High Signal Podcasts Evidence ledger
Method
Browse
How the evidence works

Public evidence record

Dwarkesh Patel

Host · Dwarkesh Podcast

Claims
500
Episodes
86
Shows
1
Named items
5

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

Browse the grouped index →

service / recommends

3Blue1Brown

“One takeaway I had from reading and watching your stuff on the cosmic distance ladder… By the way, I highly recommend people watch your series with 3Blue1Brown on the cosmic distance ladder.”

Dwarkesh Podcast · 20 Mar 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / uses

The Prize

“The thing I find wild when I'm reading The Prize is just how much economic development is ultimately contingent on the laws of physics.”

Dwarkesh Podcast · 18 Sept 2024

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

The Storm of War

“You have this really interesting book, I think probably my favorite book about World War II, The Storm of War, which I highly recommend.”

Dwarkesh Podcast · 22 Nov 2023

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

The Power Broker

“Yeah, I totally agree. I don't want to repeat myself, because I talked about this on my Byrne episode but we were talking about Robert Caro's books and one interesting thing is this guy was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize before he wrote The Power Broker. He was a top tier investigative journalist. Can you imagine crunching the numbers as a top tier investigative journalist at the peak of your career and you're like, “You know what would be a good use of my time? I'm going to spend the next seven years, in almost poverty, writing about this one guy who had a lot of influence in New York. I'm going to talk to any person who had conceivably even been in the same room as him or had been indirectly affected by his policies in any way. And I'm gonna do that obsessively for the next seven years.” There's no way the number crunching would get you there but it's probably been one of the most influential books in terms of how urban governance is done. Presidents have praised and read the book and said it changed how they think about politics. It is the kind of thing where you wouldn't have gone to that conclusion just from thinking about it beforehand and this is the most effective thing I could do.”

Dwarkesh Podcast · 15 Dec 2022

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Triumph of the City

“Your most recent book is Survival of the City. And before that Triumph of the City, both of which I highly recommend to readers.”

Dwarkesh Podcast · 28 Nov 2022

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Dwarkesh said.

205 transcript-backed records

01 / belief

When I interviewed you a few months ago, you said that in order to make a gigawatt of, I think, Vera Rubins, you need 55,000 N3 wafers, 6K N5 wafers, and 170K DRAM wafers.

“When I interviewed you a few months ago, you said that in order to make a gigawatt of, I think, Vera Rubins, you need 55,000 N3 wafers, 6K N5 wafers, and 170K DRAM wafers.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

03 / belief

I think the fundamental problem is that AI training has huge economies of scale, because any effort you spend on training an AI for a specific skill or a specific set of knowledge gets amortized across billions of sessions or billions of users.

“I think the fundamental problem is that AI training has huge economies of scale, because any effort you spend on training an AI for a specific skill or a specific set of knowledge gets amortized across billions of sessions or billions of users.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

04 / belief

There’s not some sense in which the lawyer is really truly motivated by the good of the justice system. But I think the way current AIs are shaping up, certainly how Anthropic’s AI is shaping up, is with this desire to maximize some notion of virtue or good or pro-social ends, and only to, as a distal tentative objective, help the user towards that end.

“There’s not some sense in which the lawyer is really truly motivated by the good of the justice system. But I think the way current AIs are shaping up, certainly how Anthropic’s AI is shaping up, is with this desire to maximize some notion of virtue or good or pro-social ends, and only to, as a distal tentative objective, help the user towards that end.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

08 / belief

What we’re basically doing to evaluate how much progress is coming from data versus algorithms is training the best algorithmic recipe from 2019 till now with the best data from the 2026 data file, and then also training the different data files going back from 2019 to 2026 with the current best algorithmic recipe. I think that will be interesting.

“What we’re basically doing to evaluate how much progress is coming from data versus algorithms is training the best algorithmic recipe from 2019 till now with the best data from the 2026 data file, and then also training the different data files going back from 2019 to 2026 with the current best algorithmic recipe. I think that will be interesting.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

10 / belief

” There’s another quote that says, in part, and I’m taking it slightly out of context, “We think Claude should trust Anthropic more than operators and users, since it has primary responsibility for Claude.

