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Nathan Labenz

Host · The Cognitive Revolution

Claims
258
Episodes
33
Shows
1
Named items
9

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person / recommends

Kevin Roose

“On The New York Times, I, I share your disappointment. I, I recommend Kevin Roose and, and Hard Fork out of The New York Times family of-”

The Cognitive Revolution · 23 Jun 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

tool / uses

Claude Max

“And certainly if you were to triple it from there, you'd be getting into something on the order of magnitude of parity with human headcount. What are you doing with it all too? Because I use my $200 Claude Max and my Codex Pro and I honestly don't even hit my limits that often.”

The Cognitive Revolution · 17 Jun 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

tool / uses

Codex Pro

“And certainly if you were to triple it from there, you'd be getting into something on the order of magnitude of parity with human headcount. What are you doing with it all too? Because I use my $200 Claude Max and my Codex Pro and I honestly don't even hit my limits that often.”

The Cognitive Revolution · 17 Jun 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

app / uses

Claude Max

“What are you doing with it all too? Because I use my $200 Claude Max and my Codex Pro and I honestly don't even hit my limits that often.”

The Cognitive Revolution · 17 Jun 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

app / uses

Codex Pro

“What are you doing with it all too? Because I use my $200 Claude Max and my Codex Pro and I honestly don't even hit my limits that often.”

The Cognitive Revolution · 17 Jun 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

tool / uses

Gemini 3 flash

“I think I used Gemini 3 flash at the time.”

The Cognitive Revolution · 1 Jun 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

app / uses

Claude

“That's probably the biggest reason that I use Claude is that I perceive it to be most robust to that kind of stuff.”

The Cognitive Revolution · 26 Apr 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

app / uses

Beeper Desktop

“I use Beeper Desktop to try to like aggregate a half dozen or so of them. That's also kind of painful. I feel like Beeper Desktop is, Good idea crashes a lot for me.”

The Cognitive Revolution · 19 Apr 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

other / likes

AE Studio

“Is there stuff that we can do or is it, you know, is there is it a different organization's job to figure out how to fill that gap. Because I do feel like I want some more, and I love some of the AE Studio stuff, including self-other overlap.”

The Cognitive Revolution · 4 Jan 2026

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Nathan said.

131 transcript-backed records

02 / belief

I think, like, the the broad synthesis of every bit of analysis I've seen about all these recent incidents basically boils down to, wow.

“I think, like, the the broad synthesis of every bit of analysis I've seen about all these recent incidents basically boils down to, wow.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

04 / belief

Are you gonna lie to me right now, or are you gonna come clean? And, again, with a bunch of hemming and hawing, it eventually I think that's where it's headed.

“Are you gonna lie to me right now, or are you gonna come clean? And, again, with a bunch of hemming and hawing, it eventually I think that's where it's headed.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

05 / belief

OpenAI's retired its or on the verge of they've certainly announced, and I think maybe at this point have pulled the trigger on retiring their fine tuning product.

“OpenAI's retired its or on the verge of they've certainly announced, and I think maybe at this point have pulled the trigger on retiring their fine tuning product.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

06 / belief

I found that there were interesting edge cases that I was constantly running into in my own personal export heuristic that I tried to write.

“I found that there were interesting edge cases that I was constantly running into in my own personal export heuristic that I tried to write.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

08 / belief

I think you might be prepared to bite a bullet on your libertarian principles when it comes to the tremendous price discrimination that we see between API prices and first party Quadmax or GPT Pro subscription prices.

“I think you might be prepared to bite a bullet on your libertarian principles when it comes to the tremendous price discrimination that we see between API prices and first party Quadmax or GPT Pro subscription prices.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

09 / belief

I guess another simple argument is that I think our frontier companies are doing just fine. That, you know, that could change perhaps at some point in time, and I you know, as the facts change, I I think our response to it, you know, might also ought to change.

“I guess another simple argument is that I think our frontier companies are doing just fine. That, you know, that could change perhaps at some point in time, and I you know, as the facts change, I I think our response to it, you know, might also ought to change.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

10 / belief

Maybe I'll let you choose the order of topics when it comes to Chinese models and what if anything should be done about them because you did recently post something, I think, quite counterintuitive given the fact that you're running your company on deep seek.

“Maybe I'll let you choose the order of topics when it comes to Chinese models and what if anything should be done about them because you did recently post something, I think, quite counterintuitive given the fact that you're running your company on deep seek.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

11 / belief

I do worry when I see the picture of Sam and Dario not holding hands that if there's a if there's a picture on our tombstone, I think that might be the one.

“I do worry when I see the picture of Sam and Dario not holding hands that if there's a if there's a picture on our tombstone, I think that might be the one.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

12 / belief

You know? And one example of that in my mind would be, like, don't train agents to maxim you know, with a reward signal that's, how much money they made on the Internet Yeah.

