The Lunar Society

The Stephen Kotkin episode. Kotkin is arguably the world's foremost expert on Joseph Stalin and has written a massive 2-volume biography of Stalin (with a 3rd volume in the works).No other individual had more of a profound impact on the 20th century than Stalin. He held the power of life and death over every single person across 11 time zones, and he killed tens of millions of people, utterly consumed by an ideology aimed at building paradise on Earth.And, he was one half of the biggest and most consequential military confrontation in history (even if Hitler didn't prove to be his match).Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Sponsors* Lighthouse is THE fastest immigration solution for the technology industry. All they need is your resume or LinkedIn profile to tell you which visas you're most eligible for, and they'll send you this eligibility document for free, no commitment required. Get started today at https://www.lighthousehq.com/ref/Dwarkesh.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.Timestamps(00:00:00) – Was the tsarist regime the lesser of 2 evils?(00:23:45) – The peasants brought Lenin to power, then he enslaved them(00:37:38) – Why did so many go along with enforced famine and the Great Terror?(01:02:26) – Today's leftist civil war(01:13:01) – Doesn't CCP deserve credit for China's growth?(01:35:13) – Why didn't somebody just kill Stalin?(01:52:45) – Overcoming the pathologies of communism with tech: USSR vs China Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

I've had a lot of discussions on my podcast where we haggle out timelines to AGI. Some guests think it's 20 years away - others 2 years. Here's an audio version of where my thoughts stand as of June 2025. If you want to read the original post, you can check it out here. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

George Church is the godfather of modern synthetic biology and has been involved with basically every major biotech breakthrough in the last few decades.Professor Church thinks that these improvements (e.g., orders of magnitude decrease in sequencing & synthesis costs, precise gene editing tools like CRISPR, AlphaFold-type AIs, & the ability to conduct massively parallel multiplex experiments) have put us on the verge of some massive payoffs: de-aging, de-extinction, biobots that combine the best of human and natural engineering, and (unfortunately) weaponized mirror life.Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Sponsors* WorkOS Radar ensures your product is ready for AI agents. Radar is an anti-fraud solution that categorizes different types of automated traffic, blocking harmful bots while allowing helpful agents. Future-proof your roadmap today at workos.com/radar.* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they recently released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.* Gemini 2.5 Pro was invaluable during our prep for this episode: it perfectly explained complex biology and helped us understand the most important papers. Gemini's recently improved structure and style also made using it surprisingly enjoyable. Start building with it today at https://aistudio.google.comTo sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.Timestamps(0:00:00) – Aging solved by 2050(0:07:37) – Finding the master switch for any trait(0:19:50) – Weaponized mirror life(0:30:40) – Why hasn't sequencing/synthesis led to biotech revolution?(0:50:26) – Impact of AGI on biology research progress(1:00:35) – Biobots that use the best of biological and human engineering(1:05:09) – Odds of life in universe(1:09:57) – Is DNA the ultimate data storage?(1:13:55) – Curing rare diseases with genetic counseling(1:22:23) – NIH & NSF budget cuts(1:25:26) – How one lab spawned 100 biotech companies Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Arthur Kroeber is a leading researcher on Chinese tech and macro, a founding partner at Gavekal Dragonomics, and author of "China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know." It's the most useful, detailed resource I've found of how China actually works.On this episode, we discuss how China achieved high-tech manufacturing dominance, and where they'll go from here. By Arthur's account, the Chinese government is like a giant VC fund: they decide on key priorities and then spend hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing ruthless competition at the local level. They are willing to lose huge amounts of money for a few of their bets to pay off: at China's scale, effectiveness matters more than efficiency.There's also a growing bipartisan consensus that we need to combat China's rise. This doesn't make much sense to me. China is a big, powerful country at the frontier in many fields, and its economy is intricately tied in with our own. Being instinctively adversarial is both unsustainable and risky. Arthur and I discuss how we can create a productive, mutually beneficial version of this relationship.Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Sponsors* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they recently released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.* WorkOS Radar ensures your product's free trials go to actual users. Radar uses 80+ signals to distinguish malicious bots from real people, eliminating costly free-tier abuse. See why companies like Cursor, Perplexity, and OpenAI use Radar by visiting workos.com/radar.* Lighthouse is THE fastest immigration solution for the technology industry. They help you understand your options and navigate applications for expert visas like the O-1A and EB-1A. Explore which visa is right for you at https://www.lighthousehq.com/ref/Dwarkesh.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.Timestamps(00:00:00) – We should reconcile with China(00:21:21) – BYD, Tesla, & Chinese EV industry(00:36:05) – Will China have a Japan-style financial crisis?(00:44:39) – Local debt situation is manageable(00:57:28) – If CCP is so competent, why isn't China richer?(01:05:08) – How China keeps tech under control(01:33:45) – Does China win AI?(01:43:34) – Communication with China key for AI safety(02:10:08) – What foreigners get wrong about China(02:17:32) – China-US relationship future Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Ken Rogoff is the former chief economist of the IMF, a professor of Economics at Harvard, and author of the newly released Our Dollar, Your Problem and This Time is Different.On this episode, Ken predicts that, within the next decade, the US will have a debt-induced inflation crisis, but not a Japan-type financial crisis (the latter is much worse, and can make a country poorer for generations).Ken also explains how China is trapped: in order to solve their current problems, they'll keep leaning on financial repression and state-directed investment, which only makes their situation worse.We also discuss the erosion of dollar dominance, why there will be a rebalancing toward foreign equities, how AGI will impact the deficit and interest rate, and much more!Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Sponsors* WorkOS gives your product all the features that enterprise customers need, without derailing your roadmap. Skip months of engineering effort and start selling to enterprises today at workos.com.* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they recently released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.* Gemini Live API lets you have natural, real-time, interactions with Gemini. You can talk to it like you were talking to another person, stream video to show it your surroundings, and share screen to give it context. Try it now by clicking the “Stream” tab on ai.dev.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.Timestamps(00:00:00) – China is stagnating(00:25:46) – How the US broke Japan's economy(00:37:06) – America's inflation crisis is coming(01:02:20) – Will AGI solve the US deficit?(01:07:11) – Why interest rates will go up(01:10:55) – US equities will underperform(01:22:24) – The erosion of dollar dominance Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

