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Dwarkesh Podcast / episode intelligence

Richard Sutton – Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead end

26 Sept 2025 22 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Dwarkesh PatelRichard Sutton

Claim mix

belief 8evaluation 5preference 4prediction 2commitment 1uncertainty 1observation 1

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The useful parts, with receipts.

22 published records

01 / evaluation

It’s interesting because you wrote this essay in 2019 titled “The Bitter Lesson,” and this is the most influential essay, perhaps, in the history of AI. But people have used that as a justification for scaling up LLMs because, in their view, this is the one scalable way we have found to pour ungodly amounts of compute into learning about the world.

“It’s interesting because you wrote this essay in 2019 titled “The Bitter Lesson,” and this is the most influential essay, perhaps, in the history of AI. But people have used that as a justification for scaling up LLMs because, in their view, this is the one scalable way we have found to pour ungodly amounts of compute into learning about the world.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

03 / prediction

As we move towards the era of experience, as you call it, this prior is going to be the basis on which we teach these models from experience, because this gives them the opportunity to get answers right some of the time.

“As we move towards the era of experience, as you call it, this prior is going to be the basis on which we teach these models from experience, because this gives them the opportunity to get answers right some of the time.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

05 / belief

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

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

09 / belief

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

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

12 / belief

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

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

13 / evaluation

In the old days, it was interesting because things like search and learning were called weak methods because they’re just using general principles, they’re not using the power that comes from imbuing a system with human knowledge.

“In the old days, it was interesting because things like search and learning were called weak methods because they’re just using general principles, they’re not using the power that comes from imbuing a system with human knowledge.”
Speaker
Richard Sutton
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

14 / evaluation

What is intelligence? The problem is to understand your world. Reinforcement learning is about understanding your world, whereas large language models are about mimicking people, doing what people say you should do.

“What is intelligence? The problem is to understand your world. Reinforcement learning is about understanding your world, whereas large language models are about mimicking people, doing what people say you should do.”
Speaker
Richard Sutton
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

16 / observation

It’ll say, “Okay, I’m going to approach this problem using this approach first.” It’ll write this out and be like, “Oh wait, I just realized this is the wrong conceptual way to approach the problem.

“It’ll say, “Okay, I’m going to approach this problem using this approach first.” It’ll write this out and be like, “Oh wait, I just realized this is the wrong conceptual way to approach the problem.”
Speaker
Dwarkesh Patel
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

17 / evaluation

You can’t have prior knowledge if you don’t have ground truth, because the prior knowledge is supposed to be a hint or an initial belief about what the truth is.

“You can’t have prior knowledge if you don’t have ground truth, because the prior knowledge is supposed to be a hint or an initial belief about what the truth is.”
Speaker
Richard Sutton
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

19 / prediction

Then what I usually say is that this is all human-centric. But if we step aside from being a human and just take the point of view of the universe, this is I think a major stage in the universe, a major transition, a transition from replicators.

“Then what I usually say is that this is all human-centric. But if we step aside from being a human and just take the point of view of the universe, this is I think a major stage in the universe, a major transition, a transition from replicators.”
Speaker
Richard Sutton
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

22 / evaluation

Your examples are all, “Well, really you have to” because you can teach it, but there’s all the little idiosyncrasies of the particular life they’re leading and the particular people they’re working with and what they like, as opposed to what average people like.

“Your examples are all, “Well, really you have to” because you can teach it, but there’s all the little idiosyncrasies of the particular life they’re leading and the particular people they’re working with and what they like, as opposed to what average people like.”
Speaker
Richard Sutton
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast
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