Evidence receipt / observation
Published · transcript-backedIlya Sutskever: observation
25 Nov 2025 Dwarkesh Podcast Ilya Sutskever — We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research
“The counterpoint is, “Hey, it is useful for the world to see powerful AI. It is useful for the world to see powerful AI because that’s the only way you can communicate it.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Ilya Sutskever
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- observation
- Recorded
- 25 Nov 2025
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
Transcript context
…So then why is your default plan to straight shot superintelligence? Because it sounds like OpenAI, Anthropic, all these other companies, their explicit thinking is, “Look, we have weaker and weaker intelligences that the public can get used to and prepare for.” Why is it potentially better to build a superintelligence directly? I’ll make the case for and against. The case for is that one of the challenges that people face when they’re in the market is that they have to participate in the rat race. The rat race is quite difficult in that it exposes you to difficult trade-offs which you need to make. It is nice to say, “We’ll insulate ourselves from all this and just focus on the research and come out only when we are ready, and not before.” But the counterpoint is valid too, and those are opposing forces. The counterpoint is, “Hey, it is useful for the world to see powerful AI. It is useful for the world to see powerful AI because that’s the only way you can communicate it. ” Well, I guess not even just that you can communicate the idea—…
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