On this episode, I chat with Victor Shih about all things China. We discuss China's massive local debt crisis, the CCP's views on AI, what happens after Xi, and more.Victor Shih is an expert on the Chinese political system, as well as their banking and fiscal policies, and he has amassed more biographical data on the Chinese elite than anyone else in the world. He teaches at UC San Diego, where he also directs the 21st Century China Center.Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Sponsors* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they just released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.* WorkOS is how top AI companies ship critical enterprise features without burning months of engineering time. If you need features like SSO, audit logs, or user provisioning, head to workos.com.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.Timestamps(00:00:00) – Is China more decentralized than the US?(00:03:16) – How the Politburo Standing Committee makes decisions(00:21:07) – Xi's right hand man in charge of AGI(00:35:37) – DeepSeek was trained to track CCP policy(00:45:35) – Local government debt crisis(00:50:00) – BYD, CATL, & financial repression(00:58:12) – How corruption leads to overbuilding(01:10:46) – Probability of Taiwan invasion(01:18:56) – Succession after Xi(01:25:10) – Future growth forecasts Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

New episode with my good friends Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken. Sholto focuses on scaling RL and Trenton researches mechanistic interpretability, both at Anthropic.We talk through what's changed in the last year of AI research; the new RL regime and how far it can scale; how to trace a model's thoughts; and how countries, workers, and students should prepare for AGI.See you next year for v3. Here's last year's episode, btw. Enjoy!Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.----------SPONSORS* WorkOS ensures that AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic don't have to spend engineering time building enterprise features like access controls or SSO. It's not that they don't need these features; it's just that WorkOS gives them battle-tested APIs that they can use for auth, provisioning, and more. Start building today at workos.com.* Scale is building the infrastructure for safer, smarter AI. Scale's Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, while their public leaderboards help assess model capabilities. They also just released Scale Evaluation, a new tool that diagnoses model limitations. If you're an AI researcher or engineer, learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.* Lighthouse is THE fastest immigration solution for the technology industry. They specialize in expert visas like the O-1A and EB-1A, and they've already helped companies like Cursor, Notion, and Replit navigate U.S. immigration. Explore which visa is right for you at lighthousehq.com/ref/Dwarkesh.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.----------TIMESTAMPS(00:00:00) – How far can RL scale?(00:16:27) – Is continual learning a key bottleneck?(00:31:59) – Model self-awareness(00:50:32) – Taste and slop(01:00:51) – How soon to fully autonomous agents?(01:15:17) – Neuralese(01:18:55) – Inference compute will bottleneck AGI(01:23:01) – DeepSeek algorithmic improvements(01:37:42) – Why are LLMs ‘baby AGI' but not AlphaZero?(01:45:38) – Mech interp(01:56:15) – How countries should prepare for AGI(02:10:26) – Automating white collar work(02:15:35) – Advice for students Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Based on my essay about AI firms.Huge thanks to Petr and his team for bringing this to life!Watch on YouTube.Thanks to Google for sponsoring. We used their Veo 2 model to make this entire video—it generated everything from the photorealistic humans to the claymation octopuses. If you're a Gemini Advanced user, you can try Veo 2 now in the Gemini app. Just select Veo 2 in the dropdown, and type your video idea in the prompt bar. Get started today by going to gemini.google.com.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Zuck on:* Llama 4, benchmark gaming* Intelligence explosion, business models for AGI* DeepSeek/China, export controls, & Trump* Orion glasses, AI relationships, and preventing reward-hacking from our tech.Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.----------SPONSORS* Scale is building the infrastructure for safer, smarter AI. Scale's Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, while their public leaderboards help assess model capabilities. They also just released Scale Evaluation, a new tool that diagnoses model limitations. If you're an AI researcher or engineer, learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.* WorkOS Radar protects your product against bots, fraud, and abuse. Radar uses 80+ signals to identify and block common threats and harmful behavior. Join companies like Cursor, Perplexity, and OpenAI that have eliminated costly free-tier abuse by visiting workos.com/radar.* Lambda is THE cloud for AI developers, with over 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs ready to go for startups, enterprises, and hyperscalers. By focusing exclusively on AI, Lambda provides cost-effective compute supported by true experts, including a serverless API serving top open-source models like Llama 4 or DeepSeek V3-0324 without rate limits, and available for a free trial at lambda.ai/dwarkesh.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/p/advertise.----------TIMESTAMPS(00:00:00) – How Llama 4 compares to other models(00:11:34) – Intelligence explosion(00:26:36) – AI friends, therapists & girlfriends(00:35:10) – DeepSeek & China(00:39:49) – Open source AI(00:54:15) – Monetizing AGI(00:58:32) – The role of a CEO(01:02:04) – Is big tech aligning with Trump?(01:07:10) – 100x productivity Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

