The Retort AI Podcast

Hosted by Nathan Lambert

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Feb 2025

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About the show

Distilling the major events and challenges in the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning, from Thomas Krendl Gilbert and Nathan Lambert. www.retortai.com

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38 recent

February 18, 202553 min

Tom leaves stealth: Hortus AI

An exciting week for Tom, who tells Nate about his company Hortus AI, whose mission is to make AI accountable to local communities. We cover a lot of classic Retort themes as Tom makes a case for what's missing from AI development, and how models could be more healthily integrated into everyday people's lives. Press release: https://hortus.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Hortus-AI-Press-Release_Feb25.pdf Company website: https://hortus.ai/ Link to whitepaper: https://www.newamerica.org/rethinkai/policy-papers/a-sustainable-path-for-ai-development/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

January 10, 202553 min

We ask again: Is AI a science?

Tom and Nate sit down for a classic discussion of the role of AI in the modern philosophy of science. Much of this discussion is based on Thomas Samuel Kuhn's influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . We ask -- is AI a science in the Kuhn'ian sense? Will the "paradigm" worldview apply to other sciences post AI? How will scientific institutions manage the addition of AI? We promised an AI for science reading list, so here it is: [Dario interview with Lex] https://youtu.be/ugvHCXCOmm4?si=1hnlvue8M4pV2TqC Levers for biological progress https://open.substack.com/pub/cell/p/levers?r=68gy5&utm_medium=ios X thread on theories of change in scienceshttps://x.com/AdamMarblestone/status/1845158919523664019 whitepaper linked by seb krier Dwarkesh physics pod https://open.substack.com/pub/dwarkesh/p/adam-brown?r=68gy5&utm_medium=ios — Nobel in physics went to ai Ai policy perspectives piece A new golden age of discovery https://www.aipolicyperspectives.com/p/a-new-golden-age-of-discovery Owl posting checking recent NeurIPS papers https://www.owlposting.com/p/can-o1-preview-find-major-mistakes based on idea from Ethan Mollick https://x.com/emollick/status/1868329599438037491 also another post on the subject https://open.substack.com/pub/amistrongeryet/p/the-black-spatula-project?r=68gy5&utm_medium=ios Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions intrinsic perspective https://open.substack.com/pub/erikhoel/p/great-scientists-follow-intuition?r=68gy5&utm_medium=ios Get The Retort ( https://retortai.com/)… … on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRetortAIPodcast … on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0FDjH8ujv7p8ELZGkBvrfv?si=fa17a4d408f245ee … on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-retort-ai-podcast/id1706223190 … Follow Interconnects: https://www.interconnects.ai/ … email us: mail@retortai.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

December 6, 202447 min

The Retort's biggest AI stories of 2024

We're back! Tom and Nate catch up after the Thanksgiving holiday. Our main question was -- what were the biggest AI stories of the year? We touch on the core themes of the show: infrastructure, AI realities, and and antitrust. The power buildout to scale out AI is going to have very real long-term impacts. Some links this week: * Ben Thompson's, The End of the Beginning: https://stratechery.com/2020/the-end-of-the-beginning/ * Miles Brundage's Substack: https://milesbrundage.substack.com/p/why-im-leaving-openai-and-what-im * Stochastic Parrots paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922 Thanks for listening! Get The Retort ( https://retortai.com/)… … on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRetortAIPodcast … on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0FDjH8ujv7p8ELZGkBvrfv?si=fa17a4d408f245ee … on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-retort-ai-podcast/id1706223190 … Follow Interconnects: https://www.interconnects.ai/ … email us: mail@retortai.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

October 11, 202444 min

The Nobel Albatross

Tom and Nate catch up on the happenings in AI. Of course, we're focused on the biggest awards available to us as esteemed scientists (or something close enough) -- the Nobel Prizes! What does it mean in the trajectory of AI for Hinton and Hassabis to carry added scientific weight. Honestly, feels like a sinking ship. Some links: * Schmidhuber tweet: https://x.com/SchmidhuberAI/status/1844022724328394780 * Hinton "I'm proud my student fired Sam": https://x.com/Grady_Booch/status/1844145422824243290 00:00 Introduction 04:43 Criticism of AI-related Nobel Prize awards 09:06 Geoffrey Hinton's comments on winning the Nobel Prize 18:14 Debate on who should be credited for current AI advancements 25:53 Changes in the nature of scientific research and recognition 34:44 Changes in AI safety culture and company dynamics 37:27 Discussion on AI scaling and its impact on the industry 42:21 Reflection on the ongoing AI hype cycle Retort on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRetortAIPodcast Retort on Twitter: https://x.com/retortai Retort website: https://retortai.com/ Retort email: mail at retortai dot com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

September 13, 202442 min

Claude Needs a Constitutional Convention

Tom and Nate catch up on recent events (before the OpenAI o1 release) and opportunities in transparency/policy. We recap the legendary scam of Matt from IT department, why disclosing the outcomes of process is not enough, and more. This is a great episode on understanding why the process technology was birthed from is just as important as the outcome! Some links: * Nathan's post on Model Specs for regulation https://www.interconnects.ai/p/a-post-training-approach-to-ai-regulation * Nathan's post on inference spend https://www.interconnects.ai/p/openai-strawberry-and-inference-scaling-laws Send your questions to mail at retortai dot com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

