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Some thoughts on the Sutton interview
I have a much better understanding of Sutton’s perspective now. I wanted to reflect on it a bit.
(00:00:00) - The steelman
(00:02:42) - TLDR of my current thoughts
(00:03:22) - Imitation learning is continuous with and complementary to RL
(00:08:26) - Continual learning
(00:10:31) - Concluding thoughts
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Ilya Sutskever – We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research
Ilya & I discuss SSI’s strategy, the problems with pre-training, how to improve the generalization of AI models, and how to ensure AGI goes well.
Watch on YouTube; read the transcript.
Sponsors
* Gemini 3 is the first model I’ve used that can find connections I haven’t anticipated. I recently wrote a blog post on RL’s information efficiency, and Gemini 3 helped me think it all through. It also generated the relevant charts and ran toy ML experiments for me with zero bugs. Try Gemini 3 today at gemini.google
* Labelbox helped me create a tool to transcribe our episodes! I’ve struggled with transcription in the past because I don’t just want verbatim transcripts, I want transcripts reworded to read like essays. Labelbox helped me generate the exact data I needed for this. If you want to learn how Labelbox can help you (or if you want to try out the transcriber tool yourself), go to labelbox.com/dwarkesh
* Sardine is an AI risk management platform that brings together thousands of device, behavior, and identity signals to help you assess a user’s risk of fraud & abuse. Sardine also offers a suite of agents to automate investigations so that as fraudsters use AI to scale their attacks, you can use AI to scale your defenses. Learn more at sardine.ai/dwarkesh
To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) – Explaining model jaggedness
(00:09:39) - Emotions and value functions
(00:18:49) – What are we scaling?
(00:25:13) – Why humans generalize better than models
(00:35:45) – SSI’s plan to straight-shot superintelligence
(00:46:47) – SSI’s model will learn from deployment
(00:55:07) – How to think about powerful AGIs
(01:18:13) – “We are squarely an age of research company”
(01:20:23) – Self-play and multi-agent
(01:32:42) – Research taste
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Nick Lane – Life as we know it is chemically inevitable
Nick Lane has some pretty wild ideas about the evolution of life.
He thinks early life was continuous with the spontaneous chemistry of undersea hydrothermal vents.
Nick’s story may be wrong, but I find it remarkable that with just that starting point, you can explain so much about why life is the way that it is — the things you’re supposed to just take as givens in biology class:
* Why are there two sexes? Why sex at all?
* Why are bacteria so simple despite being around for 4 billion years? Why is there so much shared structure between all eukaryotic cells despite the enormous morphological variety between animals, plants, fungi, and protists?
* Why did the endosymbiosis event that led to eukaryotes happen only once, and in the particular way that it did?
* Why is all life powered by proton gradients? Why does all life on Earth share not only the Krebs Cycle, but even the intermediate molecules like Acetyl-CoA?
His theory implies that early life is almost chemically inevitable (potentially blooming on hundreds of millions of planets in the Milky Way alone), and that the real bottleneck is the complex eukaryotic cell.
Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Sponsors
* Gemini in Sheets lets you turn messy text into structured data. We used it to classify all our episodes by type and topic, no manual tagging required. If you’re a Google Workspace user, you can get started today at docs.google.com/spreadsheets/
* Labelbox has a massive network of domain experts (called Alignerrs) who help train AI models in a way that ensures they understand the world deeply, not superficially. These Alignerrs are true experts — one even tutored me in chemistry as I prepped for this episode. Learn more at labelbox.com/dwarkesh
* Lighthouse helps frontier technology companies like Cursor and Physical Intelligence navigate the U.S. immigration system and hire top talent from around the world. Lighthouse handles everything, maximizing the probability of visa approval while minimizing the work you have to do. Learn more at lighthousehq.com/employers
To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) – The singularity that unlocked complex life
(00:08:26) – Early life continuous with Earth's geochemistry
(00:23:36) – Eukaryotes are the great filter for intelligent life
(00:42:16) – Mitochondria are the reason we have sex
(01:08:12) – Are bioelectric fields linked to consciousness?
Ref: 868329
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Sarah Paine – Why Russia Lost the Cold War
This is the final episode of the Sarah Paine lecture series, and it’s probably my favorite one. Sarah gives a “tour of the arguments” on what ultimately led to the Soviet Union’s collapse, diving into the role of the US, the Sino-Soviet border conflict, the oil bust, ethnic rebellions and even the Roman Catholic Church. As she points out, this is all particularly interesting as we find ourselves potentially at the beginning of another Cold War.
As we wrap up this lecture series, I want to take a moment to thank Sarah for doing this with me. It has been such a pleasure.
If you want more of her scholarship, I highly recommend checking out the books she’s written. You can find them here.
Watch on YouTube; read the transcript.
Sponsors
* Labelbox can get you the training data you need, no matter the domain. Their Alignerr network includes the STEM PhDs and coding experts you’d expect, but it also has experienced cinematographers and talented voice actors to help train frontier video and audio models. Learn more at labelbox.com/dwarkesh.
* Sardine doesn’t just assess customer risk for banking & retail. Their AI risk management platform is also extremely good at detecting fraudulent job applications, which I’ve found useful for my own hiring process. If you need help with hiring risk—or any other type of fraud prevention—go to sardine.ai/dwarkesh.
* Gemini’s Nano Banana Pro helped us make many of the visuals in this episode. For example, we used it to turn dense tables into clear charts so that’d it be easier to quickly understand the trends that Sarah discusses. You can try Nano Banana Pro now in the Gemini app. Go to gemini.google.com.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) – Did Reagan single-handedly win the Cold War?
(00:15:53) – Eastern Bloc uprisings & oil crisis
(00:30:37) – Gorbachev’s mistakes
(00:37:33) – German unification and NATO expansion
(00:48:31) – The Gulf War and the Cold War endgame
(00:56:10) – How central planning survived so long
(01:14:46) – Sarah’s life in the USSR in 1988
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Thursday Afternoon Breaking News Updates with Ben — 2/12/26
Survivor Reveals All to Meidas on Epstein Cover Up!!
#2453 - Evan Hafer