800 years before the Black Death, the very same bacteria ravaged Rome, killing 60%+ of the population in many areas.Also, back-to-back volcanic eruptions caused a mini Ice Age, leaving Rome devastated by famine and disease.I chatted with historian Kyle Harper about this and much else:* Rome as a massive slave society* Why humans are more disease-prone than other animals* How agriculture made us physically smaller (Caesar at 5'5" was considered tall)Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.----------SPONSORS* WorkOS makes it easy to become enterprise-ready. They have APIs for all the most common enterprise requirements—things like authentication, permissions, and encryption—so you can quickly plug them in and get back to building your core product. If you want to make your product enterprise-ready, join companies like Cursor, Perplexity and OpenAI, and head to workos.com.* Scale's Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you're an AI researcher or engineer, learn how Scale's Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier of capabilities at scale.com/dwarkeshTo sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.----------KYLE'S BOOKS* The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire* Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History* Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425----------TIMESTAMPS(00:00:00) - Plague's impact on Rome's collapse(00:06:24) - Rome's little Ice Age(00:11:51) - Why did progress stall in Rome's Golden Age?(00:23:55) - Slavery in Rome(00:36:22) - Was agriculture a mistake?(00:47:42) - Disease's impact on cognitive function(00:59:46) - Plague in India and Central Asia(01:05:16) - The next pandemic(01:16:48) - How Kyle uses LLMs(01:18:51) - De-extinction of lost species Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu have 2045+ timelines, think the whole "alignment" framing is wrong, don't think an intelligence explosion is plausible, but are convinced we'll see explosive economic growth (economy literally doubling every year or two).This discussion offers a totally different scenario than my recent interview with Scott and Daniel.Ege and Tamay are the co-founders of Mechanize, a startup dedicated to fully automating work. Before founding Mechanize, Ege and Tamay worked on AI forecasts at Epoch AI.Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.----------Sponsors* WorkOS makes it easy to become enterprise-ready. With simple APIs for essential enterprise features like SSO and SCIM, WorkOS helps companies like Vercel, Plaid, and OpenAI meet the requirements of their biggest customers. To learn more about how they can help you do the same, visit workos.com* Scale's Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you're an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale's Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh* Google's Gemini Pro 2.5 is the model we use the most at Dwarkesh Podcast: it helps us generate transcripts, identify interesting clips, and code up new tools. If you want to try it for yourself, it's now available in Preview with higher rate limits! Start building with it today at aistudio.google.com.----------Timestamps(00:00:00) - AGI will take another 3 decades(00:22:27) - Even reasoning models lack animal intelligence (00:45:04) - Intelligence explosion(01:00:57) - Ege & Tamay's story(01:06:24) - Explosive economic growth(01:33:00) - Will there be a separate AI economy?(01:47:08) - Can we predictably influence the future?(02:19:48) - Arms race dynamic(02:29:48) - Is superintelligence a real thing?(02:35:45) - Reasons not to expect explosive growth(02:49:00) - Fully automated firms(02:54:43) - Will central planning work after AGI?(02:58:20) - Career advice Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Scott and Daniel break down every month from now until the 2027 intelligence explosion.Scott Alexander is author of the highly influential blogs Slate Star Codex and Astral Codex Ten. Daniel Kokotajlo resigned from OpenAI in 2024, rejecting a non-disparagement clause and risking millions in equity to speak out about AI safety.We discuss misaligned hive minds, Xi and Trump waking up, and automated Ilyas researching AI progress.I came in skeptical, but I learned a tremendous amount by bouncing my objections off of them. I highly recommend checking out their new scenario planning document, AI 2027Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.----------Sponsors* WorkOS helps today's top AI companies get enterprise-ready. OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Anthropic and hundreds more use WorkOS to quickly integrate features required by enterprise buyers. To learn more about how you can make the leap to enterprise, visit workos.com* Jane Street likes to know what's going on inside the neural nets they use. They just released a black-box challenge for Dwarkesh listeners, and I had blast trying it out. See if you have the skills to crack it at janestreet.com/dwarkesh* Scale's Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you're an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale's Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkeshTo sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.----------Timestamps(00:00:00) - AI 2027(00:06:56) - Forecasting 2025 and 2026(00:14:41) - Why LLMs aren't making discoveries(00:24:33) - Debating intelligence explosion(00:49:45) - Can superintelligence actually transform science?(01:16:54) - Cultural evolution vs superintelligence(01:24:05) - Mid-2027 branch point(01:32:30) - Race with China(01:44:47) - Nationalization vs private anarchy(02:03:22) - Misalignment(02:14:52) - UBI, AI advisors, & human future(02:23:00) - Factory farming for digital minds(02:26:52) - Daniel leaving OpenAI(02:35:15) - Scott's blogging advice Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