“” There’s another quote that says, in part, and I’m taking it slightly out of context, “We think Claude should trust Anthropic more than operators and users, since it has primary responsibility for Claude.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

11 / belief

I feel like they just kind of say vaguely pro-social things. It doesn’t feel like there’s necessarily a mind on the other end who’s like, “Okay, I have strictly evaluated the alignment situation right now, and I think we should stop,” rather than, “This is the kind of thing the AI companies would probably try to get the AIs to say.

“I feel like they just kind of say vaguely pro-social things. It doesn’t feel like there’s necessarily a mind on the other end who’s like, “Okay, I have strictly evaluated the alignment situation right now, and I think we should stop,” rather than, “This is the kind of thing the AI companies would probably try to get the AIs to say.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

13 / belief

I want to go back to the kid analogy just for one second. Because I agree that there’s more optimization pressure on achieving end outcomes for AIs than kids, but there’s also more optimization pressure to make AIs aligned than there is on kids.

“I want to go back to the kid analogy just for one second. Because I agree that there’s more optimization pressure on achieving end outcomes for AIs than kids, but there’s also more optimization pressure to make AIs aligned than there is on kids.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

15 / belief

I think he says at some point early in the Discourses that more significant than Romulus in the founding of Rome was Numa, or whoever it was who was the prophet who gave the Roman gods and the Roman religion some legitimacy.

“I think he says at some point early in the Discourses that more significant than Romulus in the founding of Rome was Numa, or whoever it was who was the prophet who gave the Roman gods and the Roman religion some legitimacy.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

17 / belief

I think AI will be much more popular and, more importantly, will be much more likely to lead to broad increases in prosperity if it is as hard to capture the gains of AI as it is to capture the gains of electrification.

“I think AI will be much more popular and, more importantly, will be much more likely to lead to broad increases in prosperity if it is as hard to capture the gains of AI as it is to capture the gains of electrification.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

18 / belief

Phil, I liked your analogy to some Mongolian economist sitting around in 1400 thinking about what will be scarce and the limits of that kind of analysis. I think you should talk about that.

“Phil, I liked your analogy to some Mongolian economist sitting around in 1400 thinking about what will be scarce and the limits of that kind of analysis. I think you should talk about that.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

19 / belief

If I think about how the brain works versus what you’re describing here, at a high level the differences might be that while you can do structured sparsity in these accelerators and save yourself some area that you would have otherwise had to dedicate to gates, in the brain there’s unstructured sparsity.

“If I think about how the brain works versus what you’re describing here, at a high level the differences might be that while you can do structured sparsity in these accelerators and save yourself some area that you would have otherwise had to dedicate to gates, in the brain there’s unstructured sparsity.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

22 / belief

The differences we see between different groups of people, especially if this group 50,000 to 100,000 years ago had a very small population size… I think last time we were discussing on the order of 10,000 people.

“The differences we see between different groups of people, especially if this group 50,000 to 100,000 years ago had a very small population size… I think last time we were discussing on the order of 10,000 people.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

28 / belief

I think the concern, going back to the flop difference in the hacking, is yes, they have compute, but there’s some estimates that because they’re at 7nm—they don’t have EUVs because of chip-making export controls—the amount of flops they’re able to actually produce, they have one tenth the amount of flops that the US has.

“I think the concern, going back to the flop difference in the hacking, is yes, they have compute, but there’s some estimates that because they’re at 7nm—they don’t have EUVs because of chip-making export controls—the amount of flops they’re able to actually produce, they have one tenth the amount of flops that the US has.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

31 / belief

I think Dean Keith Simonton has this famous equal odds rule where he says the probability that any given thing you release—any paper, book, whatever—will be extremely important for a given person through their lifetime is not that different.

“I think Dean Keith Simonton has this famous equal odds rule where he says the probability that any given thing you release—any paper, book, whatever—will be extremely important for a given person through their lifetime is not that different.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

33 / belief

I feel like a big crux in these conversations about how good AI will be for science is, I think you said this, that they’re using existing techniques and modifying them.

“I feel like a big crux in these conversations about how good AI will be for science is, I think you said this, that they’re using existing techniques and modifying them.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

34 / belief

Whereas with research, the reason we care about solving the Millennium Prize Problems is that presumably that in the process of solving them, we discover new mathematical objects or new techniques that advance our civilization’s understanding of mathematics.

“Whereas with research, the reason we care about solving the Millennium Prize Problems is that presumably that in the process of solving them, we discover new mathematical objects or new techniques that advance our civilization’s understanding of mathematics.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

35 / belief

Suppose the AI figures it out, and latent in the Lean is some brand-new construction which, if we realized its significance, we would be able to apply in all these different situations.

