and China sign a treaty built on mutually assured compute destruction, but the authors themselves only give it a 3 to 15% chance, versus 25 to 50% for Plan D, full acceleration. Along the way: why income tax breaks when agents replace workers, the $45K-per-person handouts that climb toward $1M, and Anika's take that if you truly believe in Plan A, you want people to lose jobs fast to create the political capital to enact Plan A.</p><p>Finally, Phia. Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kiani's AI shopping extension is accused of cookie stuffing: overriding other creators' affiliate links and claiming the commission, which they're calling a bug (huh??). Maya's expert verdict as an engineer: it’s not a bug. The pod traces cookie stuffings history, including why people have gone to jail. As Anika puts it, Forbes 30 Under 30 isn't a bear signal, it's just that "the same group of people that's probabilistically going to be a billionaire in 10 years is the same group that's probabilistically gonna commit white-collar crime." The pod thinks Phia survives this. Tune in to find out why.</p><p>The pod spent a solid chunk of this episode debating probabilities. Put your own predictions to work on Kalshi. This episode is brought to you by Kalshi, the prediction market where you can trade on AI timelines and everything else the pod debated this week. Sign up at <a href="https://kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck</a> and get $10 when you trade using our code.</p><p>Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.</p><p>00:00 Crash outs are contagious</p><p>03:49 Meta Muse Spark 1.1 is actually good</p><p>12:07 "Compute daddy has spoken"</p><p>16:01 Data labeling is about to get a rebrand</p><p>23:59 Meta's secret gigawatt build-out</p><p>25:38 Meta’s insane ad business</p><p>30:59 "Dude, it's a data labeling job"</p><p>37:39 AI 2040 from the AI 2027 team</p><p>37:57 Maya's crash out…fact checked</p><p>41:53 Plan A: how we actually slow down AI</p><p>44:00 Is income tax going extinct?</p><p>46:10 Mutually assured compute destruction</p><p>50:16 The real odds we slow down AI</p><p>56:27 The Phia cookie stuffing scandal</p><p>01:00:51 The origins of cookie stuffing</p><p>01:07:13 Do nepo babies have talent</p>