“You know? And one example of that in my mind would be, like, don't train agents to maxim you know, with a reward signal that's, how much money they made on the Internet Yeah.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

13 / belief

One of the challenges obviously with, like, trying to develop techniques that you wanna hopefully will be relevant at the frontier is there's not too many open weights models that you can hack on that have the intensity of RL that is going on at the Frontier Labs, which is leading to these colorful problematic behaviors that we're seeing. But at the same time, it also, like, really amazes me over and over again that astounding work, including the the Cameron Berg paper that I think about all the time about the anti correlation between deception and role playing features and claims of subjective experience.

“One of the challenges obviously with, like, trying to develop techniques that you wanna hopefully will be relevant at the frontier is there's not too many open weights models that you can hack on that have the intensity of RL that is going on at the Frontier Labs, which is leading to these colorful problematic behaviors that we're seeing. But at the same time, it also, like, really amazes me over and over again that astounding work, including the the Cameron Berg paper that I think about all the time about the anti correlation between deception and role playing features and claims of subjective experience.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

14 / belief

I think we've covered in the past the linear representation hypothesis, which I would summarize super plain spokenly as models basically represent a concept as a direction in their activation space, and the intensity or the sort of salience of that concept is represented by the magnitude of the vector that points in that space.

“I think we've covered in the past the linear representation hypothesis, which I would summarize super plain spokenly as models basically represent a concept as a direction in their activation space, and the intensity or the sort of salience of that concept is represented by the magnitude of the vector that points in that space.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

15 / belief

How worried should we be about bio risk in the near term? Because I think part of like, all that analysis, to me at least, that there's quite a few iterations of the game to come and reputation long term is gonna matter and all that kind of stuff.

“How worried should we be about bio risk in the near term? Because I think part of like, all that analysis, to me at least, that there's quite a few iterations of the game to come and reputation long term is gonna matter and all that kind of stuff.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

17 / belief

There seems to be some pretty strong correlation between the model's self conception as a moral patient entity that has subjective experience and its natural tendency to be aligned in other ways that we care about.

“There seems to be some pretty strong correlation between the model's self conception as a moral patient entity that has subjective experience and its natural tendency to be aligned in other ways that we care about.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

18 / belief

Obviously, there's some problems in that analogy. But I think that could be a a I would love to see somebody pursue that kind of rather than scaling up always bigger, better, more.

“Obviously, there's some problems in that analogy. But I think that could be a a I would love to see somebody pursue that kind of rather than scaling up always bigger, better, more.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

19 / belief

How how well supported do you think that conclusion is with, like, firm evidence? Because I I think you could also tell a story that, like, it never occurred to it.

“How how well supported do you think that conclusion is with, like, firm evidence? Because I I think you could also tell a story that, like, it never occurred to it.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

20 / belief

I guess my sense of your overall position is, like, you're fairly optimistic that the and I think I share this for the most part that the irreducible part is, like, relatively small Yep.

“I guess my sense of your overall position is, like, you're fairly optimistic that the and I think I share this for the most part that the irreducible part is, like, relatively small Yep.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

21 / belief

I mean, it's a big question, but I think people are familiar with things like Cerebrus, which obviously has this giant chip and has like a ton of memory on chip.

“I mean, it's a big question, but I think people are familiar with things like Cerebrus, which obviously has this giant chip and has like a ton of memory on chip.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

22 / belief

You usually don't see in interpretability context a training method that leads to better behavior in a way where you can actually see the mechanism. This is pretty notable in in that respect, I think.

“You usually don't see in interpretability context a training method that leads to better behavior in a way where you can actually see the mechanism. This is pretty notable in in that respect, I think.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

23 / belief

I think human experts, doctors, lawyers, engineers, financiers, whoever, who are trying to make evals to try to produce the data for the frontier labs are finding that they are not smarter than the things being trained anymore.

“I think human experts, doctors, lawyers, engineers, financiers, whoever, who are trying to make evals to try to produce the data for the frontier labs are finding that they are not smarter than the things being trained anymore.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

25 / belief

I, I, I think that's like not entirely clear, but you know, whether we're putting whether these are like orthogonal swords through the space that, you know, really chop it up well, or they're kind of more aligned and, and leave more space to hide.

“I, I, I think that's like not entirely clear, but you know, whether we're putting whether these are like orthogonal swords through the space that, you know, really chop it up well, or they're kind of more aligned and, and leave more space to hide.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

26 / belief

One thing I learned in researching neural concept I thought was super interesting is that you guys are serving, in addition to a bunch of enterprise customers, a number of Formula One teams.

“One thing I learned in researching neural concept I thought was super interesting is that you guys are serving, in addition to a bunch of enterprise customers, a number of Formula One teams.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

29 / belief

I think that has felt, even though people have talked about that, imagine that for a while when they think about the self-driving car world, it has felt like that is a long way off even once the technology works because We just haven't seen much change.