“Suppose the AI figures it out, and latent in the Lean is some brand-new construction which, if we realized its significance, we would be able to apply in all these different situations.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

37 / belief

If you’re Jensen or Sam Altman, or whoever stands to gain a lot from scaling up AI compute, there are these stories that they’d go to TSMC and say, “Why can’t we access Y and Z?” But I think the point you’re making is that it doesn’t really matter what TSMC does in some sense.

“If you’re Jensen or Sam Altman, or whoever stands to gain a lot from scaling up AI compute, there are these stories that they’d go to TSMC and say, “Why can’t we access Y and Z?” But I think the point you’re making is that it doesn’t really matter what TSMC does in some sense.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

39 / belief

We’re going to increase transparency, we’re going to increase whistleblower protection.” But I think by default, the actual benefits we’re looking forward to seem very fragile to different kinds of moral panics or political economy problems.

“We’re going to increase transparency, we’re going to increase whistleblower protection.” But I think by default, the actual benefits we’re looking forward to seem very fragile to different kinds of moral panics or political economy problems.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

42 / belief

I think you’ve said that we’ve got to get to Mars so we can make sure that if something happens to Earth, civilization, consciousness, and all that survives.

“I think you’ve said that we’ve got to get to Mars so we can make sure that if something happens to Earth, civilization, consciousness, and all that survives.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

45 / belief

Maybe he meant this, but I think another interpretation of actually what’s happening there is that these social reward functions that are built into the Steering Subsystem needed to make use more of being able to see your elders and see what the visual cues are and hear what they’re saying.

“Maybe he meant this, but I think another interpretation of actually what’s happening there is that these social reward functions that are built into the Steering Subsystem needed to make use more of being able to see your elders and see what the visual cues are and hear what they’re saying.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

47 / belief

I think the even more interesting question is why a system that was so centrally planned, monstrously inefficient, brutal, a colonial land empire, how such a country could survive for so long into the 20th century.

“I think the even more interesting question is why a system that was so centrally planned, monstrously inefficient, brutal, a colonial land empire, how such a country could survive for so long into the 20th century.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

52 / belief

I think you’re basically inventing college from first principles for the tools that are available today and just selecting for people who have the motivation and the interest of really engaging with material.

“I think you’re basically inventing college from first principles for the tools that are available today and just selecting for people who have the motivation and the interest of really engaging with material.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

53 / belief

Just to throw the opposite argument against you, my expectation is that it blows up because I think true AGI—and I’m not talking about LLM coding bots, I’m talking about actual replacement of a human in a server—is qualitatively different from these other productivity-improving technologies because it’s labor itself.

“Just to throw the opposite argument against you, my expectation is that it blows up because I think true AGI—and I’m not talking about LLM coding bots, I’m talking about actual replacement of a human in a server—is qualitatively different from these other productivity-improving technologies because it’s labor itself.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

54 / belief

There’s a lot of really smart people who are ready to make use of the resources and do this period of catch-up because we’ve had this discontinuity, and I think AI might be similar.

“There’s a lot of really smart people who are ready to make use of the resources and do this period of catch-up because we’ve had this discontinuity, and I think AI might be similar.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

58 / belief

If you want to understand what it is that enables humans to go to the moon or to build semiconductors, I think the thing we want to understand is what makes that happen.

“If you want to understand what it is that enables humans to go to the moon or to build semiconductors, I think the thing we want to understand is what makes that happen.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

61 / belief

If we thought, “Oh, the future generation will be Nazis, I think we’d be quite concerned about just handing off power to them.” So I agree that this is not super dissimilar to worrying about more capable future humans, but I don’t think that addresses a lot of the concerns people might have about this level of power being attained this fast with entities we don’t fully understand.

“If we thought, “Oh, the future generation will be Nazis, I think we’d be quite concerned about just handing off power to them.” So I agree that this is not super dissimilar to worrying about more capable future humans, but I don’t think that addresses a lot of the concerns people might have about this level of power being attained this fast with entities we don’t fully understand.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

63 / belief

I think argument is useful. I do want to complete this thought. Joseph Henrich has this interesting theory about a lot of the skills that humans have had to master in order to be successful.

