"The Cognitive Revolution"

Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg sit down with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil, notable investors and co-hosts of the AI-focused No Priors podcast. They discuss how Sarah and Elad are approaching AI investment opportunities right now, how that differs from how they've thought about investing in the past, where in the stack from hardware to applications they expect to see value accrue, what modes of human-AI interaction they are most interested in, and more.

Sarah is the founder of $100M AI-focused venture fund Conviction VC, which she launched last fall. She was previously General Partner at Greylock. Elad is a serial entrepreneur and a startup investor. He has invested in over 40 companies now worth $1B or more each, and is also author of the High Growth Handbook.

This episode is the first in a series centered on talking to rising voices in AI media, people who are now only working overtime to understand everything going on in AI, but also creating thought leadership and educational content meant to help others get up to speed as well.

LINKS:

No Priors Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0O65xhqvGVhpgdIrrdlEYk

No Priors on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/no-priors-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning/id1668002688

Elad Gil's blog: https://blog.eladgil.com/

Sarah Guo's blog: https://sarahguo.com/blog

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We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Episode preview

(04:43) What is software 3.0

(09:14) Disruption coming from startups or incumbents?

(13:42) Sarah and Elad identify overlooked investment opportunities in AI

(15:19) Sponsor: Omneky

(15:46) Future of social media

(22:45) AI agents & personal co-pilots

(25:32) Where to invest in AI?

(31:11) How our kids will interact with AI

(34:50) How to gain conviction as an investor in AI

(45:07) When should founders raise money and when should they bootstrap?

(46:28) How should startups spend their capital now that we have AI capabilities?

(48:10) Sarah & Elad’s favorite products in AI

(51:39) Would Sarah & Elad get a neuralink implant?

(53:41) AI hopes and fears

TWITTER:

@CogRev_Podcast

@labenz (Nathan)

@eriktorenberg (Erik)

@sarahnormous (Sarah)

@eladgil (Elad)

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.

This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

Raza Habib is on the front lines of LLM implementation as CEO of Humanloop, a Y Combinator backed startup that helps companies of all kinds, small and large bridge the gap from API access to successful LLM deployment. Nathan sat down with Raza to hear what he has learned in the process of helping so many companies on their LLM implementation journeys – and he did not disappoint – as you'll hear, he shared a bunch of concrete examples of customer use cases, practical challenges that people face, and the strategies they use to overcome them.

RECOMMENDED PODCAST:

The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord.

https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview of episode

(07:00) Humanloop’s mission and surprising customer base

(12:10) Why a language model is so advantageous

(15:00) Customization and understanding model performance

(18:14) Sponsor: Omneky

(18:35) Users graduating from playground experimentation to develop robust implementations 

(23:25) Raza’s two mental models for using AI

(27:50) How customers are actually integrating API

(31:50) Challenge of evaluation and feedback

(43:33) Prediction: more fine tuning in the immediate future

(47:00) RLHF myth-busting

(57:12) Robust agents need feedback loops

(1:02:27) AI productization challenges

(01:07:32) Adopt or die moment for incumbents

(01:11:19) Fast iteration cycles

(1:15:45) Rapid fire questions for The Cognitive Revolution guests

TWITTER:

@CogRev_Podcast

@RazRazcle (Raza)

@labenz (Nathan)

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.

This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

Nathan Labenz sits down with Matt Welsh, the CEO and co-founder of Fixie.AI which just raised $17M in seed funding. The technology world's attention has turned en masse to AI agents over the last month, but Matt, a former Harvard professor and ex-Google, has been focused on AI agents for longer over at Fixie. The platform is currently in developer preview mode, where developers can build agents and end users can try them.

Agents hold the promise of handling not only the core cognitive work, but many of the messy implementation details as well – the searching & finding, sorting through & scanning, signing in & navigating, reading documentation & using APIs – all the manual ad hoc routing of information for which we act today as human plumbing.

--

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

RECOMMENDED PODCAST:

The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord.

https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview of the episode

(02:08) Why AI Agents are so topical right now, and Matt's prescience with Fixie

(06:40) How Matt started Fixie

(10:55) How AI Agents "figure out the plumbing"

(15:57) How Matt envisions work changing in the near term + concrete examples

(22:40) Building your own agent

(26:00) New threat model and guardrails of this new paradigm

(34:48) Synthetic memories in autonomous agents

(42:39) Examples of incredible use cases

(48:00) Single sign on idea

(51:00) Form factor for AI-assisted living

(54:32) Matt's hopes and fears for AI

TWITTER:

@CogRev_Podcast

@mdwelsh (Matt)

@labenz (Nathan)

@eriktorenberg (Erik)

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. https://www.omneky.com/

More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com

Also, check out the debut of co-host Erik's new long-form interview podcast Upstream, whose guests include David Sacks. Ezra Klein, Balaji Srinivasan, and Marc Andreessen.

