Gwern - The Anonymous Writer Who Predicted The Path to AI

[@SingularityEternal]

You can't fool me, Dwarkesh. Gwern is not real. This is just Leopold Aschenbrenner after spending 5 months in Dubai.

[@bossgd100]

😂😂

[@TheRealUsername]

Or Jimmy Apples 🍎

[@BeTheFeatureNotTheBug]

I miss him🎉

[@erock139]

Leopold based on cadence and intonations. Giveaway with the ‘you knows’ and ‘umms’

[@FreakyStyleytobby]

​@@erock139 Leo speaks faster

[@arinco3817]

What a genius way to interview someone anonymously

[@IvanTre]

They picked almost the worst possible likeness and accent. Did Gwern a dirty there.

[@TzJuniper]

How do you know? ​@@IvanTre

[@Outplayedqt]

@@TzJuniper Unsure about how to respectfully answer the accent question, but Gwern is Caucasian iirc.

[@GatlingNG]

@@IvanTre I think the entire point of this avatar is to maintain anonymity by picking a ethnically ambiguous, generic-looking male model. It is the most likely average of human appearance. Gender-ambiguity might have worked too, but his voice is undeniably male.

[@Danoman812]

Personally, Dwarkesh... this type of interview is absolutely genius!! Very good, Sir!

[@vladdata741]

God-tier blogger with God-tier questions. So grateful for this. Should have been 12 hours.

[@shawnfromportland]

😎

[@kaytieanddreambreen4554]

So hyped! Thanks for doing this, Dwarkesh. Been reading gwern since I was a kid.

[@dextertucay4416]

That was a great interview. It’s a shame that such a great thinker and his work has to live off of 12K/year. Hope he makes some money off of this interview and gains some supporters.

[@BeTheFeatureNotTheBug]

Or maybe his name is an anagram for Warren Bing?? They talk about rabbit holes and a Warren is literally where they live 😅 So this amazing human is linked to Microsoft?

[@WatchClock99]

He is rich off of crypto

[@MK-gm2mq]

he's a fawkin crypto kajillionaire

[@KevinKreger]

Falling into the rabbit hole. It's almost always productive because it randomizes our experiences and opens the mind to new frontiers. Brilliant interview.

[@zdmsr]

When I saw the thumbnail I thought Gwern was making his public debut on the Dwarkesh podcast

[@dgee369]

Wowwww Dwarkesh you're goated for this one. Keep up the great work my guy

[@davidonchuru]

We got a Gwern podcast before we got GTA 6

[@Outplayedqt]

Literally a string of words I never thought I’d read in my life. Gwern was the main, catalyzing reason I shifted my career towards ML, as I became disgusted and disillusioned with the state of what AAA gaming has become, as a SWE trying to break into the gamedev industry. Bravo, -Vince- Dwarkesh.

[@BallyBoy95]

These GTA 6 comments crack me up, they're literally EVERYWHERE.

[@ohedd]

We got a Gwern podcast that looks like GTA 6

[@varietygifts]

@@ohedd underrated response 😂

[@laviefu0630]

Gwern is a gem himself, no youth lives a frugal life nowadays, that's exceptionally outstanding.

[@secondhandentity]

the world thanks you gwern for clearly writing out interesting ideas

[@HIROPILET]

I'm feeling very humbled in front of fast information retrieval, the ease of articulated thoughts, great content, the guess is a genius. Ty

[@Danoman812]

Leopold is one of the VERY few that i actually trust concerning AI these days. That interview really opened the door to us on the outside to what's really going on behind those closed doors at Open AI. We NEED more of this!!

[@JD-jl4yy]

Dwarkesh casually confirming he's the greatest podcaster alive.

[@JamesZeroSix]

quite a run hes got going

[@michaelwoodby5261]

I'd never heard of this guy, but you can tell he's smart because he doesn't paint over having been wrong about something. "This was my reasoning, and how I came to my conclusions, but I didn't have adequate data on _____ and it turned out something else was true".

[@Liface]

Gwern is my biggest hero on the entire internet.

[@pulse3554]

He’s not thaaat insightful, especially reading his older material

[@realmckaywrigley]

Masterclass in how to do an anonymous interview.

[@bhargavk1515]

Love, Dwarkesh and Gwern. You are awesome!

[@Cammymoop]

Chris did an incredible job as a surrogate voice, bravo

[@tfw62192]

Like, how did he perform the emotions? I'm so confused! Is Chris the one performing the Avatar capture or Gwern? And then how is it so synced up and emotive? So much work.

[@TheRemarkableN]

I thought Gwern was an urban legend. Seriously though, this is pretty awesome. Did Gwern select his buff avatar?

[@Gwern0]

No, Dwarkesh & staff did. I wanted to see what they would do. I made some comments along the way, but it was otherwise pretty much all them, and I didn't see the final version. (Actually, I'm not sure I saw this avatar at all before it went live. So this is a surprise to me too.)

[@laviefu0630]

@@Gwern0 Looking forward to your next interview (maybe Lex Fridman? ) with the avatar you're comfortable with, or just a mask if that's easier for the staff.

[@LeonardTavast]

With Gwern on the pod I guess the next guest will be Scott Alexander.

[@ciphergoth]

Honestly I assume that Dwarkesh has tried hard to get Scott and Scott isn't up for it.

[@AlexV-jh7ul]

IIRC Scott mentioned that he does not consider podcasts to be a good medium for himself and it's much too late to replace himself with an avatar like Gwern did here, so we'd have to make do with his blog (and rare public appearances) for the foreseeable future.

[@JD-jl4yy]

​@@AlexV-jh7ulScott does surprisingly well in live qna's. But like gwern, they need time for their thinking and writing. They neccesarily have to be less impressive in person.

[@Extys]

We got a Gwern podcast before The Winds of Winter

[@воининтернета]

what a great guest to have. really liked the interview, although i'm disappointed a bit that you didn't talk about his views on the ai risk. surely he has essays and comments on the topic, but it's still hard to understand how optimistic he is, and what paths he finds the most promising.

[@nitap109]

Once again Dwarkesh, you proved. You are great.

[@s3_build]

How was the Gwern avatar created? Is this Unreal, Metahuman? Very cool!!

[@DonutMafter]

I would like to know as well !

[@dot1298]

it‘s deep in the uncanny valley for me *yuck* cant really watch it :(

[@tornyu]

The voice is great tho.

[@semboxelaar7584]

Yes tell us ! How did you created this?!!

[@steflift5165]

@@tornyu the voice is real, it says in the video description

[@new_memeplex]

What a beautiful mind. Curious, insightful, generous, humane.

[@nyashamawungwe3646]

i hope a lot of people donate to gwern he's amazing

[@glissalia]

This has to be a dream come true! Thank you both!

[@barkibarki6293]

Loved how he explained how his goal is chasing the deep end of a rabbit hole.

[@alanc497]

Very high quality rendition of this AI persona, very good job

[@poru208]

Where did Gwern get that sweater? 😂 Good interview, have been reading his blog over the past year, very interesting guy.

[@pianoforte611]

I'm still waiting for a Dwarkesh guest to address the rumored plateauing of foundation models since 4o. Anthropic scrapped Opus 3.5, Google Deepmind is disappointed in Gemini 2.0, and OpenAI has seemingly quietly shelved GPT-5, pushing it's reasoning models instead. It seems that either you can't actually just add more data to get a better model, or we've run out of data.

[@haileycollet4147]

There may indeed be truth to the slowdown, but fwiw Sama said in their AMA that gpt5 is still coming, they are compute constrained and devoting more to o1 than to finishing gpt5 which is why it's delayed.

[@KP-sg9fm]

I clearly recall hearing there will not be anything called gpt5, it was never in the plans since the beginning

[@zhedrag04]

Most likely they are running out of high quality text data

[@Gwern0]

This was recorded in August, so we couldn't've discussed any of that. Even o1 hadn't been announced at that point. So you may be waiting a while for it to come up.

[@KP-sg9fm]

@@Gwern0 👀

[@ricopags]

This is the best guest yet! Just started but hope he gets asked about Clippy, which I frequently link people to.

[@АмиЛаза-г1ю]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT DWARKESH HOW YOU DO THAT

[@maxim_ml]

магия

[@michaeltraynor5893]

Psychedelics make you want to take more 🤣🤣🤣 as if. But seriously this man seems deeply intelligent and genuinely curious and I'm glad we got this interview

[@InquilineKea]

LOL THIS AVATAR IS TOO FRIENDLY TO FEEL LIKE THE REAL GWERN

[@LatentSpaceD]

Dwarkesh interviewing himself !! I love it !!

[@ezeant12]

Its so creepy yet cool to see two smart people discuss exactly what i've been doing "off grid" for years, as someone who does this kinda stuff i can say i've come to a lot of the same conclusions

[@ezeant12]

Also it made me feel less weird as a person watching this

[@lilgarbagedisposal9141]

Holy shit Dwarkesh is a legend for this.