I recorded an AMA! I had a blast chatting with my friends Trenton Bricken and Sholto Douglas. We discussed my new book, career advice given AGI, how I pick guests, how I research for the show, and some other nonsense.My book, “The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025” is available in digital format now. Preorders for the print version are also open!Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Book launch announcement(0:04:57) - AI models not making connections across fields(0:10:52) - Career advice given AGI(0:15:20) - Guest selection criteria(0:17:19) - Choosing to pursue the podcast long-term(0:25:12) - Reading habits(0:31:10) - Beard deepdive(0:33:02) - Who is best suited for running an AI lab?(0:35:16) - Preparing for fast AGI timelines(0:40:50) - Growing the podcast Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Humans have not succeeded because of our raw intelligence.Marooned European explorers regularly starved to death in areas where foragers thrived for 1000s of years.I've always found this cultural evolution deeply mysterious.How do you discover the 10 steps for processing cassava so it won't give you cyanide poisoning simply by trial and error?Has the human brain declined in size over the last 10,000 years because we outsourced cultural evolution to a larger collective brain?The most interesting part of the podcast is Henrich's explanation of how the Catholic Church unintentionally instigated the Industrial Revolution through the dismantling of intensive kinship systems in medieval Europe.Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.----------SponsorsScale partners with major AI labs like Meta, Google Deepmind, and OpenAI. Through Scale's Data Foundry, labs get access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you're an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale's Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/p/advertise.----------Joseph's booksThe WEIRDest People in the WorldThe Secret of Our Success----------Timestamps(0:00:00) - Humans didn't succeed because of raw IQ(0:09:27) - How cultural evolution works(0:20:48) - Why is human brain size declining?(0:32:00) - Will AGI have superhuman cultural learning?(0:42:34) - Why Industrial Revolution happened in Europe(0:55:30) - Why China, Rome, India got left behind(1:21:09) - Loss of cultural variance in modern world(1:31:20) - Is individual genius real?(1:43:49) - IQ and collective brains Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

I'm so excited with how this visualization of Notes on China turned out. Petr, thank you for such beautiful watercolor artwork. More to come!Watch on YouTube.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Intro(0:00:32) - Scale(0:05:50) - Vibes(0:11:14) - Youngsters(0:14:27) - Tech & AI(0:15:47) - Hearts & Minds(0:17:07) - On Travel Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

Satya Nadella on:- Why he doesn't believe in AGI but does believe in 10% economic growth,- Microsoft's new topological qubit breakthrough and gaming world models,- Whether Office commoditizes LLMs or the other way around,Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.SponsorsScale partners with major AI labs like Meta, Google Deepmind, and OpenAI. Through Scale's Data Foundry, labs get access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you're an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale's Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkeshLinear's project management tools have become the default choice for product teams at companies like Ramp, CashApp, OpenAI, and Scale. These teams use Linear so they can stay close to their products and move fast. If you're curious why so many companies are making the switch, visit linear.app/dwarkeshTo sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkeshpatel.com/p/advertise.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Intro(0:05:04) - AI won't be winner-take-all(0:15:18) - World economy growing by 10%(0:21:39) - Decreasing price of intelligence(0:30:19) - Quantum breakthrough(0:42:51) - How Muse will change gaming(0:49:51) - Legal barriers to AI(0:55:46) - Getting AGI safety right(1:04:59) - 34 years at Microsoft(1:10:46) - Does Satya Nadella believe in AGI? Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