Subscribe:

Apple Podcasts: bit.ly/3z8TldL

Spotify: bit.ly/40letd0

Music Credit: OpenAI's Jukebox

Nathan dives in with Alex Albert, a 22-year-old computer science student at the University of Washington, who has become a prolific creator of Jailbreakchat.com and author over at The Prompt Report.com. This is Alex's first podcast appearance! Please enjoy this thought-provoking conversation with Alex Albert as part of 'Prompt Engineering Week' at The Cognitive Revolution.

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

RECOMMENDED PODCAST:

The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord.

https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics

Thank you to everyone for listening, and shout out to those who commented to let us know how you discovered the show – it was interesting to see the responses across platforms. We'd appreciate you leaving us a review in the Apple Podcasts Store: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1669813431

TIMESTAMPS:

(0:00) Preview of Alex on this episode

(6:00) How Alex lent structure to his jailbreaking activities early on

(8:00) AI is fun and interesting and it's being overshadowed by hype and confusion

(12:15) Does Alex see cases of jailbreaking for utility?

(16:13) Sponsor: Omneky

(25:59) GPT-4 is best for jailbreaking

(33:20) Role-play jailbreaks can work

(43:59) How to think about exploring black box technology

(45:19) Training models to override bad behavior

(54:55) Content filters are a band-aid

(1:07:14) AI safety

(1:13:02) AI models require scrutiny.

(1:19:39) Optimism - humans will figure it out

TWITTER:

@CogRev_Podcast

@alexalbert__ (Alex)

@labenz (Nathan)

@eriktorenberg (Erik)

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. https://www.omneky.com/

More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com

Also, check out the debut of co-host Erik's new long-form interview podcast Upstream, whose guests include David Sacks. Ezra Klein, Balaji Srinivasan, and Marc Andreessen.

Subscribe:

Apple Podcasts: bit.ly/3z8TldL

Spotify: bit.ly/40letd0

Music Credit: OpenAI's Jukebox

For anyone who discovered this show on Twitter, Riley (@goodside) likely needs no introduction – after all, he spent most of 2022 posting his explorations of OpenAI's text-davinci-002, and quickly became one of the must-follow accounts in AI. Riley Goodside is the world's first Staff Prompt Engineer at Scale AI, and is an expert in prompting large language models and integrating them into AI-powered applications. Few have spent as much time on the language model frontier, so I hope you enjoy this unique conversation with Riley Goodside.

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

RECOMMENDED PODCAST:

The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord.

https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics

TIMESTAMPS:

(0:00) Preview of the episode

(05:13) Riley's unique background

(11:24) Riley's original narrow moat

(15:07) Sponsors: Omneky

(17:02) LLMs can take on ncreasingly complex instructions

(27:41) Language models can do math

(30:05) Models can learn from context

(37:29) Fine-tune models for tasks

(38:47) Automate instruction following

(44:34) Large language models are alien text prediction

(52:27) Avoid mode collapse by framing

(59:05) Composing AI capabilities like Lego bricks

(1:00:37) Language models solve tasks

(1:05:37) GPT-3 solves real-world tasks

(1:15:03) GPT-4's amazing capabilities

(1:17:03) Multimodal abilities unlock possibilities

(1:25:03) Compare models for best task fit

(1:26:24) Compare models using trial and error

(1:36:15) AI and the future of work

(1:42:29) GPT-4 can provide second opinions

(1:45:06) AI safety discussion

(1:50:20) AI permeates society cautiously

(1:55:26) The AI revolution underway

TWITTER:

@CogRev_Podcast

@Goodside (Riley)

@scale_AI (Scale)

@labenz (Nathan)

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.