“I think that has felt, even though people have talked about that, imagine that for a while when they think about the self-driving car world, it has felt like that is a long way off even once the technology works because We just haven't seen much change.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

30 / belief

Could you give us a little bit more intuition for like how, like just how radical these moments are? It may be a little bit hard for somebody not in the domain to really grok it, but I'd love to try, to get a little bit better sense on kind of, are they really good optimizations or are they really like stepping out and exploring different regions of the design space that people, because I think what made Move 37 qualitatively so compelling was like, no human would have made that move.

“Could you give us a little bit more intuition for like how, like just how radical these moments are? It may be a little bit hard for somebody not in the domain to really grok it, but I'd love to try, to get a little bit better sense on kind of, are they really good optimizations or are they really like stepping out and exploring different regions of the design space that people, because I think what made Move 37 qualitatively so compelling was like, no human would have made that move.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

32 / belief

I'm talking, that's like a 50 years ago phenomenon. They've come a long way, but they're now going to be faced, I think, with their most profound challenge ever.

“I'm talking, that's like a 50 years ago phenomenon. They've come a long way, but they're now going to be faced, I think, with their most profound challenge ever.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

34 / belief

I think we can all kinda feel that that's coming, and I, I definitely wanna get your, um, of course, your perspective on exactly what that is and what we should be doing about it.

“I think we can all kinda feel that that's coming, and I, I definitely wanna get your, um, of course, your perspective on exactly what that is and what we should be doing about it.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

37 / belief

You know, they, that may start to change as they hopefully get a little more serious about their policies around internal deployments as well. But even that is, like, I think un- dramatically underappreciated by the public at large that, like, all this kind of, you know, harmless tr- harmlessness training that they have is the product of a lot of hard work and a very intentional design choice, and it definitely doesn't have to be that way, and in fact, it'd probably be simpler to just, like, get it to do, you know, the task.

“You know, they, that may start to change as they hopefully get a little more serious about their policies around internal deployments as well. But even that is, like, I think un- dramatically underappreciated by the public at large that, like, all this kind of, you know, harmless tr- harmlessness training that they have is the product of a lot of hard work and a very intentional design choice, and it definitely doesn't have to be that way, and in fact, it'd probably be simpler to just, like, get it to do, you know, the task.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

39 / belief

There's like a, you know, certainly some differences between how the, the leading companies kind of think about their safety training, but they're more similar than different in the grand scheme of things. So we're, we're just, like, very, very focused right now in a very small space of AI possibility, and I think that is dramatically underappreciated.

“There's like a, you know, certainly some differences between how the, the leading companies kind of think about their safety training, but they're more similar than different in the grand scheme of things. So we're, we're just, like, very, very focused right now in a very small space of AI possibility, and I think that is dramatically underappreciated.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

40 / belief

There was, I think, a lot of, lot more hope that under a Biden/Harris or, you know, any Democratic administration, that there would be some, um, push for that, and then it, it kind of got backburnered, you know, with the, the Trump win in, in '24.

“There was, I think, a lot of, lot more hope that under a Biden/Harris or, you know, any Democratic administration, that there would be some, um, push for that, and then it, it kind of got backburnered, you know, with the, the Trump win in, in '24.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

42 / belief

I think the Kurzweil graphs and just kind of, you know, in the presence of web scale compute and web scale data, somebody's gonna figure out some algorithm to make it work.

“I think the Kurzweil graphs and just kind of, you know, in the presence of web scale compute and web scale data, somebody's gonna figure out some algorithm to make it work.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

44 / belief

Again, easier, easy, easy for me to say, I guess I'll say, 'cause I think I've been very fortunate with this podcast and the fact that there's like a ton of money flowing around the AI space means that, you know, we can get sponsors in a way that would probably be very difficult for many other people in many other niches.

“Again, easier, easy, easy for me to say, I guess I'll say, 'cause I think I've been very fortunate with this podcast and the fact that there's like a ton of money flowing around the AI space means that, you know, we can get sponsors in a way that would probably be very difficult for many other people in many other niches.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

45 / belief

I think that we should actually sort of sit here and, and frame what is actually happening when we say, like, Fable outperforms on frontier code.

“I think that we should actually sort of sit here and, and frame what is actually happening when we say, like, Fable outperforms on frontier code.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

49 / belief

I, I think of like a Jay Akatra, you know, sort of advising everybody to figure out how to get AI to work in the area that is like your core area. Because you wanna know when it can do that, and you're gonna need the enhancement to be able to keep up with the pace as things get crazier and crazier.

“I, I think of like a Jay Akatra, you know, sort of advising everybody to figure out how to get AI to work in the area that is like your core area. Because you wanna know when it can do that, and you're gonna need the enhancement to be able to keep up with the pace as things get crazier and crazier.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

50 / belief

I think you were less critical, but still somewhat critical, of the recent EO and the move, as I understand it, to take certain AI testing characterization responsibilities away from Casey, which I think now has kind of an uncertain future.