This week I welcome on the show two of the most important technologists ever, in any field.Jeff Dean is Google's Chief Scientist, and through 25 years at the company, has worked on basically the most transformative systems in modern computing: from MapReduce, BigTable, Tensorflow, AlphaChip, to Gemini.Noam Shazeer invented or co-invented all the main architectures and techniques that are used for modern LLMs: from the Transformer itself, to Mixture of Experts, to Mesh Tensorflow, to Gemini and many other things.We talk about their 25 years at Google, going from PageRank to MapReduce to the Transformer to MoEs to AlphaChip – and maybe soon to ASI.My favorite part was Jeff's vision for Pathways, Google's grand plan for a mutually-reinforcing loop of hardware and algorithmic design and for going past autoregression. That culminates in us imagining *all* of Google-the-company, going through one huge MoE model.And Noam just bites every bullet: 100x world GDP soon; let's get a million automated researchers running in the Google datacenter; living to see the year 3000.SponsorsScale partners with major AI labs like Meta, Google Deepmind, and OpenAI. Through Scale's Data Foundry, labs get access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you're an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale's Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.Curious how Jane Street teaches their new traders? They use Figgie, a rapid-fire card game that simulates the most exciting parts of markets and trading. It's become so popular that Jane Street hosts an inter-office Figgie championship every year. Download from the app store or play on your desktop at figgie.com.Meter wants to radically improve the digital world we take for granted. They're developing a foundation model that automates network management end-to-end. To do this, they just announced a long-term partnership with Microsoft for tens of thousands of GPUs, and they're recruiting a world class AI research team. To learn more, go to meter.com/dwarkesh.Advertisers:To sponsor a future episode, visit: dwarkeshpatel.com/p/advertise.Timestamps00:00:00 - Intro00:02:44 - Joining Google in 199900:05:36 - Future of Moore's Law00:10:21 - Future TPUs00:13:13 - Jeff's undergrad thesis: parallel backprop00:15:10 - LLMs in 200700:23:07 - “Holy s**t” moments00:29:46 - AI fulfills Google's original mission00:34:19 - Doing Search in-context00:38:32 - The internal coding model00:39:49 - What will 2027 models do?00:46:00 - A new architecture every day?00:49:21 - Automated chip design and intelligence explosion00:57:31 - Future of inference scaling01:03:56 - Already doing multi-datacenter runs01:22:33 - Debugging at scale01:26:05 - Fast takeoff and superalignment01:34:40 - A million evil Jeff Deans01:38:16 - Fun times at Google01:41:50 - World compute demand in 203001:48:21 - Getting back to modularity01:59:13 - Keeping a giga-MoE in-memory02:04:09 - All of Google in one model02:12:43 - What's missing from distillation02:18:03 - Open research, pros and cons02:24:54 - Going the distance Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Third and final episode in the Paine trilogy!Chinese history is full of warlords constantly challenging the capital. How could Mao not only stay in power for decades, but not even face any insurgency?And how did Mao go from military genius to peacetime disaster - the patriotic hero who inflicted history's worst human catastrophe on China? How can someone shrewd enough to win a civil war outnumbered 5 to 1 decide "let's have peasants make iron in their backyards" and "let's kill all the birds"?In her lecture and our Q&A, we cover the first nationwide famine in Chinese history; Mao's lasting influence on other insurgents; broken promises to minorities and peasantry; and what Taiwan means.Thanks so much to @Substack for running this in-person event!Note that Sarah is doing an AMA over the next couple days on Youtube; see the pinned comment.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.SponsorToday's episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America's AI advantage through their data foundry. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities.If you're interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to https://scale.com/dwarkesh. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

This is the second episode in the trilogy of a lectures by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War College.In this second episode, Prof Paine dissects the ideas and economics behind Japanese imperialism before and during WWII. We get into the oil shortage which caused the war; the unique culture of honor and death; the surprisingly chaotic chain of command. This is followed by a Q&A with me.Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this event!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.SponsorToday's episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America's AI advantage through their data foundry. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities.If you're interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to scale.com/dwarkesh.Buy Sarah's Books!I highly, highly recommend both "The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949" and "The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War".Timestamps(0:00:00) - Lecture begins(0:06:58) - The code of the samurai(0:10:45) - Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism(0:16:52) - Bushido as bad strategy(0:23:34) - Military theorists(0:33:42) - Strategic sins of omission(0:38:10) - Crippled logistics(0:40:58) - the Kwantung Army(0:43:31) - Inter-service communication(0:51:15) - Shattering Japanese morale(0:57:35) - Q&A begins(01:05:02) - Unusual brutality of WWII(01:11:30) - Embargo caused the war(01:16:48) - The liberation of China(01:22:02) - Could US have prevented war?(01:25:30) - Counterfactuals in history(01:27:46) - Japanese optimism(01:30:46) - Tech change and social change(01:38:22) - Hamming questions(01:44:31) - Do sanctions work?(01:50:07) - Backloaded mass death(01:54:09) - demilitarizing Japan(01:57:30) - Post-war alliances(02:03:46) - Inter-service rivalry Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

