Dwarkesh Podcast

Gwern is a pseudonymous researcher and writer. He was one of the first people to see LLM scaling coming. If you've read his blog, you know he's one of the most interesting polymathic thinkers alive.In order to protect Gwern's anonymity, I proposed interviewing him in person, and having my friend Chris Painter voice over his words after. This amused him enough that he agreed.After the episode, I convinced Gwern to create a donation page where people can help sustain what he's up to. Please go here to contribute.Read the full transcript here.Sponsors:* Jane Street is looking to hire their next generation of leaders. Their deep learning team is looking for ML researchers, FPGA programmers, and CUDA programmers. Summer internships are open - if you want to stand out, take a crack at their new Kaggle competition. To learn more, go here: https://jane-st.co/dwarkesh* Turing provides complete post-training services for leading AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Gemini. They specialize in model evaluation, SFT, RLHF, and DPO to enhance models’ reasoning, coding, and multimodal capabilities. Learn more at turing.com/dwarkesh.* This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue.If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page.Timestamps00:00:00 - Anonymity00:01:09 - Automating Steve Jobs00:04:38 - Isaac Newton's theory of progress00:06:36 - Grand theory of intelligence00:10:39 - Seeing scaling early00:21:04 - AGI Timelines00:22:54 - What to do in remaining 3 years until AGI00:26:29 - Influencing the shoggoth with writing00:30:50 - Human vs artificial intelligence00:33:52 - Rabbit holes00:38:48 - Hearing impairment00:43:00 - Wikipedia editing00:47:43 - Gwern.net00:50:20 - Counterfactual careers00:54:30 - Borges & literature01:01:32 - Gwern's intelligence and process01:11:03 - A day in the life of Gwern01:19:16 - Gwern's finances01:25:05 - The diversity of AI minds01:27:24 - GLP drugs and obesity01:31:08 - Drug experimentation01:33:40 - Parasocial relationships01:35:23 - Open rabbit holes Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

A bonanza on the semiconductor industry and hardware scaling to AGI by the end of the decade.Dylan Patel runs Semianalysis, the leading publication and research firm on AI hardware. Jon Y runs Asianometry, the world’s best YouTube channel on semiconductors and business history.* What Xi would do if he became scaling pilled* $ 1T+ in datacenter buildout by end of decadeWatch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Sponsors:* Jane Street is looking to hire their next generation of leaders. Their deep learning team is looking for FPGA programmers, CUDA programmers, and ML researchers. To learn more about their full time roles, internship, tech podcast, and upcoming Kaggle competition, go here.* This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue.If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page.Timestamps00:00:00 – Xi's path to AGI00:04:20 – Liang Mong Song00:08:25 – How semiconductors get better00:11:16 – China can centralize compute00:18:50 – Export controls & sanctions00:32:51 – Huawei's intense culture00:38:51 – Why the semiconductor industry is so stratified00:40:58 – N2 should not exist00:45:53 – Taiwan invasion hypothetical00:49:21 – Mind-boggling complexity of semiconductors00:59:13 – Chip architecture design01:04:36 – Architectures lead to different AI models? China vs. US01:10:12 – Being head of compute at an AI lab01:16:24 – Scaling costs and power demand01:37:05 – Are we financing an AI bubble?01:50:20 – Starting Asianometry and SemiAnalysis02:06:10 – Opportunities in the semiconductor stack Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Unless you understand the history of oil, you cannot understand the rise of America, WW1, WW2, secular stagnation, the Middle East, Ukraine, how Xi and Putin think, and basically anything else that's happened since 1860.It was a great honor to interview Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Prize - the best history of oil ever written (which makes it the best history of the 20th century ever written).Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Sponsors:This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue.This episode is brought to you by Suno, pioneers in AI-generated music. Suno's technology allows artists to experiment with melodic forms and structures in unprecedented ways. From chart-toppers to avant-garde compositions, Suno is redefining musical creativity. If you're an ML researcher passionate about shaping the future of music, email your resume to dwarkesh@suno.com.If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page.Timestamps(00:00:00) – Beginning of the oil industry(00:13:37) – World War I & II(00:25:06) – The Middle East(00:47:04) – Yergin’s conversations with Putin & Modi(01:04:36) – Writing through stories(01:10:26) – The renewable energy transition Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