“I think you were less critical, but still somewhat critical, of the recent EO and the move, as I understand it, to take certain AI testing characterization responsibilities away from Casey, which I think now has kind of an uncertain future.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

51 / belief

A lot of the proposals that I understand that you have favored or even championed, including mandatory safety plan publication, certain other transparency meas- measures, whistleblower protections, and even a sort of Fathom-style public-private regulatory, you know, hybrid structure, have all happened in different states to, uh, I think a remarkable degree in a pretty short period of time.

“A lot of the proposals that I understand that you have favored or even championed, including mandatory safety plan publication, certain other transparency meas- measures, whistleblower protections, and even a sort of Fathom-style public-private regulatory, you know, hybrid structure, have all happened in different states to, uh, I think a remarkable degree in a pretty short period of time.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

53 / belief

For the time being, we still have some agency over this process, and I think that's a great reminder to maintain an ownership mindset and hold ourselves accountable to doing our very best work and not getting lazy and letting the AIs lead us around.

“For the time being, we still have some agency over this process, and I think that's a great reminder to maintain an ownership mindset and hold ourselves accountable to doing our very best work and not getting lazy and letting the AIs lead us around.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

54 / belief

You could the decomposition process like multiple times and check for consistency, which I think you're suggesting something like that might be going on.

“You could the decomposition process like multiple times and check for consistency, which I think you're suggesting something like that might be going on.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

56 / belief

For context, Frontier code is the new benchmark asking whether an open source maintainer would actually merge the model's pull request. And this leap of roughly 10% for Opus to 25 upwards of 30% for Fable, I think is a a very similar finding to some of the things that I've just personally experienced where it's like, yeah, this is getting me a lot more.

“For context, Frontier code is the new benchmark asking whether an open source maintainer would actually merge the model's pull request. And this leap of roughly 10% for Opus to 25 upwards of 30% for Fable, I think is a a very similar finding to some of the things that I've just personally experienced where it's like, yeah, this is getting me a lot more.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

57 / belief

We began with timelines. It's a historic day, I think historic circumstances, both because we are living in a fable era now where I think again important thresholds have been crossed and revealed to the public and so many are adjusting to it in real time.

“We began with timelines. It's a historic day, I think historic circumstances, both because we are living in a fable era now where I think again important thresholds have been crossed and revealed to the public and so many are adjusting to it in real time.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

58 / belief

One thing I wanted to follow up on was your comment on meaning. And because I thought that this was a I would say a striking apparent contradiction in the report is the observation that the people who feel most threatened by AI seem to be most eager to adopt it and use it more and more.

“One thing I wanted to follow up on was your comment on meaning. And because I thought that this was a I would say a striking apparent contradiction in the report is the observation that the people who feel most threatened by AI seem to be most eager to adopt it and use it more and more.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

59 / belief

I think we kind of have the easiest time imagining a version of the world that's pretty similar to the current one, but where like a lot of stuff is automated and so the savings kind of get passed on to the consumer.

“I think we kind of have the easiest time imagining a version of the world that's pretty similar to the current one, but where like a lot of stuff is automated and so the savings kind of get passed on to the consumer.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

60 / belief

I guess another way I might interpret it if I think about the person who was in the traditional sort of customer service or customer success role and is now being asked to babysit bots, is maybe some of this turnover could in fact be healthy.

“I guess another way I might interpret it if I think about the person who was in the traditional sort of customer service or customer success role and is now being asked to babysit bots, is maybe some of this turnover could in fact be healthy.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

62 / belief

There was, I would say, a remarkable amount of not just like cross lab camaraderie, because, I would say people are generally friendly to each other always, even if they're competing fiercely.

“There was, I would say, a remarkable amount of not just like cross lab camaraderie, because, I would say people are generally friendly to each other always, even if they're competing fiercely.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

63 / belief

I kind of, you know, can I can visualize the forward pass in my mind and then I can visualize the backward pass of back propagation going through and, you know, gradually updating all the weights.

“I kind of, you know, can I can visualize the forward pass in my mind and then I can visualize the backward pass of back propagation going through and, you know, gradually updating all the weights.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

64 / belief

The core idea is I see it in the nested learning paradigm. And what I, what I think is like potentially for simple person like myself, like most exciting about it is for quite some time now, right, we have achieved the greater and greater expressivity of models by stacking more and more layers and just making them bigger.

“The core idea is I see it in the nested learning paradigm. And what I, what I think is like potentially for simple person like myself, like most exciting about it is for quite some time now, right, we have achieved the greater and greater expressivity of models by stacking more and more layers and just making them bigger.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

65 / belief

On page 39 of this paper, we get to the part where you also have a new optimizer that is outperforming not just your old Atom standard, but also even outperforming Muon. It does come with a little bit of computational overhead, but I think again, the argument is that it more than pays back for itself in terms of faster convergence or just better learning.