August 26, 202436 min

Avoiding the AI burnout

Tom and Nate catch up on core themes of AI after a somewhat unintended summer break. We discuss the moral groundings and philosophy of what we're building, our travels, The Anxious Generation, AGI obsessions, an update on AI Ethics vs. AI Safety, and plenty more in between. As always, contact us at mail@retortai.com Some links we mention in the episode: * The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail https://motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/emotional_dog_and_rational_tail.pdf * The Anxious Generation https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036 * Shadow Lake Lodge https://shadowlakelodge.com/ * Recent Dwarkesh Podcast https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/joe-carlsmith This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

July 19, 202434 min

What we are getting wrong about AI regulation

Tom and Nate catch up on the rapidly evolving (and political) space of AI regulation. We cover CA SB 1047, recent policing of data scraping, presidential appointees, antitrust intention vs. implementation, FLOP thresholds, and everything else touching the future of large ML models. Nate's internet cut out, so this episode ends a little abruptly. Reach out with any questions to mail at retortai.com Some links: - night falls on the cumberlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Comes_to_the_Cumberlands - hillbilly elegy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy - wired piece on data https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-training-data-apple-nvidia-anthropic/ - nate's recent piece on AI regulation https://www.interconnects.ai/p/sb-1047-and-open-weights 00:00 Intro 01:19 Training Data and the Media 03:43 Norms, Power, and the Limits of Regulation 08:52 OpenAI's Business Model 12:33 Antitrust: The Essential Tool for Governing AI 17:11 Users as Afterthoughts 20:07 Depoliticizing AI 26:14 "Breaking Bad" & the AI Parallel 28:11 The "Little Tech" Agenda 31:03 Reframing the Narrative of Big Tech 32:20 "The Lean Startup" & AI's Uncertainty This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

June 28, 202441 min

AI, feedback, and population public health

Tom and Nate revisit one of their old ideas -- AI through the lens of public health infrastructure, and especially alignment. Sorry about Tom's glitchy audio, I figured it out after the fact that he was talking into the microphone at the wrong angle. Regardless, here are some links for this week. Links: - Data foundry for AI https://scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f - Information piece on Scale AI ($) https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-a-14-billion-startup-is-now-hiring-phds-to-train-ai-from-their-living-rooms?shared=168f685a864ca709 - ChatGPT compounding math: https://chatgpt.com/share/2c19a357-acb2-441d-8203-946b74ce785c contact us at mail at retortai dot com 00:00 Intro 00:39 Chicago's Tech Scene and the "The Bear" 01:22 AI and Public Health: A New Framework 08:17 Lessons for AI from Sanitation Infrastructure 12:58 The Mental Health Impact of Generative AI 23:28 Aligning AI with Diverse Societal Values 27:06 Power Dynamics in AI's Development 33:02 The Need for a Neutral AI Research Body (NAIRR) 36:57 New Regulations for a New Era of AI 41:05 Outro: Join the Conversation This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

June 21, 202452 min

Apple sends a memo to the AGI faithful

Tom and Nate caught up last week (sorry for the editing delay) on the big two views of the AI future: Apple Intelligence and Situational Awareness (Nationalistic AI doom prevention). One of our best episodes, here are the links: * The Kekulé Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kekul%C3%A9_Problem * Truth and Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Method * Situational Awareness https://situational-awareness.ai/ 00:00 A Hypothetical Life: From Germany to AGI 01:20 Leopold Aschenbrenner: Situational Awareness and Extrapolation 02:01 The Retort: Apple vs. Doomsday AI 03:40 Credentials and Social Choice Theory 05:14 Dissecting "Situational Awareness": Hype vs. Reality 07:16 The Limits of Language Models: Are They Really Intelligent? 11:04 Apple's Vision: AI for Consumers, Not Conquerors 13:53 Silicon Valley Myopia and the Geopolitics of AI 18:25 Beyond Benchmarks: The Scientist vs. The Engineer 22:04 What is Intelligence? The Narrowness of Human Fixation 24:32 A Growing Disrespect for Language? 27:40 The Power of Talking to Language Models 32:50 Language: Representation or Revelation? 38:54 The Future of Meaning: Will AI Obliterate Art? 45:32 A Vision for AI as Public Infrastructure This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

May 31, 202443 min

Murky waters in AI policy

Tom and Nate catch up on many AI policy happenings recently. California's "anti open source" 1047 bill, the senate AI roadmap, Google's search snaifu, OpenAI's normal nonsense, and reader feedback! A bit of a mailbag. Enjoy. 00:00 Murky waters in AI policy 00:33 The Senate AI Roadmap 05:14 The Executive Branch Takes the Lead 08:33 California's Senate AI Bill 22:22 OpenAI's Two Audiences 28:53 The Problem with OpenAI Model Spec 39:50 A New World of AI Regulation A bunch of links... Data and society whitepaper: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/66465fcd83d1881b974fe099/t/664b866c9524f174acd7931c/1716225644575/24.05.18+-+AI+Shadow+Report+V4.pdf https://senateshadowreport.com/ California bill https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/california-senate-passes-sb-1047 https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB1047/id/2999979 Data walls https://www.interconnects.ai/p/the-data-wall Interconnects Merch https://interconnects.myshopify.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com