I had no idea how wild human history was before chatting with the geneticist of ancient DNA David Reich.Human history has been again and again a story of one group figuring ‘something’ out, and then basically wiping everyone else out.From the tribe of 1k-10k modern humans who killed off all the other human species 70,000 years ago; to the Yamnaya horse nomads 5,000 years ago who killed off 90+% of (then) Europeans and also destroyed the Indus Valley.So much of what we thought we knew about human history is turning out to be wrong, from the ‘Out of Africa’ theory to the evolution of language, and this is all thanks to the research from David Reich’s lab.Buy David Reich’s fascinating book, Who We Are How We Got Here.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.SponsorThis episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue.If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page.Timestamps(00:00:00) – Archaic and modern humans gene flow(00:20:24) – How early modern humans dominated the world(00:39:59) – How bubonic plague rewrote history(00:50:03) – Was agriculture terrible for humans?(00:59:28) – Yamnaya expansion and how populations collide(01:15:39) – “Lost civilizations” and our Neanderthal ancestry(01:31:32) – The DNA Challenge(01:41:38) – David’s career: the genetic vocation Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Chatted with Joe Carlsmith about whether we can trust power/techno-capital, how to not end up like Stalin in our urge to control the future, gentleness towards the artificial Other, and much more.Check out Joe's sequence on Otherness and Control in the Age of AGI here.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Sponsors:- Bland.ai is an AI agent that automates phone calls in any language, 24/7. Their technology uses "conversational pathways" for accurate, versatile communication across sales, operations, and customer support. You can try Bland yourself by calling 415-549-9654. Enterprises can get exclusive access to their advanced model at bland.ai/dwarkesh.- Stripe is financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue.If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page.Timestamps:(00:00:00) - Understanding the Basic Alignment Story(00:44:04) - Monkeys Inventing Humans(00:46:43) - Nietzsche, C.S. Lewis, and AI(1:22:51) - How should we treat AIs(1:52:33) - Balancing Being a Humanist and a Scholar(2:05:02) - Explore exploit tradeoffs and AI Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

I talked with Patrick McKenzie (known online as patio11) about how a small team he ran over a Discord server got vaccines into Americans' arms: A story of broken incentives, outrageous incompetence, and how a few individuals with high agency saved 1000s of lives.Enjoy!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.SponsorThis episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue.Timestamps(00:00:00) – Why hackers on Discord had to save thousands of lives(00:17:26) – How politics crippled vaccine distribution(00:38:19) – Fundraising for VaccinateCA(00:51:09) – Why tech needs to understand how government works(00:58:58) – What is crypto good for?(01:13:07) – How the US government leverages big tech to violate rights(01:24:36) – Can the US have nice things like Japan?(01:26:41) – Financial plumbing & money laundering: a how-not-to guide(01:37:42) – Maximizing your value: why some people negotiate better(01:42:14) – Are young people too busy playing Factorio to found startups?(01:57:30) – The need for a post-mortem Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