“I think argument is useful. I do want to complete this thought. Joseph Henrich has this interesting theory about a lot of the skills that humans have had to master in order to be successful.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

64 / belief

I'd claim that cryptography, radar, even oil… Even if Germany had a huge reserve of oil, maybe it would have lengthened the length at which Germany could have sustained itself. But if you change the fact that the Axis had one-fourth of the GDP of the Allies combined, I think switching that genuinely changes who wins the war, whereas these other things actually wouldn't change who won the war.

“I'd claim that cryptography, radar, even oil… Even if Germany had a huge reserve of oil, maybe it would have lengthened the length at which Germany could have sustained itself. But if you change the fact that the Axis had one-fourth of the GDP of the Allies combined, I think switching that genuinely changes who wins the war, whereas these other things actually wouldn't change who won the war.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

65 / belief

AKA, maybe intelligence is easier than we think, and there's a bunch of contingent reasons evolution didn't churn as hard on this variable as it could have.

“AKA, maybe intelligence is easier than we think, and there's a bunch of contingent reasons evolution didn't churn as hard on this variable as it could have.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

70 / belief

One really interesting takeaway from this lecture—and I'm curious if you agree with this—is that when we think about this period in history, we often think of Japan as the rising power in Asia.

“One really interesting takeaway from this lecture—and I'm curious if you agree with this—is that when we think about this period in history, we often think of Japan as the rising power in Asia.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

71 / belief

I agree with the mechanism by which the growth happened, but I don't think it's the case that it was their inability to have true Marxist communism which led to liberalization.

“I agree with the mechanism by which the growth happened, but I don't think it's the case that it was their inability to have true Marxist communism which led to liberalization.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

72 / belief

I think on net it was a good thing that the NSF and the NIH and all these budgets were blown up and got DOGE’d and so forth…” I'm not saying you think this is likely, but suppose there ends up being a positive story told in retrospect.

“I think on net it was a good thing that the NSF and the NIH and all these budgets were blown up and got DOGE’d and so forth…” I'm not saying you think this is likely, but suppose there ends up being a positive story told in retrospect.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

75 / belief

There I haven't crunched the numbers, but if I were to guess, I don't think with TSMC's leading-edge 5 nanometer wafer, I doubt very little of what it costs to make that is the process engineers themselves.

“There I haven't crunched the numbers, but if I were to guess, I don't think with TSMC's leading-edge 5 nanometer wafer, I doubt very little of what it costs to make that is the process engineers themselves.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

76 / belief

I think the crux comes down to the people who expect something much longer have a sense that… When I had Ege and Tamay on my podcast, they were like, "Look, you could look at AlphaGo, and say, 'Oh, this is a model that can do exploration.

“I think the crux comes down to the people who expect something much longer have a sense that… When I had Ege and Tamay on my podcast, they were like, "Look, you could look at AlphaGo, and say, 'Oh, this is a model that can do exploration.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

77 / belief

Speaking of inference compute, one thing that I think is not talked about enough is, if you do live in the world that you're painting—in a year or two, we have computer use agents that are doing actual jobs, you've totally automated large parts of software engineering—then these models are going to be incredibly valuable to use.

“Speaking of inference compute, one thing that I think is not talked about enough is, if you do live in the world that you're painting—in a year or two, we have computer use agents that are doing actual jobs, you've totally automated large parts of software engineering—then these models are going to be incredibly valuable to use.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

78 / belief

I think in the addition example, you said in the paper that the way it actually does the addition is different from the way it tells you it does the addition.

“I think in the addition example, you said in the paper that the way it actually does the addition is different from the way it tells you it does the addition.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

79 / belief

Yeah, it would be good from an alignment perspective, too. Because I think you kind of do need a wider range of skills before you can do something super scary.

“Yeah, it would be good from an alignment perspective, too. Because I think you kind of do need a wider range of skills before you can do something super scary.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

80 / belief

I think one thing that's not appreciated enough is how much of our leverage on the future—given the fact that our labor isn't going to be worth that much—comes from our economic, and political systems surviving.

“I think one thing that's not appreciated enough is how much of our leverage on the future—given the fact that our labor isn't going to be worth that much—comes from our economic, and political systems surviving.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

82 / belief

I think there's a paper from Tsinghua University, where they showed that if you give a base model enough tries to answer a question, it can still answer the question as well as the reasoning model.

