Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share [Linkpost] “The Thinking Machine” by PeterMcCluskey
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
[Linkpost] “The Thinking Machine” by PeterMcCluskey
This is a link post.
Book review: The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the
World's Most Coveted Microchip, by Stephen Witt.
This is a well-written book about the rise of deep learning, and the man
who is the most responsible for building the hardware that it needs.
Building the Foundations
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by three engineers. They failed to articulate
much of a business plan, but got funding anyway due to the reputation
that Jensen had developed while working for LSI Logic.
For 20 years, Nvidia was somewhat successful, but was an erratic
performer in a small industry.
Around 2004, Nvidia increased the resources it devoted to parallel
processing. There was probably some foresight involved in this strategy,
but for around a decade Nvidia's results created doubts about its
wisdom. The market for such GPUs was tiny. Most experts believed it was
too hard to make parallel software work.
But Jensen excels at solving problems that most others would reject as
impossible.
The Most Important Decision
Nvidia was sometimes less interested in neural networks than neural
network researchers were interested in Nvidia. Geoffrey Hinton sometimes
couldn't get Nvidia to [...]
---
Outline:
(00:27) Building the Foundations
(01:17) The Most Important Decision
(02:16) Jensens Character
(03:41) AI Risks
---
First published:
January 4th, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NXW2QrKvhZmiGvkcd/the-thinking-machine
Linkpost URL:
https://bayesianinvestor.com/blog/index.php/2026/01/04/the-thinking-machine/
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
View all episodes
By LessWrongThis is a link post.
Book review: The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the
World's Most Coveted Microchip, by Stephen Witt.
This is a well-written book about the rise of deep learning, and the man
who is the most responsible for building the hardware that it needs.
Building the Foundations
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by three engineers. They failed to articulate
much of a business plan, but got funding anyway due to the reputation
that Jensen had developed while working for LSI Logic.
For 20 years, Nvidia was somewhat successful, but was an erratic
performer in a small industry.
Around 2004, Nvidia increased the resources it devoted to parallel
processing. There was probably some foresight involved in this strategy,
but for around a decade Nvidia's results created doubts about its
wisdom. The market for such GPUs was tiny. Most experts believed it was
too hard to make parallel software work.
But Jensen excels at solving problems that most others would reject as
impossible.
The Most Important Decision
Nvidia was sometimes less interested in neural networks than neural
network researchers were interested in Nvidia. Geoffrey Hinton sometimes
couldn't get Nvidia to [...]
---
Outline:
(00:27) Building the Foundations
(01:17) The Most Important Decision
(02:16) Jensens Character
(03:41) AI Risks
---
First published:
January 4th, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NXW2QrKvhZmiGvkcd/the-thinking-machine
Linkpost URL:
https://bayesianinvestor.com/blog/index.php/2026/01/04/the-thinking-machine/
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
More shows like LessWrong (30+ Karma)
View all
The Daily
113,049 Listeners
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
132 Listeners
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
7,281 Listeners
Dwarkesh Podcast
533 Listeners
The Ezra Klein Show
16,317 Listeners
AI Article Readings
4 Listeners
Doom Debates
14 Listeners
LessWrong posts by zvi
2 Listeners