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Dwarkesh Patel

Host · Dwarkesh Podcast

Claims
500
Episodes
86
Shows
1
Named items
5

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

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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.

99 transcript-backed records

02 / uncertainty

We just don’t have human-level robotics models yet. So you’re suggesting if we do that — if the AIs get really good at the verifiable stuff in chip design, et cetera, and then they get really good at building fabs — it’ll be the equivalent of going back to the 18th century and saying, “Okay, I don’t know what you guys are talking about in your parliament, but I’ve got a bunch of steamships and a bunch of Maxim guns.

“We just don’t have human-level robotics models yet. So you’re suggesting if we do that — if the AIs get really good at the verifiable stuff in chip design, et cetera, and then they get really good at building fabs — it’ll be the equivalent of going back to the 18th century and saying, “Okay, I don’t know what you guys are talking about in your parliament, but I’ve got a bunch of steamships and a bunch of Maxim guns.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

03 / uncertainty

As you were saying, by the time RLVR actually worked — even though you could have done it with less compute — we had to wait for oceans of compute, gigawatts of compute, to be available before people were doing this training, on the trajectory of compute continuing to increase so we make more breakthroughs. I don’t know.

“As you were saying, by the time RLVR actually worked — even though you could have done it with less compute — we had to wait for oceans of compute, gigawatts of compute, to be available before people were doing this training, on the trajectory of compute continuing to increase so we make more breakthroughs. I don’t know.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

05 / uncertainty

When the AI came up with that counterexample to the unit distance conjecture, you can just read its chain of thought. It’s not understandable to me, because I don’t know anything about mathematics, but it seems that to other mathematicians it was understandable.

“When the AI came up with that counterexample to the unit distance conjecture, you can just read its chain of thought. It’s not understandable to me, because I don’t know anything about mathematics, but it seems that to other mathematicians it was understandable.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

08 / uncertainty

Interesting. But we don’t know what exactly happens, if anything, between 200,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago that goes from just anatomical modernity to behavioral modernity.

“Interesting. But we don’t know what exactly happens, if anything, between 200,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago that goes from just anatomical modernity to behavioral modernity.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

11 / uncertainty

If we end up in this world in 2030 where the West has the most advanced process technology but has not ramped it up as much, whereas China… I don’t know if you think by 2030 they would have EUV and 2 nm or whatever.

“If we end up in this world in 2030 where the West has the most advanced process technology but has not ramped it up as much, whereas China… I don’t know if you think by 2030 they would have EUV and 2 nm or whatever.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

12 / uncertainty

I mean the message I’m taking from this interview is that like all these people that folks make fun of on Twitter, Yann LeCun and Beff Jezos and whatever, I don’t know maybe they got it right.

“I mean the message I’m taking from this interview is that like all these people that folks make fun of on Twitter, Yann LeCun and Beff Jezos and whatever, I don’t know maybe they got it right.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

13 / uncertainty

You had this previous lecture that you gave on the Indo-Pakistani chapter in history where we had to alienate India in order to fend off against the Soviet Union in this little episode. I don’t know what the solution to this is.

“You had this previous lecture that you gave on the Indo-Pakistani chapter in history where we had to alienate India in order to fend off against the Soviet Union in this little episode. I don’t know what the solution to this is.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

14 / uncertainty

To spell out what I mean—I don’t know whether it’s more accurate to call it a value function or reward function—but the brainstem has a directive where it’s saying, “Mate with somebody who’s more successful.

“To spell out what I mean—I don’t know whether it’s more accurate to call it a value function or reward function—but the brainstem has a directive where it’s saying, “Mate with somebody who’s more successful.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

15 / uncertainty

I want to ask about your, I don’t know if you call it a prediction but, your hypothesis that at some point China and Russia will finish each other off or have some sort of conflict which will be bad for both of them.

“I want to ask about your, I don’t know if you call it a prediction but, your hypothesis that at some point China and Russia will finish each other off or have some sort of conflict which will be bad for both of them.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

16 / uncertainty

Then adults are somewhere in between, where they don’t have the flexibility of childhood learning, but they can memorize facts and information in a way that is harder for kids. I don’t know if there’s something interesting about that spectrum.

“Then adults are somewhere in between, where they don’t have the flexibility of childhood learning, but they can memorize facts and information in a way that is harder for kids. I don’t know if there’s something interesting about that spectrum.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

20 / uncertainty

I'm not sure how to understand this claim that we know how to engage with the right hook, we just don't know what that hook is supposed to do in the body. I don't know if that's the way you describe it.

“I'm not sure how to understand this claim that we know how to engage with the right hook, we just don't know what that hook is supposed to do in the body. I don't know if that's the way you describe it.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

21 / uncertainty

At current hardware efficiencies. I don't know if it's worth spelling out. Basically, an H100 has the same amount of flops as a human brain, but also uses way more energy than a human brain.

“At current hardware efficiencies. I don't know if it's worth spelling out. Basically, an H100 has the same amount of flops as a human brain, but also uses way more energy than a human brain.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

22 / uncertainty

To the extent that we hold consumption constant, and maybe we shouldn't, they would have to be suffering 4x as much as a chicken in the 1950s for it not to be a net improvement. I don't know if you disagree with that.

“To the extent that we hold consumption constant, and maybe we shouldn't, they would have to be suffering 4x as much as a chicken in the 1950s for it not to be a net improvement. I don't know if you disagree with that.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

25 / uncertainty

I don't know if that's the way you would still describe the way in which these software agents aren't able to do a full day of work, but are able to help you out with a couple minutes.

“I don't know if that's the way you would still describe the way in which these software agents aren't able to do a full day of work, but are able to help you out with a couple minutes.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

26 / uncertainty

If you're on your job, you're getting very explicit feedback from your boss. That's not necessarily how the task should be done differently, but a high-level explanation of what you did wrong, which you update on not in the way that pre-training updates weights, but more in the… I don’t know.

“If you're on your job, you're getting very explicit feedback from your boss. That's not necessarily how the task should be done differently, but a high-level explanation of what you did wrong, which you update on not in the way that pre-training updates weights, but more in the… I don’t know.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

28 / uncertainty

Sometimes it goes off the rails, obviously, but I don't know… You could make a theoretical argument that you teach a kid to make a lot of money when he grows up and a lot of smart people are imbued with those values and just rarely become psychopaths or something.

“Sometimes it goes off the rails, obviously, but I don't know… You could make a theoretical argument that you teach a kid to make a lot of money when he grows up and a lot of smart people are imbued with those values and just rarely become psychopaths or something.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

32 / uncertainty

Let me just add on to that, one of the many other reasons why I worry about nationalization or some kind of public private partnership, or even just very stringent regulation- actually, this is more an argument against very stringent regulation in favor of safety rather than deferring more to the labs on the implementation- is that it just seems like we don’t know what we don’t know about alignment.

“Let me just add on to that, one of the many other reasons why I worry about nationalization or some kind of public private partnership, or even just very stringent regulation- actually, this is more an argument against very stringent regulation in favor of safety rather than deferring more to the labs on the implementation- is that it just seems like we don’t know what we don’t know about alignment.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

33 / uncertainty

I don’t know if ‘emotionally’ is the right word, but their expectation of what their life might look like, even in the world where there’s no doom.

“I don’t know if ‘emotionally’ is the right word, but their expectation of what their life might look like, even in the world where there’s no doom.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

34 / uncertainty

Actually, when we did our episode together, a bunch of people, I don't know if you saw this, independently made these blog posts and Anki cards and shit where they're explaining the concept because we just kind of passed over some things.

“Actually, when we did our episode together, a bunch of people, I don't know if you saw this, independently made these blog posts and Anki cards and shit where they're explaining the concept because we just kind of passed over some things.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

35 / uncertainty

The human brain can store much more, so why does the human brain just not want us to memorize these kinds of things, and is actively pruning, and… yeah, I don't know.

“The human brain can store much more, so why does the human brain just not want us to memorize these kinds of things, and is actively pruning, and… yeah, I don't know.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

37 / uncertainty

Here’s another thing that I want to clarify: If you were trying to understand Britain's conduct in World War I, why they initiated it and why they conducted it in the way they did, and you tried to understand it using cultural explanations — what some British guy wrote in the 17th century — I don't know how far you'd get.

“Here’s another thing that I want to clarify: If you were trying to understand Britain's conduct in World War I, why they initiated it and why they conducted it in the way they did, and you tried to understand it using cultural explanations — what some British guy wrote in the 17th century — I don't know how far you'd get.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

38 / uncertainty

I'm not sure if you're suggesting in the physical universe or in some hypothetical universe where the vacuum could be different, as in, in reality there are other pockets with different vacuums, or that hypothetically they could exist, or that our universe counterfactually could have been one of these? I don't know.

“I'm not sure if you're suggesting in the physical universe or in some hypothetical universe where the vacuum could be different, as in, in reality there are other pockets with different vacuums, or that hypothetically they could exist, or that our universe counterfactually could have been one of these? I don't know.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

40 / uncertainty

Borges has a short poem called "Borges and I" where he talks about how he doesn’t identify with the version of himself that is actually doing the writing and publishing all of this great work. I don’t know if you identify with that at all.