I'm thrilled to launch a new trilogy of double episodes: a lecture series by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War College, each followed by a deep Q&A.In this first episode, Prof Paine talks about key decisions by Khrushchev, Mao, Nehru, Bhutto, & Lyndon Johnson that shaped the whole dynamic of South Asia today. This is followed by a Q&A.Come for the spy bases, shoestring nukes, and insight about how great power politics impacts every region.Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.SponsorsToday's episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America's AI advantage through their data foundry. The Air Force, Army, Defense Innovation Unit, and Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office all trust Scale to equip their teams with AI-ready data and the technology to build powerful applications.Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities.If you're interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to scale.com/dwarkesh.Timestamps(00:00) - Intro(02:11) - Mao at war, 1949-51(05:40) - Pactomania and Sino-Soviet conflicts(14:42) - The Sino-Indian War(20:00) - Soviet peace in India-Pakistan(22:00) - US Aid and Alliances(26:14) - The difference with WWII(30:09) - The geopolitical map in 1904(35:10) - The US alienates Indira Gandhi(42:58) - Instruments of US power(53:41) - Carrier battle groups(1:02:41) - Q&A begins(1:04:31) - The appeal of the USSR(1:09:36) - The last communist premier(1:15:42) - India and China's lost opportunity(1:58:04) - Bismark's cunning(2:03:05) - Training US officers(2:07:03) - Cruelty in Russian history Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

I interviewed Tyler Cowen at the Progress Conference 2024. As always, I had a blast. This is my fourth interview with him – and yet I'm always hearing new stuff.We talked about why he thinks AI won't drive explosive economic growth, the real bottlenecks on world progress, him now writing for AIs instead of humans, and the difficult relationship between being cultured and fostering growth – among many other things in the full episode.Thanks to the Roots of Progress Institute (with special thanks to Jason Crawford and Heike Larson) for such a wonderful conference, and to FreeThink for the videography.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.SponsorsI'm grateful to Tyler for volunteering to say a few words about Jane Street. It's the first time that a guest has participated in the sponsorship. I hope you can see why Tyler and I think so highly of Jane Street. To learn more about their open rules, go to janestreet.com/dwarkersh.Timestamps(00:00:00) Economic Growth and AI(00:14:57) Founder Mode and increasing variance(00:29:31) Effective Altruism and Progress Studies(00:33:05) What AI changes for Tyler(00:44:57) The slow diffusion of innovation(00:49:53) Stalin's library(00:52:19) DC vs SF vs EU Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

In order to apply, or to refer someone else, please fill out this short form! For more information, visit dwarkeshpatel.com/roles.Our mission is to publish the highest quality intellectual content in the world, to find the David Reichs and Sarah Paines of every field, and to produce the best contemporaneous coverage of the emergence of AGI.I need the help of two key partners in order to achieve this mission.* General Manager: A killer operator who will run and lead our business.* Editor-in-Chief: A polymath and a shrewd promoter with amazing taste.If you refer somebody I end up hiring, I'll pay you $20,000. If you know someone exceptional who would be a great fit, please share this with them!FAQWill keep updated.Q: What happened to the COO position you posted about a few months ago?Tons of super talented people applied. The role wasn't filled because I had incorrectly combined two distinct positions into one. This was not due to any shortcomings in the applicant pool, and I'm very grateful to everyone who applied!Q: What's the timeline?A: I'll keep applications open until January 20th and will start reviewing and scheduling interviews from January 8th. Early applications will be reviewed first.Q: I applied for the COO role previously - can I apply again?A: Yes! While many incredibly talented people applied for the COO role, I've now split the role into two more focused positions. If you applied before, you're welcome to apply again, though please note that I have already reviewed and considered your previous application.Q: What's the compensation?A: Compensation will be competitive with major tech companies.Q: What about location?A: I'm flexible on location but have a preference for hybrid work with some time in my SF office when in-person collaboration is valuable. Full remote is possible for exceptional candidates. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

Adam Brown is a founder and lead of BlueShift with is cracking maths and reasoning at Google DeepMind and a theoretical physicist at Stanford.We discuss: destroying the light cone with vacuum decay, holographic principle, mining black holes, & what it would take to train LLMs that can make Einstein level conceptual breakthroughs.Stupefying, entertaining, & terrifying.Enjoy!Watch on YouTube, read the transcript, listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite platform.Sponsors- Deepmind, Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI, partner with Scale for high quality data to fuel post-training Publicly available data is running out - to keep developing smarter and smarter models, labs will need to rely on Scale's data foundry, which combines subject matter experts with AI models to generate fresh data and break through the data wall. Learn more at scale.ai/dwarkesh.- 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 for just a few more weeks. If you want to stand out, take a crack at their new Kaggle competition. To learn more, go janestreet.com/dwarkersh.- 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) - Changing the laws of physics(00:26:05) - Why is our universe the way it is(00:37:30) - Making Einstein level AGI(01:00:31) - Physics stagnation and particle colliders(01:11:10) - Hitchhiking(01:29:00) - Nagasaki(01:36:19) - Adam's career(01:43:25) - Mining black holes(01:59:42) - The holographic principle(02:23:25) - Philosophy of infinities(02:31:42) - Engineering constraints for future civilizations Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

