Dwarkesh Podcast

Dwarkesh Patel
  • 4.7 (223)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Dwarkesh Podcast

Deeply researched interviews www.dwarkeshpatel.com

  1. 5 DAYS AGO

    Sarah Paine Episode 3: How Mao Conquered China

    Third and final episode in the Paine trilogy! Chinese history is full of warlords constantly challenging the capital. How could Mao not only stay in power for decades, but not even face any insurgency? And how did Mao go from military genius to peacetime disaster - the patriotic hero who inflicted history’s worst human catastrophe on China? How can someone shrewd enough to win a civil war outnumbered 5 to 1 decide "let's have peasants make iron in their backyards" and "let's kill all the birds"? In her lecture and our Q&A, we cover the first nationwide famine in Chinese history; Mao's lasting influence on other insurgents; broken promises to minorities and peasantry; and what Taiwan means. Thanks so much to @Substack for running this in-person event! Note that Sarah is doing an AMA over the next couple days on Youtube; see the pinned comment. Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Sponsor Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to https://scale.com/dwarkesh. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

    1h 48m

  2. JAN 23

    Sarah Paine Episode 2: Why Japan Lost (Lecture & Interview)

    This is the second episode in the trilogy of a lectures by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War College. In this second episode, Prof Paine dissects the ideas and economics behind Japanese imperialism before and during WWII. We get into the oil shortage which caused the war; the unique culture of honor and death; the surprisingly chaotic chain of command. This is followed by a Q&A with me. Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this event! Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Sponsor Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to scale.com/dwarkesh. Buy Sarah's Books! I highly, highly recommend both "The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949" and "The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War". Timestamps (0:00:00) - Lecture begins (0:06:58) - The code of the samurai (0:10:45) - Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism (0:16:52) - Bushido as bad strategy (0:23:34) - Military theorists (0:33:42) - Strategic sins of omission (0:38:10) - Crippled logistics (0:40:58) - the Kwantung Army (0:43:31) - Inter-service communication (0:51:15) - Shattering Japanese morale (0:57:35) - Q&A begins (01:05:02) - Unusual brutality of WWII (01:11:30) - Embargo caused the war (01:16:48) - The liberation of China (01:22:02) - Could US have prevented war? (01:25:30) - Counterfactuals in history (01:27:46) - Japanese optimism (01:30:46) - Tech change and social change (01:38:22) - Hamming questions (01:44:31) - Do sanctions work? (01:50:07) - Backloaded mass death (01:54:09) - demilitarizing Japan (01:57:30) - Post-war alliances (02:03:46) - Inter-service rivalry Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

    2h 8m

  3. JAN 16

    Sarah Paine Episode 1: The War For India (Lecture & Interview)

    I’m thrilled to launch a new trilogy of double episodes: a lecture series by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War College, each followed by a deep Q&A. In this first episode, Prof Paine talks about key decisions by Khrushchev, Mao, Nehru, Bhutto, & Lyndon Johnson that shaped the whole dynamic of South Asia today. This is followed by a Q&A. Come for the spy bases, shoestring nukes, and insight about how great power politics impacts every region. Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this! Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Sponsors Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. The Air Force, Army, Defense Innovation Unit, and Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office all trust Scale to equip their teams with AI-ready data and the technology to build powerful applications. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to scale.com/dwarkesh. Timestamps (00:00) - Intro (02:11) - Mao at war, 1949-51 (05:40) - Pactomania and Sino-Soviet conflicts (14:42) - The Sino-Indian War (20:00) - Soviet peace in India-Pakistan (22:00) - US Aid and Alliances (26:14) - The difference with WWII (30:09) - The geopolitical map in 1904 (35:10) - The US alienates Indira Gandhi (42:58) - Instruments of US power (53:41) - Carrier battle groups (1:02:41) - Q&A begins (1:04:31) - The appeal of the USSR (1:09:36) - The last communist premier (1:15:42) - India and China's lost opportunity (1:58:04) - Bismark's cunning (2:03:05) - Training US officers (2:07:03) - Cruelty in Russian history Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

    2h 13m

  4. JAN 9

    Tyler Cowen - the #1 bottleneck to AI progress is humans

    I interviewed Tyler Cowen at the Progress Conference 2024. As always, I had a blast. This is my fourth interview with him – and yet I’m always hearing new stuff. We talked about why he thinks AI won't drive explosive economic growth, the real bottlenecks on world progress, him now writing for AIs instead of humans, and the difficult relationship between being cultured and fostering growth – among many other things in the full episode. Thanks to the Roots of Progress Institute (with special thanks to Jason Crawford and Heike Larson) for such a wonderful conference, and to FreeThink for the videography. Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Sponsors I’m grateful to Tyler for volunteering to say a few words about Jane Street. It's the first time that a guest has participated in the sponsorship. I hope you can see why Tyler and I think so highly of Jane Street. To learn more about their open rules, go to janestreet.com/dwarkersh. Timestamps (00:00:00) Economic Growth and AI (00:14:57) Founder Mode and increasing variance (00:29:31) Effective Altruism and Progress Studies (00:33:05) What AI changes for Tyler (00:44:57) The slow diffusion of innovation (00:49:53) Stalin's library (00:52:19) DC vs SF vs EU Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

    1 hr
  5. I'm hiring!

    12/27/2024

    I'm hiring!

    In order to apply, or to refer someone else, please fill out this short form! For more information, visit dwarkeshpatel.com/roles. Our mission is to publish the highest quality intellectual content in the world, to find the David Reichs and Sarah Paines of every field, and to produce the best contemporaneous coverage of the emergence of AGI. I need the help of two key partners in order to achieve this mission. * General Manager: A killer operator who will run and lead our business. * Editor-in-Chief: A polymath and a shrewd promoter with amazing taste. If you refer somebody I end up hiring, I'll pay you $20,000. If you know someone exceptional who would be a great fit, please share this with them! FAQ Will keep updated. Q: What happened to the COO position you posted about a few months ago? Tons of super talented people applied. The role wasn't filled because I had incorrectly combined two distinct positions into one. This was not due to any shortcomings in the applicant pool, and I’m very grateful to everyone who applied! Q: What's the timeline? A: I'll keep applications open until January 20th and will start reviewing and scheduling interviews from January 8th. Early applications will be reviewed first. Q: I applied for the COO role previously - can I apply again? A: Yes! While many incredibly talented people applied for the COO role, I've now split the role into two more focused positions. If you applied before, you're welcome to apply again, though please note that I have already reviewed and considered your previous application. Q: What's the compensation? A: Compensation will be competitive with major tech companies. Q: What about location? A: I'm flexible on location but have a preference for hybrid work with some time in my SF office when in-person collaboration is valuable. Full remote is possible for exceptional candidates. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

    9 min
  6. Adam Brown – How Future Civilizations Could Change The Laws of Physics

    12/26/2024

    Adam Brown – How Future Civilizations Could Change The Laws of Physics

    Adam Brown is a founder and lead of BlueShift with is cracking maths and reasoning at Google DeepMind and a theoretical physicist at Stanford. We discuss: destroying the light cone with vacuum decay, holographic principle, mining black holes, & what it would take to train LLMs that can make Einstein level conceptual breakthroughs. Stupefying, entertaining, & terrifying. Enjoy! Watch on YouTube, read the transcript, listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite platform. Sponsors - Deepmind, Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI, partner with Scale for high quality data to fuel post-training Publicly available data is running out - to keep developing smarter and smarter models, labs will need to rely on Scale’s data foundry, which combines subject matter experts with AI models to generate fresh data and break through the data wall. Learn more at scale.ai/dwarkesh. - Jane Street is looking to hire their next generation of leaders. Their deep learning team is looking for ML researchers, FPGA programmers, and CUDA programmers. Summer internships are open for just a few more weeks. If you want to stand out, take a crack at their new Kaggle competition. To learn more, go to janestreet.com/dwarkesh. - This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Changing the laws of physics (00:26:05) - Why is our universe the way it is (00:37:30) - Making Einstein level AGI (01:00:31) - Physics stagnation and particle colliders (01:11:10) - Hitchhiking (01:29:00) - Nagasaki (01:36:19) - Adam’s career (01:43:25) - Mining black holes (01:59:42) - The holographic principle (02:23:25) - Philosophy of infinities (02:31:42) - Engineering constraints for future civilizations Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

    2h 44m

  7. 11/13/2024

    Gwern Branwen - How an Anonymous Researcher Predicted AI's Trajectory

    Gwern is a pseudonymous researcher and writer. He was one of the first people to see LLM scaling coming. If you've read his blog, you know he's one of the most interesting polymathic thinkers alive. In order to protect Gwern's anonymity, I proposed interviewing him in person, and having my friend Chris Painter voice over his words after. This amused him enough that he agreed. After the episode, I convinced Gwern to create a donation page where people can help sustain what he's up to. Please go here to contribute. Read the full transcript here. Sponsors: * Jane Street is looking to hire their next generation of leaders. Their deep learning team is looking for ML researchers, FPGA programmers, and CUDA programmers. Summer internships are open - if you want to stand out, take a crack at their new Kaggle competition. To learn more, go to janestreet.com/dwarkesh. * Turing provides complete post-training services for leading AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Gemini. They specialize in model evaluation, SFT, RLHF, and DPO to enhance models’ reasoning, coding, and multimodal capabilities. Learn more at turing.com/dwarkesh. * This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page. Timestamps 00:00:00 - Anonymity 00:01:09 - Automating Steve Jobs 00:04:38 - Isaac Newton's theory of progress 00:06:36 - Grand theory of intelligence 00:10:39 - Seeing scaling early 00:21:04 - AGI Timelines 00:22:54 - What to do in remaining 3 years until AGI 00:26:29 - Influencing the shoggoth with writing 00:30:50 - Human vs artificial intelligence 00:33:52 - Rabbit holes 00:38:48 - Hearing impairment 00:43:00 - Wikipedia editing 00:47:43 - Gwern.net 00:50:20 - Counterfactual careers 00:54:30 - Borges & literature 01:01:32 - Gwern's intelligence and process 01:11:03 - A day in the life of Gwern 01:19:16 - Gwern's finances 01:25:05 - The diversity of AI minds 01:27:24 - GLP drugs and obesity 01:31:08 - Drug experimentation 01:33:40 - Parasocial relationships 01:35:23 - Open rabbit holes Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

    1h 37m

  8. 10/02/2024

    Dylan Patel & Jon (Asianometry) – How the Semiconductor Industry Actually Works

    A bonanza on the semiconductor industry and hardware scaling to AGI by the end of the decade. Dylan Patel runs Semianalysis, the leading publication and research firm on AI hardware. Jon Y runs Asianometry, the world’s best YouTube channel on semiconductors and business history. * What Xi would do if he became scaling pilled * $ 1T+ in datacenter buildout by end of decade Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Sponsors: * Jane Street is looking to hire their next generation of leaders. Their deep learning team is looking for FPGA programmers, CUDA programmers, and ML researchers. To learn more about their full time roles, internship, tech podcast, and upcoming Kaggle competition, go here. * This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page. Timestamps 00:00:00 – Xi's path to AGI 00:04:20 – Liang Mong Song 00:08:25 – How semiconductors get better 00:11:16 – China can centralize compute 00:18:50 – Export controls & sanctions 00:32:51 – Huawei's intense culture 00:38:51 – Why the semiconductor industry is so stratified 00:40:58 – N2 should not exist 00:45:53 – Taiwan invasion hypothetical 00:49:21 – Mind-boggling complexity of semiconductors 00:59:13 – Chip architecture design 01:04:36 – Architectures lead to different AI models? China vs. US 01:10:12 – Being head of compute at an AI lab 01:16:24 – Scaling costs and power demand 01:37:05 – Are we financing an AI bubble? 01:50:20 – Starting Asianometry and SemiAnalysis 02:06:10 – Opportunities in the semiconductor stack Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

    2h 10m
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4.7
out of 5
223 Ratings

About

Deeply researched interviews www.dwarkeshpatel.com

Information

  • Creator
    Dwarkesh Patel
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2025
  • Episodes
    83
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dwarkesh Patel
  • Show Website
    Dwarkesh Podcast

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