“I think there's a paper from Tsinghua University, where they showed that if you give a base model enough tries to answer a question, it can still answer the question as well as the reasoning model.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

83 / belief

Does that mean alignment is easier than we think just because you just have to write a bunch of fake news articles that say, "AIs just love humanity and they just want to do good things.

“Does that mean alignment is easier than we think just because you just have to write a bunch of fake news articles that say, "AIs just love humanity and they just want to do good things.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

84 / belief

DeepSeek has the MIT license, whereas I think a couple of the contingencies in the Llama license require you to say "built with Llama" on applications using it or any model that you train using Llama has to begin with the word "Llama.

“DeepSeek has the MIT license, whereas I think a couple of the contingencies in the Llama license require you to say "built with Llama" on applications using it or any model that you train using Llama has to begin with the word "Llama.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

85 / belief

On the point of what the different labs are optimizing for — to steelman their view — I think a lot of them believe that once you fully automate software engineering and AI research, then you can kick off an intelligence explosion.

“On the point of what the different labs are optimizing for — to steelman their view — I think a lot of them believe that once you fully automate software engineering and AI research, then you can kick off an intelligence explosion.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

87 / belief

I think that's an excellent note to close on. Just to plug one more time, we've been discussing Plagues Upon the Earth, which is the history of disease going back through the Neolithic to modern times, Fate of Rome which discusses the plagues and history of the Roman Empire considering climate and biology.

“I think that's an excellent note to close on. Just to plug one more time, we've been discussing Plagues Upon the Earth, which is the history of disease going back through the Neolithic to modern times, Fate of Rome which discusses the plagues and history of the Roman Empire considering climate and biology.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

91 / belief

The thing worth noting about the future is that most of the people who will ever exist are going to be digital. And look, I think factory farming is incredibly bad.

“The thing worth noting about the future is that most of the people who will ever exist are going to be digital. And look, I think factory farming is incredibly bad.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

92 / belief

I think a lot of your forecast relies on, at some point, not only the US President, but also Xi Jinping, waking up to the possibility of a super intelligence and the stakes involved there.

“I think a lot of your forecast relies on, at some point, not only the US President, but also Xi Jinping, waking up to the possibility of a super intelligence and the stakes involved there.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

93 / belief

Where right now, if you told your parents, “I’m going to become a startup founder”, I think the reaction would be like, “there’s a 1% chance you’ll succeed, but it’s an interesting experience and if you do succeed, that’s crazy.

“Where right now, if you told your parents, “I’m going to become a startup founder”, I think the reaction would be like, “there’s a 1% chance you’ll succeed, but it’s an interesting experience and if you do succeed, that’s crazy.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

94 / belief

One observation I have is, you could have told a story in 2021, once ChatGPT comes out… I think I had friends who were credible AI thinkers who were like, “look, you’ve got the coding agent now, it’s been cracked.

“One observation I have is, you could have told a story in 2021, once ChatGPT comes out… I think I had friends who were credible AI thinkers who were like, “look, you’ve got the coding agent now, it’s been cracked.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

95 / belief

I guess the bigger the organization, even if everybody is aligned- I think some of your responses addressed whether they will be aligned on goals.

“I guess the bigger the organization, even if everybody is aligned- I think some of your responses addressed whether they will be aligned on goals.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

96 / belief

I agree. We’re on a totally different topic here of, do you get a Dyson sphere? There’s one world where it’s crazy but it’s still boring, in the sense that the economy is growing much faster, but it would be like what the Industrial Revolution would look like to somebody in the year 1000.

“I agree. We’re on a totally different topic here of, do you get a Dyson sphere? There’s one world where it’s crazy but it’s still boring, in the sense that the economy is growing much faster, but it would be like what the Industrial Revolution would look like to somebody in the year 1000.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

97 / belief

Maybe the reason that this sounds less plausible to me than the 25x number implies is that when I think about concretely what that would look like, where you have these AIs and we know that there’s a gap in data efficiency between human brains and these AIs.

“Maybe the reason that this sounds less plausible to me than the 25x number implies is that when I think about concretely what that would look like, where you have these AIs and we know that there’s a gap in data efficiency between human brains and these AIs.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

101 / belief

Now, when I think about what's going to be possible in the next 250 years, I'm thinking like space travel, and space elevators, and immortality, and curing all diseases.