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(00:21:22) – How early modern humans dominated the world(00:40:57) – How the bubonic plague rewrote history(00:51:04) – Was agriculture terrible for humans?(01:00:14) – Yamnaya expansion and how populations collide(01:16:26) – “Lost civilizations” and our Neanderthal ancestry(01:32:18) – The DNA Challenge(01:42:32) – 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(00:29:43) - 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 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com

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

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

Paul Christiano is the world's leading AI safety researcher. My full episode with him is out!We discuss:- Does he regret inventing RLHF, and is alignment necessarily dual-use?- Why he has relatively modest timelines (40% by 2040, 15% by 2030),- What do we want post-AGI world to look like (do we want to keep gods enslaved forever)?- Why he's leading the push to get to labs develop responsible scaling policies, and what it would take to prevent an AI coup or bioweapon,- His current research into a new proof system, and how this could solve alignment by explaining model's behavior- 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.Open PhilanthropyOpen Philanthropy is currently hiring for twenty-two different roles to reduce catastrophic risks from fast-moving advances in AI and biotechnology, including grantmaking, research, and operations.For more information and to apply, please see the application: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/new-roles-on-our-gcr-team/The deadline to apply is November 9th; make sure to check out those roles before they close.Timestamps(00:00:00) - What do we want post-AGI world to look like?(00:24:25) - Timelines(00:45:28) - Evolution vs gradient descent(00:54:53) - Misalignment and takeover(01:17:23) - Is alignment dual-use?(01:31:38) - Responsible scaling policies(01:58:25) - Paul's alignment research(02:35:01) - Will this revolutionize theoretical CS and math?(02:46:11) - How Paul invented RLHF(02:55:10) - Disagreements with Carl Shulman(03:01:53) - Long TSMC but not NVIDIA This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com

I had a lot of fun chatting with Shane Legg - Founder and Chief AGI Scientist, Google DeepMind!We discuss:* Why he expects AGI around 2028* How to align superhuman models* What new architectures needed for AGI* Has Deepmind sped up capabilities or safety more?* Why multimodality will be next big landmark* and much moreWatch full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read full transcript here.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Measuring AGI(0:11:41) - Do we need new architectures?(0:16:26) - Is search needed for creativity?(0:19:19) - Superhuman alignment(0:29:58) - Impact of Deepmind on safety vs capabilities(0:34:03) - Timelines(0:41:24) - Multimodality This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com

I had a lot of fun chatting with Grant Sanderson (who runs the excellent 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel) about:- Whether advanced math requires AGI- What careers should mathematically talented students pursue- Why Grant plans on doing a stint as a high school teacher- Tips for self teaching- Does Godel's incompleteness theorem actually matter- Why are good explanations so hard to find?- And much moreWatch on YouTube. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast platform. Full transcript here.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Does winning math competitions require AGI?(0:08:24) - Where to allocate mathematical talent?(0:17:34) - Grant's miracle year(0:26:44) - Prehistoric humans and math(0:33:33) - Why is a lot of math so new?(0:44:44) - Future of education(0:56:28) - Math helped me realize I wasn't that smart(0:59:25) - Does Godel's incompleteness theorem matter?(1:05:12) - How Grant makes videos(1:10:13) - Grant's math exposition competition(1:20:44) - Self teaching This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com

I learned so much from Sarah Paine, Professor of History and Strategy at the Naval War College.We discuss:- how continental vs maritime powers think and how this explains Xi & Putin's decisions- how a war with China over Taiwan would shake out and whether it could go nuclear- why the British Empire fell apart, why China went communist, how Hitler and Japan could have coordinated to win WW2, and whether Japanese occupation was good for Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria- plus other lessons from WW2, Cold War, and Sino-Japanese War- how to study history properly, and why leaders keep making the same mistakesIf you want to learn more, check out her books - they're some of the best military history I've ever read.Watch on YouTube, listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Grand strategy(0:11:59) - Death ground(0:23:19) - WW1(0:39:23) - Writing history(0:50:25) - Japan in WW2(0:59:58) - Ukraine(1:10:50) - Japan/Germany vs Iraq/Afghanistan occupation(1:21:25) - Chinese invasion of Taiwan(1:51:26) - Communists & Axis(2:08:34) - Continental vs maritime powers This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com

George Hotz and Eliezer Yudkowsky hashed out their positions on AI safety.It was a really fun debate. No promises but there might be a round 2 where we better hone in on the cruxes that we began to identify here.Watch the livestreamed YouTube version (high quality video will be up next week).Catch the Twitter stream.Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Check back here in about 24 hours for the full transcript. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com