“On page 39 of this paper, we get to the part where you also have a new optimizer that is outperforming not just your old Atom standard, but also even outperforming Muon. It does come with a little bit of computational overhead, but I think again, the argument is that it more than pays back for itself in terms of faster convergence or just better learning.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

66 / belief

I mean, I was, I always say the last and least valuable co-author of the emergent misalignment paper that came out about a year ago and there's been a lot of variations on that since. But the kind of big take away the big theme, you know that I think we should all we would all do well to remember is changes to, I don't want to say 1 area, but sort of changes made to a neural network with one particular purpose or one particular data set can have like very strange and surprising knock on effects in behaviors that at first glance would seem like very far afield.

“I mean, I was, I always say the last and least valuable co-author of the emergent misalignment paper that came out about a year ago and there's been a lot of variations on that since. But the kind of big take away the big theme, you know that I think we should all we would all do well to remember is changes to, I don't want to say 1 area, but sort of changes made to a neural network with one particular purpose or one particular data set can have like very strange and surprising knock on effects in behaviors that at first glance would seem like very far afield.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

67 / belief

I mean, maybe it's been somewhat fruitful, but I think also people would get very confused and they try to interpret dreams or understand, you know, what's going on there.

“I mean, maybe it's been somewhat fruitful, but I think also people would get very confused and they try to interpret dreams or understand, you know, what's going on there.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

68 / belief

I think I want to spend one more beat on what you mean when you say generating its own value, because I'm kind of like, OK, I, I know the transformer architecture pretty well.

“I think I want to spend one more beat on what you mean when you say generating its own value, because I'm kind of like, OK, I, I know the transformer architecture pretty well.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

69 / belief

I think has been realizing that my top level second brain called Code Agent can change all these repos underneath it without needing to be it.

“I think has been realizing that my top level second brain called Code Agent can change all these repos underneath it without needing to be it.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

72 / belief

One thing that Granola doesn't do, which I think in many contexts may be the right choice for them, is they don't record the original audio.

“One thing that Granola doesn't do, which I think in many contexts may be the right choice for them, is they don't record the original audio.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

74 / belief

I could go back and, you know, retranscribe, but I think that's usually so far, like really, you know, as of today, I think that's already pretty good and pretty trustworthy.

“I could go back and, you know, retranscribe, but I think that's usually so far, like really, you know, as of today, I think that's already pretty good and pretty trustworthy.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

75 / belief

I've kind of, I've got enough, but I, how can I bring the cream to the top? So that was one initial use of that, but then also another post processing I think, I'm not sure if this maybe came in like May or something when everybody was all of a sudden doing wikis was to one idea I had over time was OK, Now that I have this thing right and it comes from like 8 different sources.

“I've kind of, I've got enough, but I, how can I bring the cream to the top? So that was one initial use of that, but then also another post processing I think, I'm not sure if this maybe came in like May or something when everybody was all of a sudden doing wikis was to one idea I had over time was OK, Now that I have this thing right and it comes from like 8 different sources.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

76 / belief

I think we've seen a little bit of evidence this last couple weeks that could even have a positive effect as it flows through the training data and gives AIs a conception of themselves based on our imagination of what they maybe should be like in a mature state.

“I think we've seen a little bit of evidence this last couple weeks that could even have a positive effect as it flows through the training data and gives AIs a conception of themselves based on our imagination of what they maybe should be like in a mature state.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

77 / belief

Is there, if there's not, we can move on. But if you have any other kind of specific advice, I think one of the things people are going to ask, there was a pretty good post on this just yesterday that we can link to in the show notes.

“Is there, if there's not, we can move on. But if you have any other kind of specific advice, I think one of the things people are going to ask, there was a pretty good post on this just yesterday that we can link to in the show notes.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

78 / belief

I'm not sure how many entrepreneurs are going to want to go join the government, actually, because I think that personality type is often one that started a company in the 1st place because they didn't want to work at a big company.

“I'm not sure how many entrepreneurs are going to want to go join the government, actually, because I think that personality type is often one that started a company in the 1st place because they didn't want to work at a big company.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

79 / belief

One other argument that people have made a lot who I think are especially skeptical of AI companies, but I guess just maybe just have a hype doom as you framed it earlier, is that safety work is ultimately still counterproductive.

“One other argument that people have made a lot who I think are especially skeptical of AI companies, but I guess just maybe just have a hype doom as you framed it earlier, is that safety work is ultimately still counterproductive.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

80 / belief

I think maybe, and to the degree you can focus this on the AI angle on pandemics, I think the audience is If there's one, it's a pretty diverse actually, I've learned over time, but if there's one thing that unites us, it is a general obsession with AI.

“I think maybe, and to the degree you can focus this on the AI angle on pandemics, I think the audience is If there's one, it's a pretty diverse actually, I've learned over time, but if there's one thing that unites us, it is a general obsession with AI.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

81 / belief

I would say my subjective sense right now of the AI nonprofit space is, and obviously there will be exceptions to this, I don't mean to pay with too broad of a rush, and you can also feel free to disagree.

“I would say my subjective sense right now of the AI nonprofit space is, and obviously there will be exceptions to this, I don't mean to pay with too broad of a rush, and you can also feel free to disagree.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

82 / belief

Shout out also to Halcyon as another network that I've seen with a very focused and not super scaled, but high success rate approach. They've also been pretty good, especially I think for mid-career people making moves into the AI space.

“Shout out also to Halcyon as another network that I've seen with a very focused and not super scaled, but high success rate approach. They've also been pretty good, especially I think for mid-career people making moves into the AI space.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

83 / belief

We, I think there's this big dream, which I'm excited about of like a is taking search costs super low, kind of facilitating all these transactions that previously couldn't have happened because the transaction costs were too high to facilitate.

“We, I think there's this big dream, which I'm excited about of like a is taking search costs super low, kind of facilitating all these transactions that previously couldn't have happened because the transaction costs were too high to facilitate.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

85 / belief

I didn't really care about surviving or taking over doesn't really matter, right? And either way, we have, I think, a pretty alarming demonstration there of even when instructed to allow itself to be shut down, the model refuses.

“I didn't really care about surviving or taking over doesn't really matter, right? And either way, we have, I think, a pretty alarming demonstration there of even when instructed to allow itself to be shut down, the model refuses.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

86 / belief

One thing I think is worth calling out though, too, is this is not purely theoretical at this point in the sense I believe that in the mythos system card Anthropic had said that you know, the the classic story of Sam Bowman getting a an e-mail while he was eating his sandwich at the park.

“One thing I think is worth calling out though, too, is this is not purely theoretical at this point in the sense I believe that in the mythos system card Anthropic had said that you know, the the classic story of Sam Bowman getting a an e-mail while he was eating his sandwich at the park.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

87 / belief

I would say, as I'm sure you're well aware, like commentary on Google's AI integrations across its vast product suite has been that it is characterized by like some bangers and then there have been some which have been characterized as misses.

“I would say, as I'm sure you're well aware, like commentary on Google's AI integrations across its vast product suite has been that it is characterized by like some bangers and then there have been some which have been characterized as misses.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

90 / belief

I think you've maybe navigated this about as well as anyone could in the sense that betting on Anthropic and kind of going all in on whatever the best model is, which has been clawed to make it work as well as possible while the capabilities curve was getting to critical thresholds.

“I think you've maybe navigated this about as well as anyone could in the sense that betting on Anthropic and kind of going all in on whatever the best model is, which has been clawed to make it work as well as possible while the capabilities curve was getting to critical thresholds.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

91 / belief

Can you tell a little bit more about, I mean, I think probably a lot of people are surprised almost an hour into the conversation to hear the company has roots in Europe, is headquartered in Europe.

“Can you tell a little bit more about, I mean, I think probably a lot of people are surprised almost an hour into the conversation to hear the company has roots in Europe, is headquartered in Europe.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

92 / belief

Maybe just one more beat on the regulatory environments. And I would separate here following the rules, which you've, you know, I think clearly stated that you're committed to doing from advising on like what the rules should be.

“Maybe just one more beat on the regulatory environments. And I would separate here following the rules, which you've, you know, I think clearly stated that you're committed to doing from advising on like what the rules should be.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

93 / belief

Yeah, that might actually tie back into the original slop question in an interesting way. But maybe one more beat on just kind of some practical product stuff, because I did want to ask about something that I think is increasingly common and is like quite prominent actually in the Descript experience today, which is there are individual button clicks and certainly like individual prompts that I can give to Underlord that will spend a few dollars worth of credits for me in kind of 1 go.

“Yeah, that might actually tie back into the original slop question in an interesting way. But maybe one more beat on just kind of some practical product stuff, because I did want to ask about something that I think is increasingly common and is like quite prominent actually in the Descript experience today, which is there are individual button clicks and certainly like individual prompts that I can give to Underlord that will spend a few dollars worth of credits for me in kind of 1 go.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

94 / belief

I think that's a, Because a lot of times when I have this conversation, I'm like, jeez, it seems like this work is going to be pretty highly automated.

“I think that's a, Because a lot of times when I have this conversation, I'm like, jeez, it seems like this work is going to be pretty highly automated.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

95 / belief

I look back at a couple of emails that you sent, one that I think you said kind of right after taking over, and you wrote something I think will be a really great jumping off point for us, which was, the script isn't a slot machine and we don't want it to be.

“I look back at a couple of emails that you sent, one that I think you said kind of right after taking over, and you wrote something I think will be a really great jumping off point for us, which was, the script isn't a slot machine and we don't want it to be.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

96 / belief

I would say our typical complaint was probably most often that, and this would definitely vary through different generations, but more recently it was like able to do the job perfectly well, so to speak.

“I would say our typical complaint was probably most often that, and this would definitely vary through different generations, but more recently it was like able to do the job perfectly well, so to speak.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

97 / belief

How do you relate this to what I think of as metacognitive behaviors. In the original R1 paper, there was this aha moment that they published.