I chatted with Tony Blair about:- What he learned from Lee Kuan Yew- Intelligence agencies track record on Iraq & Ukraine- What he tells the dozens of world leaders who come seek advice from him- How much of a PM’s time is actually spent governing- What will AI’s July 1914 moment look like from inside the Cabinet?Enjoy!Watch the video on YouTube. Read the full transcript here.Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Sponsors- Prelude Security is the world’s leading cyber threat management automation platform. Prelude Detect quickly transforms threat intelligence into validated protections so organizations can know with certainty that their defenses will protect them against the latest threats. Prelude is backed by Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, The MITRE Corporation, CrowdStrike, and other leading investors. Learn more here.- This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue.If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page.Timestamps(00:00:00) – A prime minister’s constraints(00:04:12) – CEOs vs. politicians(00:10:31) – COVID, AI, & how government deals with crisis(00:21:24) – Learning from Lee Kuan Yew(00:27:37) – Foreign policy & intelligence(00:31:12) – How much leadership actually matters(00:35:34) – Private vs. public tech(00:39:14) – Advising global leaders(00:46:45) – The unipolar moment in the 90s Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Here is my conversation with Francois Chollet and Mike Knoop on the $1 million ARC-AGI Prize they're launching today.I did a bunch of socratic grilling throughout, but Francois’s arguments about why LLMs won’t lead to AGI are very interesting and worth thinking through.It was really fun discussing/debating the cruxes. Enjoy!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Timestamps(00:00:00) – The ARC benchmark(00:11:10) – Why LLMs struggle with ARC(00:19:00) – Skill vs intelligence(00:27:55) - Do we need “AGI” to automate most jobs?(00:48:28) – Future of AI progress: deep learning + program synthesis(01:00:40) – How Mike Knoop got nerd-sniped by ARC(01:08:37) – Million $ ARC Prize(01:10:33) – Resisting benchmark saturation(01:18:08) – ARC scores on frontier vs open source models(01:26:19) – Possible solutions to ARC Prize Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Chatted with my friend Leopold Aschenbrenner on the trillion dollar nationalized cluster, CCP espionage at AI labs, how unhobblings and scaling can lead to 2027 AGI, dangers of outsourcing clusters to Middle East, leaving OpenAI, and situational awareness.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Follow Leopold on Twitter.Timestamps(00:00:00) – The trillion-dollar cluster and unhobbling(00:20:31) – AI 2028: The return of history(00:40:26) – Espionage & American AI superiority(01:08:20) – Geopolitical implications of AI(01:31:23) – State-led vs. private-led AI(02:12:23) – Becoming Valedictorian of Columbia at 19(02:30:35) – What happened at OpenAI(02:45:11) – Accelerating AI research progress(03:25:58) – Alignment(03:41:26) – On Germany, and understanding foreign perspectives(03:57:04) – Dwarkesh’s immigration story and path to the podcast(04:07:58) – Launching an AGI hedge fund(04:19:14) – Lessons from WWII(04:29:08) – Coda: Frederick the Great Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Chatted with John Schulman (cofounded OpenAI and led ChatGPT creation) on how posttraining tames the shoggoth, and the nature of the progress to come...Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Timestamps(00:00:00) - Pre-training, post-training, and future capabilities(00:16:57) - Plan for AGI 2025(00:29:19) - Teaching models to reason(00:40:50) - The Road to ChatGPT(00:52:13) - What makes for a good RL researcher?(01:00:58) - Keeping humans in the loop(01:15:15) - State of research, plateaus, and moatsSponsorsIf you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, fill out this form.* Your DNA shapes everything about you. Want to know how? Take 10% off our Premium DNA kit with code DWARKESH at mynucleus.com.* CommandBar is an AI user assistant that any software product can embed to non-annoyingly assist, support, and unleash their users. Used by forward-thinking CX, product, growth, and marketing teams. Learn more at commandbar.com. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Mark Zuckerberg on:- Llama 3- open sourcing towards AGI- custom silicon, synthetic data, & energy constraints on scaling- Caesar Augustus, intelligence explosion, bioweapons, $10b models, & much moreEnjoy!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Human edited transcript with helpful links here.Timestamps(00:00:00) - Llama 3(00:08:32) - Coding on path to AGI(00:25:24) - Energy bottlenecks(00:33:20) - Is AI the most important technology ever?(00:37:21) - Dangers of open source(00:53:57) - Caesar Augustus and metaverse(01:04:53) - Open sourcing the $10b model & custom silicon(01:15:19) - Zuck as CEO of Google+SponsorsIf you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, fill out this form.* This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. Learn more at stripe.com.* V7 Go is a tool to automate multimodal tasks using GenAI, reliably and at scale. Use code DWARKESH20 for 20% off on the pro plan. Learn more here.* CommandBar is an AI user assistant that any software product can embed to non-annoyingly assist, support, and unleash their users. Used by forward-thinking CX, product, growth, and marketing teams. Learn more at commandbar.com. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Had so much fun chatting with my good friends Trenton Bricken and Sholto Douglas on the podcast.No way to summarize it, except: This is the best context dump out there on how LLMs are trained, what capabilities they're likely to soon have, and what exactly is going on inside them.You would be shocked how much of what I know about this field, I've learned just from talking with them.To the extent that you've enjoyed my other AI interviews, now you know why.So excited to put this out. Enjoy! I certainly did :)Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. There's a transcript with links to all the papers the boys were throwing down - may help you follow along.Follow Trenton and Sholto on Twitter.Timestamps(00:00:00) - Long contexts(00:16:12) - Intelligence is just associations(00:32:35) - Intelligence explosion & great researchers(01:06:52) - Superposition & secret communication(01:22:34) - Agents & true reasoning(01:34:40) - How Sholto & Trenton got into AI research(02:07:16) - Are feature spaces the wrong way to think about intelligence?(02:21:12) - Will interp actually work on superhuman models(02:45:05) - Sholto’s technical challenge for the audience(03:03:57) - Rapid fire Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Here is my episode with Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMindWe discuss:* Why scaling is an artform* Adding search, planning, & AlphaZero type training atop LLMs* Making sure rogue nations can't steal weights* The right way to align superhuman AIs and do an intelligence explosionWatch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Timestamps(0:00:00) - Nature of intelligence(0:05:56) - RL atop LLMs(0:16:31) - Scaling and alignment(0:24:13) - Timelines and intelligence explosion(0:28:42) - Gemini training(0:35:30) - Governance of superhuman AIs(0:40:42) - Safety, open source, and security of weights(0:47:00) - Multimodal and further progress(0:54:18) - Inside Google DeepMind Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