Here is my conversation with Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic.We discuss:- why human level AI is 2-3 years away- race dynamics with OpenAI and China- $10 billion training runs, bioterrorism, alignment, cyberattacks, scaling, ...Dario is hilarious and has fascinating takes on what these models are doing, why they scale so well, and what it will take to align them.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.Pay whatever value you feel you've gottenI'm running an experiment on this episode.I'm not doing an ad.Instead, I'm just going to ask you to pay for whatever value you feel you personally got out of this conversation.Pay here: https://bit.ly/3ONINtpTimestamps(00:02:03) - Scaling(00:16:49) - Language(00:24:01) - Economic Usefulness(00:39:08) - Bioterrorism(00:44:38) - Cybersecurity(00:48:22) - Alignment & mechanistic interpretability(00:58:46) - Does alignment research require scale?(01:06:33) - Misuse vs misalignment(01:10:09) - What if AI goes well?(01:12:08) - China(01:16:14) - How to think about alignment(01:30:21) - Manhattan Project(01:32:34) - Is modern security good enough?(01:37:12) - Inefficiencies in training(01:46:56) - Anthropic's Long Term Benefit Trust(01:52:21) - Is Claude conscious?(01:57:17) - Keeping a low profile This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com

A few weeks ago, I sat beside Andy Matuschak to record how he reads a textbook.Even though my own job is to learn things, I was shocked with how much more intense, painstaking, and effective his learning process was.So I asked if we could record a conversation about how he learns and a bunch of other topics:* How he identifies and interrogates his confusion (much harder than it seems, and requires an extremely effortful and slow pace)* Why memorization is essential to understanding and decision-making* How come some people (like Tyler Cowen) can integrate so much information without an explicit note taking or spaced repetition system.* How LLMs and video games will change education* How independent researchers and writers can make money* The balance of freedom and discipline in education* Why we produce fewer von Neumann-like prodigies nowadays* How multi-trillion dollar companies like Apple (where he was previously responsible for bedrock iOS features) manage to coordinate millions of different considerations (from the cost of different components to the needs of users, etc) into new products designed by 10s of 1000s of people.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.To see Andy's process in action, check out the video where we record him studying a quantum physics textbook, talking aloud about his thought process, and using his memory system prototype to internalize the material.You can check out his website and personal notes, and follow him on Twitter.CometeerVisit cometeer.com/lunar for $20 off your first order on the best coffee of your life!If you want to sponsor an episode, contact me at dwarkesh.sanjay.patel@gmail.com.Timestamps(00:02:32) - Skillful reading(00:04:10) - Do people care about understanding?(00:08:32) - Structuring effective self-teaching(00:18:17) - Memory and forgetting(00:34:50) - Andy's memory practice(00:41:47) - Intellectual stamina(00:46:07) - New media for learning (video, games, streaming)(01:00:31) - Schools are designed for the median student(01:06:52) - Is learning inherently miserable?(01:13:37) - How Andy would structure his kids' education(01:31:40) - The usefulness of hypertext(01:43:02) - How computer tools enable iteration(01:52:24) - Monetizing public work(02:10:16) - Spaced repetition(02:11:56) - Andy's personal website and notes(02:14:24) - Working at Apple(02:21:05) - Spaced repetition 2 Get full access to The Lunar Society at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

The second half of my 7 hour conversation with Carl Shulman is out!My favorite part! And the one that had the biggest impact on my worldview.Here, Carl lays out how an AI takeover might happen:* AI can threaten mutually assured destruction from bioweapons,* use cyber attacks to take over physical infrastructure,* build mechanical armies,* spread seed AIs we can never exterminate,* offer tech and other advantages to collaborating countries, etcPlus we talk about a whole bunch of weird and interesting topics which Carl has thought about:* what is the far future best case scenario for humanity* what it would look like to have AI make thousands of years of intellectual progress in a month* how do we detect deception in superhuman models* does space warfare favor defense or offense* is a Malthusian state inevitable in the long run* why markets haven't priced in explosive economic growth* & much moreCarl also explains how he developed such a rigorous, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary model of the biggest problems in the world.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.Catch part 1 here80,000 hoursThis episode is sponsored by 80,000 hours. To get their free career guide (and to help out this podcast), please visit 80000hours.org/lunar.80,000 hours is without any close second the best resource to learn about the world's most pressing problems and how you can solve them.If this conversation has got you concerned, and you want to get involved, then check out the excellent 80,000 hours guide on how to help with AI risk.To advertise on The Lunar Society, contact me at dwarkesh.sanjay.patel@gmail.com.Timestamps(00:02:50) - AI takeover via cyber or bio(00:34:30) - Can we coordinate against AI?(00:55:52) - Human vs AI colonizers(01:06:58) - Probability of AI takeover(01:23:59) - Can we detect deception?(01:49:28) - Using AI to solve coordination problems(01:58:04) - Partial alignment(02:13:44) - AI far future(02:25:07) - Markets & other evidence(02:35:29) - Day in the life of Carl Shulman(02:49:08) - Space warfare, Malthusian long run, & other rapid fireTranscript Get full access to The Lunar Society at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe