Dwarkesh Podcast

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 to janestreet.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.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 to janestreet.com/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