“Borges has a short poem called "Borges and I" where he talks about how he doesn’t identify with the version of himself that is actually doing the writing and publishing all of this great work. I don’t know if you identify with that at all.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

44 / uncertainty

I imagine since you wrote The Prize, world leaders are inviting you to meet them and give advice. I don't know how many stories you can tell from these conversations.

“I imagine since you wrote The Prize, world leaders are inviting you to meet them and give advice. I don't know how many stories you can tell from these conversations.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

50 / uncertainty

We're starting off with something that has this intricate representation of human values and it doesn't seem that hard to sort of lock it into a persona that we are comfortable with. I don't know what changes.

“We're starting off with something that has this intricate representation of human values and it doesn't seem that hard to sort of lock it into a persona that we are comfortable with. I don't know what changes.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

51 / uncertainty

I don't know if moral realism is the right word, but you mentioned the thing. There's something that makes hearts converge to the thing we are or the thing we would be upon reflection.

“I don't know if moral realism is the right word, but you mentioned the thing. There's something that makes hearts converge to the thing we are or the thing we would be upon reflection.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

53 / uncertainty

” I'm thinking to myself, how is this not as trivial a problem as, “hey XYZ, if you give me money that you can find between your couch cushions, we will save thousands of lives and get the world economy back on track.

“” I'm thinking to myself, how is this not as trivial a problem as, “hey XYZ, if you give me money that you can find between your couch cushions, we will save thousands of lives and get the world economy back on track.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

54 / uncertainty

Maybe you have a point. We don’t know. You have arguments for why that’s a more likely world, but maybe that’s not the world we live in.

“Maybe you have a point. We don’t know. You have arguments for why that’s a more likely world, but maybe that’s not the world we live in.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

58 / uncertainty

I guess if you think of something like the laws of physics, it's not that the feature for wetness is turned on, but it's only turned on this much and then the feature for… I guess maybe it's true because the mass is like a gradient and… I don't know.

“I guess if you think of something like the laws of physics, it's not that the feature for wetness is turned on, but it's only turned on this much and then the feature for… I guess maybe it's true because the mass is like a gradient and… I don't know.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

59 / uncertainty

There's some process by which to interpret the early data. I don't know. I could put a Google Doc in front of you and I'm pretty sure you could just keep typing for a while on different ideas you have.

“There's some process by which to interpret the early data. I don't know. I could put a Google Doc in front of you and I'm pretty sure you could just keep typing for a while on different ideas you have.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

61 / uncertainty

There was an interesting paper that you can use diffusion to come up with model weights. I don't know how legit that was or whatever, but something like that.

“There was an interesting paper that you can use diffusion to come up with model weights. I don't know how legit that was or whatever, but something like that.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

62 / uncertainty

There’s a perception that maybe other labs are more compute-efficient than DeepMind has been with Gemini. I don’t know what you make of that perception.

“There’s a perception that maybe other labs are more compute-efficient than DeepMind has been with Gemini. I don’t know what you make of that perception.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

67 / uncertainty

Yeah, but it seems like I don’t know how you train a John von Neumann, because then he also assisted the US in thinking about Cold War game theory and things like that.

“Yeah, but it seems like I don’t know how you train a John von Neumann, because then he also assisted the US in thinking about Cold War game theory and things like that.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

68 / uncertainty

Another analogy here is it set up all these things that nobody understands, these systems of alliances and relationships in Europe. And you can imagine, like an AI advisor, and you’re not sure what’s going on, but it’s making, I don’t know, maybe it’s like a hedge fund manager that’s AI and it’s like making a lot of money.

“Another analogy here is it set up all these things that nobody understands, these systems of alliances and relationships in Europe. And you can imagine, like an AI advisor, and you’re not sure what’s going on, but it’s making, I don’t know, maybe it’s like a hedge fund manager that’s AI and it’s like making a lot of money.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

70 / uncertainty

Might be like Rlhf where we don’t know if it generalizes, but so far it makes your chat GPT thing better and you can also use it to make sure that chat GPT doesn’t tell you how to make a bioweapon.

“Might be like Rlhf where we don’t know if it generalizes, but so far it makes your chat GPT thing better and you can also use it to make sure that chat GPT doesn’t tell you how to make a bioweapon.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

72 / uncertainty

Presumably you didn't have some sort of practice but since you were encountering these things day to day, that natural frequency and way in which problems came up, did you have a worse understanding of those problems then compared to now, knowing what you do and having the practices you do, you're able to comprehend now? I don't know if that question made sense.

“Presumably you didn't have some sort of practice but since you were encountering these things day to day, that natural frequency and way in which problems came up, did you have a worse understanding of those problems then compared to now, knowing what you do and having the practices you do, you're able to comprehend now? I don't know if that question made sense.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

73 / uncertainty

If you are trying to self learn and there is a resource that is a close approximation of the syllabus you want. Should you just think “Hey, I don't know why I need this chapter.

