Podcast Episodes

Gwern — Anonymous writer who predicted AI trajectory on $12K/year salary

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.

I…

Published on 1 year, 1 month ago

@Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works

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 Asiano…

Published on 1 year, 2 months ago

Daniel Yergin — Oil destroyed Hitler, fracking destroyed Putin

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…

Published on 1 year, 3 months ago

David Reich — How one small tribe conquered the world 70,000 years ago

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 …

Published on 1 year, 4 months ago

Joe Carlsmith — Preventing an AI takeover

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.

Che…

Published on 1 year, 4 months ago

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

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, …

Published on 1 year, 5 months ago

Tony Blair — Why political leaders keep failing at major change

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…

Published on 1 year, 6 months ago

Francois Chollet — Why the biggest AI models can't solve simple puzzles

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 …

Published on 1 year, 6 months ago

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

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 t…

Published on 1 year, 6 months ago

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

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, Spo…

Published on 1 year, 7 months ago