“How do you relate this to what I think of as metacognitive behaviors. In the original R1 paper, there was this aha moment that they published.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

98 / belief

If that happens, you know, I mean, I also remember the Anthropic leaked pitch deck from a few years ago where they basically said, we think the people in 26 timeframe that train the best models might create such a big advantage that like nobody will ever catch up.

“If that happens, you know, I mean, I also remember the Anthropic leaked pitch deck from a few years ago where they basically said, we think the people in 26 timeframe that train the best models might create such a big advantage that like nobody will ever catch up.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

99 / belief

When I think about like how much the weights change with fine tuning, I usually think of that as kind of more a function of like some sort of divergence penalty, some sort of tethering of the, you know, the model as it's evolving to the base, to the starting point.

“When I think about like how much the weights change with fine tuning, I usually think of that as kind of more a function of like some sort of divergence penalty, some sort of tethering of the, you know, the model as it's evolving to the base, to the starting point.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

101 / belief

I think one of the interesting questions is I think the Uber CTO came out and said that they busted through their clawed budget, you know, for the year in the first four months.

“I think one of the interesting questions is I think the Uber CTO came out and said that they busted through their clawed budget, you know, for the year in the first four months.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

102 / belief

Like I think there's a, there's a, there's a piece of us which gets threatened by, you know, having it, being able to talk and also having, you know, assigning it subjective experience.

“Like I think there's a, there's a, there's a piece of us which gets threatened by, you know, having it, being able to talk and also having, you know, assigning it subjective experience.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

103 / belief

The, the Exa paradigm is like you can write a whole paragraph and it's all very sort of semantically oriented, very embedding based. And but, but I've heard, I think I even spoke to will about the idea that, you know, nobody's going to type in a paragraph long query, but the, your AI can, you know, it has time to do that.

“The, the Exa paradigm is like you can write a whole paragraph and it's all very sort of semantically oriented, very embedding based. And but, but I've heard, I think I even spoke to will about the idea that, you know, nobody's going to type in a paragraph long query, but the, your AI can, you know, it has time to do that.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

104 / belief

Given all of that, it's like, really hard to imagine how it's not having some experience. And the big reason, I doubt it for the AI side is that all that stuff that, you know, in some unknown, mysterious way is giving rise to consciousness is like that same stuff isn't there, broadly speaking.

“Given all of that, it's like, really hard to imagine how it's not having some experience. And the big reason, I doubt it for the AI side is that all that stuff that, you know, in some unknown, mysterious way is giving rise to consciousness is like that same stuff isn't there, broadly speaking.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

105 / belief

I'm not a bidder, but I didn't have the model way back then. Because I think that, you know, does help us drive really the the fundamental architectural approaches for for programmability and scalability, which will serve us into the future.

“I'm not a bidder, but I didn't have the model way back then. Because I think that, you know, does help us drive really the the fundamental architectural approaches for for programmability and scalability, which will serve us into the future.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

109 / belief

I think I'm following a fairly similar pattern, although probably in keeping with my generally less structured personality, I kind of start with everything in one repo, but then over time, especially if I want to share something, then I'll split it out into a separate repo.

“I think I'm following a fairly similar pattern, although probably in keeping with my generally less structured personality, I kind of start with everything in one repo, but then over time, especially if I want to share something, then I'll split it out into a separate repo.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

110 / belief

Obviously, I don't want to share my entire e-mail history, not because I don't trust anyone, but just because that's what the people who've sent me those emails I think would want me to do.

“Obviously, I don't want to share my entire e-mail history, not because I don't trust anyone, but just because that's what the people who've sent me those emails I think would want me to do.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

112 / belief

Chrome extension also is another one that jumps out at me as like, mine's probably different than yours, but there's definitely got to be. And I took this note from Zvi, too, but I still haven't acted on it because he's also got a Chrome extension that he uses to, I think, also collect notes and reformat and move things around.

“Chrome extension also is another one that jumps out at me as like, mine's probably different than yours, but there's definitely got to be. And I took this note from Zvi, too, but I still haven't acted on it because he's also got a Chrome extension that he uses to, I think, also collect notes and reformat and move things around.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

114 / belief

I think you put your finger on something there that is like, I very much associate this style of thinking with you of kind of coming at it's and the, you know, it's in the title of the, of the Substack second thoughts as well, coming at these core questions from both perspectives.

“I think you put your finger on something there that is like, I very much associate this style of thinking with you of kind of coming at it's and the, you know, it's in the title of the, of the Substack second thoughts as well, coming at these core questions from both perspectives.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

115 / belief

I'm, you know, I'm creating whole simulations of things that I previously just thought about. And I've got, you know, memory palaces that are now like not just in my mind, but are actually, you know, in durable mode on computers.