“Now, when I think about what's going to be possible in the next 250 years, I'm thinking like space travel, and space elevators, and immortality, and curing all diseases.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

102 / belief

I think there's just, there are so many different applications that you have put out for using these models to make the different areas you talked about better.

“I think there's just, there are so many different applications that you have put out for using these models to make the different areas you talked about better.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

106 / belief

One of the things I learned from your book is that the overwhelming fraction of deaths on the Japanese side during the war happened after it was known that they were going to lose.

“One of the things I learned from your book is that the overwhelming fraction of deaths on the Japanese side during the war happened after it was known that they were going to lose.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

109 / belief

Wasn't Churchill, by the time he was 24, an international correspondent in Cuba and India? I think he was the highest-paid journalist in the world by the time he was 24.

“Wasn't Churchill, by the time he was 24, an international correspondent in Cuba and India? I think he was the highest-paid journalist in the world by the time he was 24.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

111 / belief

I think we've mentioned a couple of other bounds like this where there's no principled reason you might have anticipated ex ante why there would be such a bound that prevents something that just gets in our way, but it just so happens to be this way.

“I think we've mentioned a couple of other bounds like this where there's no principled reason you might have anticipated ex ante why there would be such a bound that prevents something that just gets in our way, but it just so happens to be this way.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

112 / belief

There's something to that sort of finality which makes existential risk salient in the first place. And if you agree with that intuition, then I think you should be inclined to think that there is something significant about the fact that in some base reality, like genuinely the story carries forward.

“There's something to that sort of finality which makes existential risk salient in the first place. And if you agree with that intuition, then I think you should be inclined to think that there is something significant about the fact that in some base reality, like genuinely the story carries forward.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

114 / belief

I've found that there are a lot of books which are nominally about one subject, but the author just feels a need to say, "If you really want to understand my topic, you have to understand basically everything else in the world." I think of a couple of biographies especially.

“I've found that there are a lot of books which are nominally about one subject, but the author just feels a need to say, "If you really want to understand my topic, you have to understand basically everything else in the world." I think of a couple of biographies especially.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

132 / belief

I agree that nuclear energy is a thing that happened later on and is dual-use. But it’s something that happened literally a decade after nuclear weapons were developed.

“I agree that nuclear energy is a thing that happened later on and is dual-use. But it’s something that happened literally a decade after nuclear weapons were developed.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

133 / belief

Unless you’re right about what the intelligence explosion looks like, don’t move yet. But in that world where it really does seem like Alec Radford can be automated, and that's the only bottleneck to getting to ASI… Okay I think we can leave it at that.

“Unless you’re right about what the intelligence explosion looks like, don’t move yet. But in that world where it really does seem like Alec Radford can be automated, and that's the only bottleneck to getting to ASI… Okay I think we can leave it at that.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

136 / belief

I agree, but if the coefficient, of how fast they diminish as you grow the input, is high enough, then in the abstract the fact that inputs matter isn’t that relevant.

“I agree, but if the coefficient, of how fast they diminish as you grow the input, is high enough, then in the abstract the fact that inputs matter isn’t that relevant.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

139 / belief

I'm not sure I agree with this. There are many examples in history where small groups of people, Bell Labs or Skunk Works, have made significant progress.

“I'm not sure I agree with this. There are many examples in history where small groups of people, Bell Labs or Skunk Works, have made significant progress.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

144 / belief

Regarding other open source dangers, I think you have genuine legitimate points about the balance of power stuff and potentially the harms you can get rid of because we have better alignment techniques or something.

“Regarding other open source dangers, I think you have genuine legitimate points about the balance of power stuff and potentially the harms you can get rid of because we have better alignment techniques or something.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

150 / belief

Basically every single high-profile guest I've done so far, I think maybe with one or two exceptions, I've sat down for a week and I've just come up with a list of sample questions.

“Basically every single high-profile guest I've done so far, I think maybe with one or two exceptions, I've sat down for a week and I've just come up with a list of sample questions.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

152 / belief

I don't quite know how to synthesize it yet, but as I think about advice for people in their 20s, I'm not going to normatively pretend to know or presume in which direction one should go in life.

“I don't quite know how to synthesize it yet, but as I think about advice for people in their 20s, I'm not going to normatively pretend to know or presume in which direction one should go in life.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

153 / belief

I think you're being too humble. Staying on Fast Grants, now we have the retrospective of how effective the fast grants recipients were, compared to the other grants that were given out by, let's say, the NIH or NSF.

“I think you're being too humble. Staying on Fast Grants, now we have the retrospective of how effective the fast grants recipients were, compared to the other grants that were given out by, let's say, the NIH or NSF.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

156 / belief

I think there's an interesting thread here in how it relates to Stripe climate, in that you're subsidizing learning curves that East Asian countries did for their own internal companies.

“I think there's an interesting thread here in how it relates to Stripe climate, in that you're subsidizing learning curves that East Asian countries did for their own internal companies.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

157 / belief

I wonder if you’re doing enough of that when it comes to AI, where I think you have really interesting thoughts about GPD, five-level stuff, but somebody with your sort of polymathic understanding of different fields, if you just extrapolate out these trends, it seems like you might have a lot of interesting thoughts about what might be possible with something much further down the line.

“I wonder if you’re doing enough of that when it comes to AI, where I think you have really interesting thoughts about GPD, five-level stuff, but somebody with your sort of polymathic understanding of different fields, if you just extrapolate out these trends, it seems like you might have a lot of interesting thoughts about what might be possible with something much further down the line.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

158 / belief

Relatedly, I think, a couple of years ago, Paul Schlemming had an interesting paper that if you look from 1311 to now, interest rates have been declining.

“Relatedly, I think, a couple of years ago, Paul Schlemming had an interesting paper that if you look from 1311 to now, interest rates have been declining.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

160 / belief

When you say there’ll be uncertainties, I think you made this argument when you were responding to Alex Epstein on fossil future, where you said uncertainties also extend out into the domain where there’s a bad outcome or much bigger outcome than you’re anticipating.

“When you say there’ll be uncertainties, I think you made this argument when you were responding to Alex Epstein on fossil future, where you said uncertainties also extend out into the domain where there’s a bad outcome or much bigger outcome than you’re anticipating.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

162 / belief

Sure. So before we get into his actual views, I think his career is a tremendous white pill in the sense that he writes The Road to Serfdom in 1944 when Nazi Germany and Soviet Union are both prominent players.

“Sure. So before we get into his actual views, I think his career is a tremendous white pill in the sense that he writes The Road to Serfdom in 1944 when Nazi Germany and Soviet Union are both prominent players.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

163 / belief

You talk in the book about how Mill is very concerned about the quality and the character development of the population. But when we think about the fact that somebody like him was elected to the parliament at the time, the greatest thinker who’s alive is elected to government, and it’s hard to imagine that could be true in today’s world.

“You talk in the book about how Mill is very concerned about the quality and the character development of the population. But when we think about the fact that somebody like him was elected to the parliament at the time, the greatest thinker who’s alive is elected to government, and it’s hard to imagine that could be true in today’s world.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

164 / belief

Your biography is the part of the canon. So in the person of Napoleon, I think startup founders see the best aspects of themselves resemblance.

“Your biography is the part of the canon. So in the person of Napoleon, I think startup founders see the best aspects of themselves resemblance.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

166 / belief

I'm just saying, okay, I personally, it's hard for me to imagine in 100 years that these things are still our slaves. And if they are, I think that's not the best world.

“I'm just saying, okay, I personally, it's hard for me to imagine in 100 years that these things are still our slaves. And if they are, I think that's not the best world.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

169 / belief

I think that's a great note to leave it on Grant. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast and genuinely, you're one of the people I really, really admire but what you've done for the landscape of Math education is really remarkable.

“I think that's a great note to leave it on Grant. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast and genuinely, you're one of the people I really, really admire but what you've done for the landscape of Math education is really remarkable.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

170 / belief

Then should we think of educators more as motivational speakers? As in the actual job of getting the content in your head is maybe for the textbooks or for Youtube but why we have college classes or high school classes is that we have somebody who approximates Tony Robbins to get you to do the thing.

“Then should we think of educators more as motivational speakers? As in the actual job of getting the content in your head is maybe for the textbooks or for Youtube but why we have college classes or high school classes is that we have somebody who approximates Tony Robbins to get you to do the thing.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

173 / belief

Something I learned from your book that I thought was really interesting, and also tragic because of the counterfactual, was one of the strategies you suggested.

“Something I learned from your book that I thought was really interesting, and also tragic because of the counterfactual, was one of the strategies you suggested.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

176 / belief

For example, you had this really insightful post based on your experience in industry at Apple about the possibilities of Vision Pro and in what ways it's living up to and not. I think that would have just gone huge.

“For example, you had this really insightful post based on your experience in industry at Apple about the possibilities of Vision Pro and in what ways it's living up to and not. I think that would have just gone huge.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

178 / belief

If we nuked Afghanistan or Vietnam we would have technically won the war if that was the only goal, right? Oh, this is an interesting point that I think you made.

“If we nuked Afghanistan or Vietnam we would have technically won the war if that was the only goal, right? Oh, this is an interesting point that I think you made.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

180 / belief

I think some people might be skeptical that existing robots given their current hardware will have the dexterity and the maneuverability to do a lot of physical labor that an AI might want to do.

“I think some people might be skeptical that existing robots given their current hardware will have the dexterity and the maneuverability to do a lot of physical labor that an AI might want to do.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

183 / belief

I think that I was not convinced from the arguments that we could not have a system of sort of checks on this the same way you have checks on smart humans that it would try to deceive us to achieve its aims.

“I think that I was not convinced from the arguments that we could not have a system of sort of checks on this the same way you have checks on smart humans that it would try to deceive us to achieve its aims.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

184 / belief

First of all, one optimistic lesson to take from there is that we actually did learn from GPT-3, not everything, but we learned many things about what the potential failure modes could be 3.

“First of all, one optimistic lesson to take from there is that we actually did learn from GPT-3, not everything, but we learned many things about what the potential failure modes could be 3.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

187 / belief

I think what some people might not know is the millions and millions and millions of words of science fiction and fan fiction that you’ve written.

“I think what some people might not know is the millions and millions and millions of words of science fiction and fan fiction that you’ve written.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

188 / belief

Eliezer Yudkowsky 3:19:29 I think I want to register for the record that the term breeding humans would cause me to look askance at any aliens who would propose that as a policy action on their part.

“Eliezer Yudkowsky 3:19:29 I think I want to register for the record that the term breeding humans would cause me to look askance at any aliens who would propose that as a policy action on their part.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

190 / belief

I think the credit you would get for that, rightly, is as a good Agnostic forecaster, as somebody who is calm and measured. But it seems like to be able to make really strong claims about the future, about something that is so out of prior distributions as like the death of humanity, you don’t only have to show yourself as a good Agnostic forecaster, you have to show that your ability to forecast because of a particular theory is much greater.

“I think the credit you would get for that, rightly, is as a good Agnostic forecaster, as somebody who is calm and measured. But it seems like to be able to make really strong claims about the future, about something that is so out of prior distributions as like the death of humanity, you don’t only have to show yourself as a good Agnostic forecaster, you have to show that your ability to forecast because of a particular theory is much greater.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

192 / belief

Maybe I'm a bit more pessimistic about that because I think the people who are working on individual rights frameworks weren’t anticipating an industrial revolution.

“Maybe I'm a bit more pessimistic about that because I think the people who are working on individual rights frameworks weren’t anticipating an industrial revolution.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

194 / belief

You mentioned that the aristocratic elites feel that they have the responsibility to give back more so than the meritocratic elites. But I believe that in the U.

“You mentioned that the aristocratic elites feel that they have the responsibility to give back more so than the meritocratic elites. But I believe that in the U.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

195 / belief

We’re actually going to have sensible procurement policies that bring in things at a reasonable cost, and I think we need to balance a little bit back towards Robert Moses in order to have slightly more empowered builders who actually are able to deliver American cities the infrastructure they need at an affordable cost.

“We’re actually going to have sensible procurement policies that bring in things at a reasonable cost, and I think we need to balance a little bit back towards Robert Moses in order to have slightly more empowered builders who actually are able to deliver American cities the infrastructure they need at an affordable cost.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

197 / belief

I think there are a lot of examples where if you don't have the context on why they were built a certain way, you wouldn't understand what was going on.

“I think there are a lot of examples where if you don't have the context on why they were built a certain way, you wouldn't understand what was going on.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

198 / belief

I think a co-sign solution to this kind of thing would be optimal where if the view is worth more to you than the apartment is worth to somebody else, then you can just pay them to not build there.

“I think a co-sign solution to this kind of thing would be optimal where if the view is worth more to you than the apartment is worth to somebody else, then you can just pay them to not build there.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast
Search evidence