Dwarkesh Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Patrick McKenzie — Money laundering, big tech censorship, SBF & Japan Jul 24, 2024

Show notes

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.

Sponsor

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.

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

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com

Tony Blair — Why political leaders keep failing at major change Jun 26, 2024

Show notes

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

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com

Francois Chollet — Why the biggest AI models can't solve simple puzzles Jun 11, 2024

Show notes

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

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com

Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history Jun 04, 2024

Show notes

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

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com

John Schulman (OpenAI Cofounder) — Reasoning, RLHF, & plan for 2027 AGI May 15, 2024

Show notes

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

(00:16:55) - Plan for AGI 2025

(00:29:18) - Teaching models to reason

(00:39:45) - The Road to ChatGPT

(00:51:07) - What makes for a good RL researcher?

(00:59:53) - Keeping humans in the loop

(01:14:11) - State of research, plateaus, and moats

Sponsors

If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, fill out this form.

* 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.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com

Mark Zuckerberg — Llama 3, $10B models, Caesar Augustus, & 1 GW datacenters Apr 18, 2024

Show notes

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 more

Enjoy!

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+

Sponsors

If 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.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com

Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken — How LLMs actually think Mar 28, 2024

Show notes

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

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com

Demis Hassabis — Scaling, superhuman AIs, AlphaZero atop LLMs, AlphaFold Feb 28, 2024

Show notes

Here is my episode with Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind

We 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 explosion

Watch 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

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com

Patrick Collison — Why Silicon Valley's most talented should leave Feb 21, 2024

Show notes

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

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com

Tyler Cowen — Hayek, Keynes, & Smith on AI, animal spirits, anarchy, & growth Jan 31, 2024

Show notes

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

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com