More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

Nathan Labenz dives in with Jaan Tallinn, a technologist, entrepreneur (Kazaa, Skype), and investor (DeepMind and more) whose unique life journey has intersected with some of the most important social and technological events of our collective lifetime. Jaan has since invested in nearly 180 startups, including dozens of AI application layer companies and some half dozen startup labs that focus on fundamental AI research, all in an effort to support the teams that he believes most likely to lead us to AI safety, and to have a seat at the table at organizations that he worries might take on too much risk. He's also founded several philanthropic nonprofits, including the Future of Life Institute, which recently published the open letter calling for a six-month pause on training new AI systems. In this discussion, we focused on:

- the current state of AI development and safety

-Jan's expectations for possible economic transformation

- what catastrophic failure modes worry him most in the near term

- How big of a bullet we dodged with the training of GPT-4

- Which organizations really matter for immediate-term pause purposes

- How AI race dynamics are likely to evolve over the next couple of years

LINKS REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE:

Future of Life's open letter: https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/

Eliezer Yudkowsky's TIME article: https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/

Podcast: Daniela and Dario Amodei on Anthropic- https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/daniela-and-dario-amodei-on-anthropic/id1170991978?i=1000552976406

Zvi on the pause: https://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-the-fli-ai-risk-open-letter

--

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.

TIMESTAMPS:

(0:00) Episode Preview

(1:30) Jaan's impressive entrepreneurial career and his role in the recent AI Open Letter

(3:26) AI safety and Future of Life Institute

(6:55) Jaan's first meeting with Eliezer Yudkowsky and the founding of the Future of Life Institute

(13:00) Future of AI evolution

(15:55) Sponsor: Omneky

(17:20) Jaan's investments in AI companies

(24:22) The emerging danger paradigm

(33:48) AI supervising itself

(40:06) Evolution, useful heuristics, and lack of insight into selection process

(43:13) Current estimate for life-ending catastrophe

(54:20) Our luck given the softness of language models

(56:24) Future of Language Models

(1:01:00) The Moore’s law of mad science

(1:03:02) GPT-5 type project

(1:11:00) AI alignment with the latest models

(1:14:31) AI research investment and safety

(1:21:00) What a six month pause buys us

(1:27:01) AI’s Turing Test Passing

(1:33:18) Responsible AI development.

(1:41:20) Neuralink implant technology

Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg delve into the upcoming economic transformation and the future of work in light of the threshold crossed by GPT-4.

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

RECOMMENDED PODCAST:

The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord.

https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics

LINKS REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE:

Microsoft research paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712

TIMESTAMPS:

(0:00) Preview

(1:56) Unpacking "There will be economic transformation," Nathan’s reflection after red teaming GPT-4

(4:55) A cross-section of prompts Nathan ran through GPT-4

(17:00) Sponsor: Omneky

(18:00) Future of business and a new style of Taylorism of knowledge work

(28:00) The “shrinking category of work” and a new definition of work

(36:00) A future of “Muggles” and the 1000x developer

(51:15) Are we facing a bifurcated economy and regulations from special interest groups?

(58:30) Upcoming morale shift of white-collar workers and predictions

TWITTER:

@CogRev_Podcast

@labenz (Nathan)

@eriktorenberg (Erik)

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.

This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

We've looked forward to today's episode since we launched the show! Andreas Stuhlmuller and Jungwon Byun are the co-founders of Ought, a product-driven research lab that develops mechanisms for delegating open-ended thinking to advanced machine learning systems. Their flagship product, Elicit (elicit.org), is an AI research assistant that helps researchers accelerate time-consuming workflows, starting with literature review.

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

LINKS REFERENCED IN EPISODE:

Ought: https://ought.org/

Elicit: https://elicit.org/

TIMESTAMPS:

(0:00) Preview

(2:00) Nathan introduces the founders of Ought

(4:20) Why doesn't AI serve better reasoning?

(6:55) What limits the current paradigm

(8:40) Reflections on the last six years of Ought’s research experiments of "composable thinking"

(13:10) Error elimination mechanism is a shared challenge between human and AI systems

(16:45) Sponsor: Omneky

(18:00) Interpretability by construction product philosophy

(25:00) Nathan’s personal experience using Elicit as a research assistant

(30:00) Explicit concerns about model reasonings, and the importance of going a step further

(36:00) What customers of OpenAI Foundry should consider

(43:15) Evaluation challenges

(48:15) Embeddings challenges

(51:00) Vision for a knowledge work assembly line corporate paradigm

(56:00) Ought's short-term approach to building: Understanding human ways of teaching the model to be more helpful

(59:00) Wishful thinking versus real helpfulness

(1:03:00) What's next for Elicit: expansion and new workflows

(1:17:00) Zapier for reasoning

(1:23:00) What are the most fundamental "magic questions" for all domains?

(1:31:43) Significant impact of GPT4

(1:36:00) How people are using Elicit

(1:44:00) AI Uncertainty and reason for hope

(1:48:00) 3 lightning-round questions

TWITTER:

@CogRev_Podcast

@jungofthewon

@stuhlmueller

@labenz (Nathan)

@eriktorenberg (Erik)

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.

This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].

More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

Anton Troynikov of Chroma and Flo Crivello of Lindy AI join The Cognitive Revolution cohosts Nathan Labenz and Erik Torenberg to debate the issues raised in the AI open letter, which advocates for a 6-month pause on AI system trainings.

This episode was recorded on March 31st and was first released as a Moment of Zen episode (airing April 1). Subscribe to Moment of Zen for more timely debates like this one!

Also, check out the debut of Erik's new long-form interview podcast Upstream, whose guests in the first two episodes were Balaji Srinivasan and Marc Andreessen. This coming season will feature interviews with Ezra Klein, David Sacks, Katherine Boyle, and more. Subscribe here:

Apple Podcasts: bit.ly/3z8TldL

Spotify: bit.ly/40letd0

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

RECOMMENDED PODCAST:

The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord.

https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics

LINKS REFERENCED IN EPISODE: 

Open letter: https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/

Scott Aronson blog post: https://scottaaronson.blog/

TIMESTAMPS:

(0:00) Preview of debate

(3:10) Introduction from Nathan and explanation of the AI open letter

(8:50) Anton’s skepticism of the open letter

(12:14) Flo’s skepticism of the open letter

(16:35) Nathan’s support for the open letter

(22:52) Sponsor: Omneky

(28:00) Differences between Flo and Anton’s positions

(34:00) GPT4 is still dangerous

(42:30) Luddites/“Pausers” are on the wrong side of history

(47:44) Why not pause for 6 months?

(56:30) Anton and Flo debate robotics

(1:04:30) What we’re all scared of with AI

(1:27:45) Is there an asymmetric risk with pausing or not pausing?

TWITTER:

@CogRev_Podcast

@atroyn (Anton)

@labenz (Nathan)

@eriktorenberg (Erik)

@altimor (Flo)

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

Thank you Omneky for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.

More show notes and reading material released in our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack.com/

Thank you to Graham Bessellieu for production.

Nathan Labenz talks to Google Robotics researcher Keerthana Gopalakrishnan (@keerthanpg) about how they train robots at Google, and how robots contextualize their environment and complete tasks through supervised learning. They go deep on integrating language models for commands and how to approach translating them, as well as the importance of robotics safety. Keerthana also shares how we’re using robots to better understand ourselves, personal experiences using AI, and her hopes and fears about AI's impact on society.

This episode provides valuable insights into the current state and potential future of robotics and AI, with Keerthana's expertise offering unique perspectives on these fascinating topics.

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

RECOMMENDED PODCAST:

The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix’s culture deck Patty McCord.

https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics

(0:00) Preview to episode

(0:51) Sponsor

(1:09) Intro

(5:20) GPT analogy for robotics

(6:51) Domestic robots

(10:53) Description of Google robotics

(15:17) Controlling robots and supervised learning

(18:50) How robots complete tasks

(26:17) Using data to train robots

(30:45) Data operability 

(36:02) Integrating language models for commands

(38:58) How to approach translating commands

(42:49) How robots contextualize their environment

(47:02) Approach to robotics safety

(51:02) Tasks that robots can’t/shouldn’t do

(54:08) The hard bounds of robotics

(59:17) Frequency of inference

(1:03:50) Form factor in robotics

(1:08:38) Using robots to better understand ourselves

(1:12:23) Having robot friends and spouses

(1:17:44) Inference and latency

(1:19:17) The Google Robotics team

(1:21:07) AI tools Keerthana uses in her personal life

SPONSORS:

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive

*Thank you Omneky* for sponsoring The Cognitive Revolution. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work, customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off.

Twitter:

@CogRev_Podcast

@keerthanpg (Keerthana)

@labenz (Nathan)

Join 1000's of subscribers of our Substack: https://cognitiverevolution.substack

Websites:

cognitivervolution.ai

omneky.com

https://research.google/research-areas/robotics/

https://research.google/teams/brain/