We discuss:* what it takes to process $1 trillion/year* how to build multi-decade APIs, companies, and relationships* what's next for Stripe (increasing the GDP of the internet is quite an open ended prompt, and the Collison brothers are just getting started).Plus the amazing stuff they're doing at Arc Institute, the financial infrastructure for AI agents, playing devil's advocate against progress studies, and much more.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Timestamps(00:00:00) - Advice for 20-30 year olds(00:12:12) - Progress studies(00:22:21) - Arc Institute(00:34:27) - AI & Fast Grants(00:43:46) - Stripe history(00:55:44) - Stripe Climate(01:01:39) - Beauty & APIs(01:11:51) - Financial innards(01:28:16) - Stripe culture & future(01:41:56) - Virtues of big businesses(01:51:41) - John Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

It was a great pleasure speaking with Tyler Cowen for the 3rd time.We discussed GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?, especially in the context of how the insights of Hayek, Keynes, Smith, and other great economists help us make sense of AI, growth, animal spirits, prediction markets, alignment, central planning, and much more.The topics covered in this episode are too many to summarize. Hope you enjoy!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Timestamps(0:00:00) - John Maynard Keynes(00:17:16) - Controversy(00:25:02) - Fredrick von Hayek(00:47:41) - John Stuart Mill(00:52:41) - Adam Smith(00:58:31) - Coase, Schelling, & George(01:08:07) - Anarchy(01:13:16) - Cheap WMDs(01:23:18) - Technocracy & political philosophy(01:34:16) - AI & Scaling Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

This is a narration of my blog post, Lessons from The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro.You read the full post here: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/lyndon-johnsonListen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future posts and episodes. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

This is a narration of my blog post, Will scaling work?. You read the full post here: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/will-scaling-workListen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future posts and episodes. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

A true honor to speak with Jung Chang.She is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (sold 15+ million copies worldwide) and Mao: The Unknown Story.We discuss:- what it was like growing up during the Cultural Revolution as the daughter of a denounced official- why the CCP continues to worship the biggest mass murderer in human history.- how exactly Communist totalitarianism was able to subjugate a billion people- why Chinese leaders like Xi and Deng who suffered from the Cultural Revolution don't condemn Mao- how Mao starved and killed 40 million people during The Great Leap Forward in order to exchange food for Soviet weaponsWild Swans is the most moving book I've ever read. It was a real privilege to speak with its author.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Timestamps(00:00:00) - Growing up during Cultural Revolution(00:15:58) - Could officials have overthrown Mao?(00:34:09) - Great Leap Forward(00:48:12) - Modern support of Mao(01:03:24) - Life as peasant(01:21:30) - Psychology of communist society Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Andrew Roberts is the world's best biographer and one of the leading historians of our time.We discussed* Churchill the applied historian,* Napoleon the startup founder,* why Nazi ideology cost Hitler WW2,* drones, reconnaissance, and other aspects of the future of war,* Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Ukraine, & Taiwan.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Timestamps(00:00:00) - Post WW2 conflicts(00:10:57) - Ukraine(00:16:33) - How Truman Prevented Nuclear War(00:22:49) - Taiwan(00:27:15) - Churchill(00:35:11) - Gaza & future wars(00:39:05) - Could Hitler have won WW2?(00:48:00) - Surprise attacks(00:59:33) - Napoleon and startup founders(01:14:06) - Robert’s insane productivity Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Here is my interview with Dominic Cummings on why Western governments are so dangerously broken, and how to fix them before an even more catastrophic crisis.Dominic was Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister during COVID, and before that, director of Vote Leave (which masterminded the 2016 Brexit referendum).Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Timestamps(00:00:00) - One day in COVID…(00:08:26) - Why is government broken?(00:29:10) - Civil service(00:38:27) - Opportunity wasted?(00:49:35) - Rishi Sunak and Number 10 vs 11(00:55:13) - Cyber, nuclear, bio risks(01:02:04) - Intelligence & defense agencies(01:23:32) - Bismarck & Lee Kuan Yew(01:37:46) - How to fix the government?(01:56:43) - Taiwan(02:00:10) - Russia(02:07:12) - Bismarck’s career as an example of AI (mis)alignment(02:17:37) - Odyssean education Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe