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.”
Public evidence record
Dwarkesh Patel
Host · Dwarkesh Podcast
- Claims
- 500
- Episodes
- 86
- Shows
- 1
- Named items
- 5
Books, apps, and tools
The evidenced stack.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Claim ledger
What Dwarkesh said.
22 transcript-backed records
01 / commitment
I also think the way in which the constitution practically influences the nature of Claude is a thing you can only understand if you understand the training process which resulted in how Claude was built, which we can’t reason about given the fact that the training process is not public. So I think in the limit, to understand the safety case, or the case for why my interests are represented in how these AI models are developed, the labs would need to be more transparent than they are currently about the nature of AI training.
“I also think the way in which the constitution practically influences the nature of Claude is a thing you can only understand if you understand the training process which resulted in how Claude was built, which we can’t reason about given the fact that the training process is not public. So I think in the limit, to understand the safety case, or the case for why my interests are represented in how these AI models are developed, the labs would need to be more transparent than they are currently about the nature of AI training.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
02 / commitment
I will say for the audience, for previous episodes when I was prepping and it seemed relevant to understand how AlphaGo works, I would find it very confusing.
“I will say for the audience, for previous episodes when I was prepping and it seemed relevant to understand how AlphaGo works, I would find it very confusing.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
03 / commitment
One big question I have is how plausible is it that if we just keep training AIs—they get better and better at solving problems in Lean—that they will continue to solve more and more impressive problems, and then we will be surprised at how little insight we got from some Lean solution to proving the Riemann hypothesis or something.
“One big question I have is how plausible is it that if we just keep training AIs—they get better and better at solving problems in Lean—that they will continue to solve more and more impressive problems, and then we will be surprised at how little insight we got from some Lean solution to proving the Riemann hypothesis or something.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
04 / commitment
I won’t even ask you about the dirty rooms thing, but let’s say they build the clean rooms.
“I won’t even ask you about the dirty rooms thing, but let’s say they build the clean rooms.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
05 / commitment
Maybe some of those things work, but it’s at the same time frustrating but also funny and interesting that historically nobody has a good track record of being able to say, “I will do this thing so that this huge unanticipated change in history will go my way, or according to my values.
“Maybe some of those things work, but it’s at the same time frustrating but also funny and interesting that historically nobody has a good track record of being able to say, “I will do this thing so that this huge unanticipated change in history will go my way, or according to my values.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
06 / commitment
As a broader objective of having this full digital coworker emulator, you’re saying, “all the revenue maximizing corporations want to do this, xAI being one of them, but we will win because of a secret plan we have.
“As a broader objective of having this full digital coworker emulator, you’re saying, “all the revenue maximizing corporations want to do this, xAI being one of them, but we will win because of a secret plan we have.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
07 / commitment
A lot of people’s models of recursive self-improvement literally, explicitly state we will have a million Ilyas in a server that are coming up with different ideas, and this will lead to a superintelligence emerging very fast.
“A lot of people’s models of recursive self-improvement literally, explicitly state we will have a million Ilyas in a server that are coming up with different ideas, and this will lead to a superintelligence emerging very fast.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
08 / commitment
We will eventually have models, if they get to human level, which will have this ability to continuously learn on the job. That will drive so much value to the model company that is ahead, at least in my view, because you have copies of one model broadly deployed through the economy learning how to do every single job.
“We will eventually have models, if they get to human level, which will have this ability to continuously learn on the job. That will drive so much value to the model company that is ahead, at least in my view, because you have copies of one model broadly deployed through the economy learning how to do every single job.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
09 / commitment
There's the question of where the software will be, and then there's the question of how many physical robots we will have.
“There's the question of where the software will be, and then there's the question of how many physical robots we will have.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
10 / commitment
Right now we are export controlling chips for the purpose of keeping our AI lead and we recognize this is a key input in our ability to compete in AI. So we are going to export control China's ability to have these chips.
“Right now we are export controlling chips for the purpose of keeping our AI lead and we recognize this is a key input in our ability to compete in AI. So we are going to export control China's ability to have these chips.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
11 / commitment
I agree with your general point that how any nation gets wealthy is not by the government but because of the thrift and entrepreneurialism and hard work of individuals.
“I agree with your general point that how any nation gets wealthy is not by the government but because of the thrift and entrepreneurialism and hard work of individuals.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
12 / commitment
If this scale of compute increase can’t continue beyond 2030—not just because of chips, but also because of power and raw GDP even—then because we don't think we will get it by 2030 or 2028, then the probability per year just goes down a bunch.
“If this scale of compute increase can’t continue beyond 2030—not just because of chips, but also because of power and raw GDP even—then because we don't think we will get it by 2030 or 2028, then the probability per year just goes down a bunch.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
13 / commitment
” I will mention something that has actually radicalized me against Twitter as an information source is I’ll meet- and this has happened multiple times- I’ll meet somebody who seems to be an interesting poster, has funny, seemingly insightful posts on Twitter.
“” I will mention something that has actually radicalized me against Twitter as an information source is I’ll meet- and this has happened multiple times- I’ll meet somebody who seems to be an interesting poster, has funny, seemingly insightful posts on Twitter.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Episode
- AI 2027: month-by-month model of intelligence explosion — Scott Alexander & Daniel Kokotajlo
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
14 / commitment
I will also mention that all I have to do is ask them questions, and I do think it's much harder to learn a field to be a practitioner than just learn enough to ask interesting questions.
“I will also mention that all I have to do is ask them questions, and I do think it's much harder to learn a field to be a practitioner than just learn enough to ask interesting questions.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
15 / commitment
Other news; I have a book launching today, it's called The Scaling Era. I hope one of the questions ends up being why you should buy this book.
“Other news; I have a book launching today, it's called The Scaling Era. I hope one of the questions ends up being why you should buy this book.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
16 / commitment
Mostly because- it's not even the long-term impact over years, though I think that is part of it and I do regret all the episodes I did without using Speech Marking Cards, because all the insights have just sort of faded away.
“Mostly because- it's not even the long-term impact over years, though I think that is part of it and I do regret all the episodes I did without using Speech Marking Cards, because all the insights have just sort of faded away.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
17 / commitment
We're doing that right now because of new technology that's being used by labs like yours.
“We're doing that right now because of new technology that's being used by labs like yours.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
18 / commitment
Another quote from Keynes, I guess I won’t read the whole quote in full, but basically says, over time, as investments, markets get more mature, more and more of equities are held basically by passive investors, people who don’t have a direct hand in the involvement of the enterprise, and the share of the market that’s passive investment now is much bigger.
“Another quote from Keynes, I guess I won’t read the whole quote in full, but basically says, over time, as investments, markets get more mature, more and more of equities are held basically by passive investors, people who don’t have a direct hand in the involvement of the enterprise, and the share of the market that’s passive investment now is much bigger.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
19 / commitment
Speaking of the early years, it's really interesting that in 2011, you had a blog post where you said — “I’ve decided to once again leave my prediction for when human level AGI will arrive unchanged.
“Speaking of the early years, it's really interesting that in 2011, you had a blog post where you said — “I’ve decided to once again leave my prediction for when human level AGI will arrive unchanged.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
20 / commitment
Sometimes I'll listen back to a conversation and I won't even remember the content in the conversation.
“Sometimes I'll listen back to a conversation and I won't even remember the content in the conversation.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
21 / commitment
I think a better analogy is just put him in a high position in the Manhattan Project and say we will take your opinions very seriously and in fact, we even give you a lot of authority over this project.
“I think a better analogy is just put him in a high position in the Manhattan Project and say we will take your opinions very seriously and in fact, we even give you a lot of authority over this project.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Episode
- Eliezer Yudkowsky — Why AI will kill us, aligning LLMs, nature of intelligence, SciFi, & rationality
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast
22 / commitment
Lehman Center for American History and the Jacques Barzun Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, where he has also shared the Department of History. We will be discussing Robert Moses.
“Lehman Center for American History and the Jacques Barzun Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, where he has also shared the Department of History. We will be discussing Robert Moses.”
- Speaker
- Dwarkesh Patel
- Publisher
- Dwarkesh Podcast