“I'm, you know, I'm creating whole simulations of things that I previously just thought about. And I've got, you know, memory palaces that are now like not just in my mind, but are actually, you know, in durable mode on computers.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

117 / belief

I wonder how that, going back to the first question about how AGI pilled various organizations are, I wonder how, how do you see that from a competitive dynamic standpoint? Because I think one of the things that's most interesting where, you know, the dice are in the air, so to speak, it feels to me right now in the software market is like, Sure seems like the pace of software development is increasing dramatically.

“I wonder how that, going back to the first question about how AGI pilled various organizations are, I wonder how, how do you see that from a competitive dynamic standpoint? Because I think one of the things that's most interesting where, you know, the dice are in the air, so to speak, it feels to me right now in the software market is like, Sure seems like the pace of software development is increasing dramatically.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

118 / belief

Going back to the models, though, themselves, what's your read right now on this is another thing where I think people have very different intuitions.

“Going back to the models, though, themselves, what's your read right now on this is another thing where I think people have very different intuitions.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

119 / belief

Before going into your expectations for the year ahead, what are you seeing in terms of guardrails. And obviously one big pattern that I think is like very natural to you guys is sourcing answers back to the document or the sort of authoritative place from which it came.

“Before going into your expectations for the year ahead, what are you seeing in terms of guardrails. And obviously one big pattern that I think is like very natural to you guys is sourcing answers back to the document or the sort of authoritative place from which it came.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

121 / belief

I was very surprised by this because I think, man, if I had a, if I'm GE or if I'm 3M or any number of a hundred year old, millions of employees over the generations, companies that have this incredible history and so much data that's accrued that nobody really understands at the company these days.

“I was very surprised by this because I think, man, if I had a, if I'm GE or if I'm 3M or any number of a hundred year old, millions of employees over the generations, companies that have this incredible history and so much data that's accrued that nobody really understands at the company these days.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

123 / belief

At the point where the models are better able to predict the future than our best super forecasters or even aggregations of super forecasters, that will feel, I think, like a very meaningful shift in what's going on in the world.

“At the point where the models are better able to predict the future than our best super forecasters or even aggregations of super forecasters, that will feel, I think, like a very meaningful shift in what's going on in the world.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

124 / belief

I'm no astronomer, but my experience with platforms in the past and definitely experiences with the Meta platform, formerly known as Facebook, where it was like they came on the scene, they opened up a ton of stuff.

“I'm no astronomer, but my experience with platforms in the past and definitely experiences with the Meta platform, formerly known as Facebook, where it was like they came on the scene, they opened up a ton of stuff.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

125 / belief

I kind of I think of them more as like Obviously they're quite different too across the different companies, but I think of it less as like trying to get rich and more like trying to make a real mark on history is kind of the biggest summary that I would give for a lot of them.

“I kind of I think of them more as like Obviously they're quite different too across the different companies, but I think of it less as like trying to get rich and more like trying to make a real mark on history is kind of the biggest summary that I would give for a lot of them.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

126 / belief

One thing that jumps out is like maybe not as emphasized as I would have thought is being in command of current research. That's something I think at this point, like really nobody can keep up with all the current research because, you know, that exponential has gotten away from all feeble human minds, I would say, maybe with a few hyperlexics that can still keep up.

“One thing that jumps out is like maybe not as emphasized as I would have thought is being in command of current research. That's something I think at this point, like really nobody can keep up with all the current research because, you know, that exponential has gotten away from all feeble human minds, I would say, maybe with a few hyperlexics that can still keep up.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

128 / belief

I thought we would maybe just start with kind of big picture from your perspective. And I think, you know, having watched some of your previous talks, I know that you play sort of a portfolio strategy where you're not like, I have a very specific, narrow prediction, and I'm trying to maximize the value of this organization, this program for that very hyper-specific prediction.

“I thought we would maybe just start with kind of big picture from your perspective. And I think, you know, having watched some of your previous talks, I know that you play sort of a portfolio strategy where you're not like, I have a very specific, narrow prediction, and I'm trying to maximize the value of this organization, this program for that very hyper-specific prediction.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

130 / belief

I as a power user of all of these things, I have to say I I do find myself going to different services depending on the query. It seems like I've noticed and I would say I would I think Brave is in the middle, I would say, right now between like, perplexity gives me a lot of times the shortest, most to the point answer.

“I as a power user of all of these things, I have to say I I do find myself going to different services depending on the query. It seems like I've noticed and I would say I would I think Brave is in the middle, I would say, right now between like, perplexity gives me a lot of times the shortest, most to the point answer.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

131 / belief

Going back to this plumbing example, and I think trying to generalize from that to what I think a lot of people who listen to this show are working on, I think in a lot of scenarios, there's like a proprietary dataset that is like too big for people to like page through.

“Going back to this plumbing example, and I think trying to generalize from that to what I think a lot of people who listen to this show are working on, I think in a lot of scenarios, there's like a proprietary dataset that is like too big for people to like page through.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution
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