“If you are trying to self learn and there is a resource that is a close approximation of the syllabus you want. Should you just think “Hey, I don't know why I need this chapter.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

82 / uncertainty

From reading your writing from earlier, it seemed like a big part of your argument was like, look — I don’t know how many total mutations it was to get from chimps to humans, but it wasn’t that many mutations.

“From reading your writing from earlier, it seemed like a big part of your argument was like, look — I don’t know how many total mutations it was to get from chimps to humans, but it wasn’t that many mutations.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

83 / uncertainty

I don’t know if you saw his recent blog post, but here’s a quote from it: “If you really accept the practical version of the Orthogonality Thesis, then it seems to me that you can’t regard education, knowledge, and enlightenment as instruments for moral betterment.

“I don’t know if you saw his recent blog post, but here’s a quote from it: “If you really accept the practical version of the Orthogonality Thesis, then it seems to me that you can’t regard education, knowledge, and enlightenment as instruments for moral betterment.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

85 / uncertainty

A lot of them might have, like, problems, to put it in that kind of language, but I don't know how many of them would make you suspect that there's, like, mental health issues or there's addiction issues that for somebody who's in charge of a multibillion dollar empire, I don't know.

“A lot of them might have, like, problems, to put it in that kind of language, but I don't know how many of them would make you suspect that there's, like, mental health issues or there's addiction issues that for somebody who's in charge of a multibillion dollar empire, I don't know.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

86 / uncertainty

I was like ten in 2011 so I don’t know if I would’ve personally. I would’ve liked to think I would’ve caught on if I was older but maybe not.

“I was like ten in 2011 so I don’t know if I would’ve personally. I would’ve liked to think I would’ve caught on if I was older but maybe not.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

87 / uncertainty

I don't know how to look into the far future situation, don't understand the far future situation, and don't see a path to doing good on that front I feel good about.

“I don't know how to look into the far future situation, don't understand the far future situation, and don't see a path to doing good on that front I feel good about.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

89 / uncertainty

First, how can somebody be long AI but hedge for the possibility that Taiwan will be invaded? So, I don't know if I should put money into TSMC but I know that GPUs are going to be the next big thing or are going to be very important in the future.

“First, how can somebody be long AI but hedge for the possibility that Taiwan will be invaded? So, I don't know if I should put money into TSMC but I know that GPUs are going to be the next big thing or are going to be very important in the future.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

90 / uncertainty

If there's one person who's designing all the bridges, all the highways, all the parks, is something more possible that can be possible if like multiple different branches and people have their own unique visions? I don't know if that question makes sense.

“If there's one person who's designing all the bridges, all the highways, all the parks, is something more possible that can be possible if like multiple different branches and people have their own unique visions? I don't know if that question makes sense.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

91 / uncertainty

I don't know if you're familiar with the longtermist movement, maybe you’ve come across this before, but one thing they've proposed is not like a doctrine or anything, but on the periphery, some idea I saw was that just as we have environmental review we should have a posterity review so that you're analyzing the impacts of your actions on generations way down the line.

“I don't know if you're familiar with the longtermist movement, maybe you’ve come across this before, but one thing they've proposed is not like a doctrine or anything, but on the periphery, some idea I saw was that just as we have environmental review we should have a posterity review so that you're analyzing the impacts of your actions on generations way down the line.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

94 / uncertainty

I don't know if you saw this, by the way, but about a year or two ago, Microsoft announced that they were building this new office for developers in India and they were looking at this very interesting architectural details and craftsmanship that made it look like you know for everything from the furniture to the floor layout to the arches of the entrances.

“I don't know if you saw this, by the way, but about a year or two ago, Microsoft announced that they were building this new office for developers in India and they were looking at this very interesting architectural details and craftsmanship that made it look like you know for everything from the furniture to the floor layout to the arches of the entrances.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

96 / uncertainty

I don’t know, but maybe yes. More generally, one of the common arguments that libertarians make about India and its elites is, “Oh, all of India's elites go study in Oxford or something, and they learn about the regulations the West is adopting that make no sense for a country with $2,000 GDP per capita.

“I don’t know, but maybe yes. More generally, one of the common arguments that libertarians make about India and its elites is, “Oh, all of India's elites go study in Oxford or something, and they learn about the regulations the West is adopting that make no sense for a country with $2,000 GDP per capita.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

99 / uncertainty

I wonder whether he was doing this in the 40’–– like when he was at that age, was he doing this? I don't know what the cultural conventions were at the time.

“I wonder whether he was doing this in the 40’–– like when he was at that age, was he doing this? I don't know what the cultural conventions were at the time.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast
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