Episode Details

In this episode, Steve talks to three AI engineers from his startup SuperFocus.AI.

0:00 Introduction

1:06 The Google memo and open-source AI 

14:41 Sparsification and the size of models: AI on your phone?

30:16 When will AI take over ordinary decision-making from humans?

34:50 Rapid advances in AI: a view from inside

41:28 AI Doomers and Alignment

Links to earlier episodes on AI and LLMs.

Artificial Intelligence & Large Language Models: Oxford Lecture — #35: https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/artificial-intelligence-large-language-models-oxford-lecture-35

Bing vs. Bard, US-China STEM Competition, and Embryo Screening — #30: https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/bing-vs-bard-us-china-stem-competition-and-embryo-screening-30

ChatGPT, LLMs, and AI — #29: https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/chatgpt-llms-and-ai

Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.

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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (Superfocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU.

Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on Twitter @hsu_steve.

Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models. 

Mechanize is hiring! 

https://mechanize.work/b/hsu 

Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists. 

For example: 

Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors  $500K salary 

Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can’t yet solve  $300K salary 

Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.