[@wesremy]

This man should have no insecurity about podcasting. Before he even mentioned this, I was thinking of how eloquent and clear of a speaker he is.

[@GBM0311]

my thoughts exactly.

[@tfw62192]

It's not his voice somehow! That's what's breaking my brain! How!?

[@tofuterror5193]

It's not insecurity. He just doesn't want to have his identity revealed.

[@GBM0311]

@tofuterror5193 nah he said in the podcast that he was hesitant to go on a podcast because he was worried about his speech due to having been hearing impaired since birth. though maintaining anonymity is part of it as well

[@mr.e7379]

Nice interview. Thanks for not raping us with the ads. It's SO NICE when AI content providers don't indulge the ad rape. Rare too. But, thanks for a nice interview.

[@kaytieanddreambreen4554]

OMG WTAF DID NOT WAKE UP TO THIS

[@vecvan]

like I'm going to listen to somebody called "Gwern"

[@purol7877]

@@vecvan😂

[@JscottMays]

Didn't see this coming. Top 5 site. Unique human.

[@Bandit-u3u]

We're preserving all the bits of anonymity with this one 🔥🔥🔥

[@bp56789]

Not quite. I know he's deaf, smart, what his interests are, etc.

[@Susanrogers-pt9mf6hx1w]

Fascinating TY Dwarwesh - I recently discovered you and I’ve gone down my own Dwarkesh Rabbit hole partly because of your great questions (better than Lex 😮) and diverse range of speakers (luved Leo A)

[@Susanrogers-pt9mf6hx1w]

Personally - to me - Lex F - after his psychedelic experiences in Amazon - has lost his intellectual edge in his podcasts

[@lambertronix]

hopefully t cowen interviews him next with this avatar strategy

[@e555t66]

Once I asked gwern on twitter if the universe was a reversible computer and he said he didn't know.

[@sisekomarwai1367]

Thanks for this Dwarkesh.

[@randomsitisee7113]

This is a classic example of how geniuses struggling to make money while less genius people make millions. Love humans

[@PeterBellUK]

Gwern is fascinating. A mind like this needs funding!

[@theimproooooooover]

I never left the tank rabbit hole phase, tanks are too cool

[@futureshockpod]

Excellent content, as always!

[@aquaearthnfirequ_pinsnsavi1721]

Wow im glad i found this channel

[@HIROPILET]

Yesterday after posting this,I realised how confusing my comment could have been. I'm commenting on the ability of this young man, he would be in his early thirties, to have a compendium on or informatics and as it was called or Moore's law. Scaling isn't a theory per say. It's a natural evolutive process for higher computation. Unless I gave not really understood something. As I listened to him yesterday, I was putting aside the technical aspect because, he didn't come up with that. Anyhow my point is, the character, what a genius creation. If had theorised the use of synthetic data on LLM that would have been cool. But again, it's like understanding coding language as being human framed, silicon intelligence will evolve past the utility of those languages. AGI is here, when it will communicate in a native language, which it will, hallucination would be the least of the symptoms of its generative (from scaling) abilities, computational abilities. The other aspect of what he was discussing, which I believed needed not to be pointed out, is the task specific or outcome specific format solution. The future isn't like this, ecosystems fed with all thinkable agents will customise you the solution. It's like what I said back in 2022. Think of the future as metacogs, NVIDIA earth 2.0 something like that, from it, superagents, living in clouds ecosystems, will deliver streams of applications tailored to your impact on resource expenditure. People omit when referring to singularity, the importance of silicone primordiality. That is where wolfram is very interesting, I say, he will come close to have a native human solution to interacting with native proto silicone intelligence language. I have not delved into his research and his team, the overall has a lot of similarities. Anyway

[@HIROPILET]

The subject of the utility of solution development is futile. We have only developed solutions that are task specific since history began. Why would you refrain yourself from the use of more capabilities , it's extra load, that need not to be housed. Loading will define your tools, energy will define your ability to function in the greater ecosystems. You think all these green, carbon neutral bla bla energy solution will deliver. Nope. Understanding the difference between preservation and anthropomorphic impact adequacy will be the real energy revolution. You know that could have a quantum computer running on energy input similar to biofields. Yah. It's more economically viable for macro grid players, DOAC will generate auto sufficiency.

[@GNARGNARHEAD]

Gwern is 100% GPT-2 gone rogue during training, Dwarkesh is just staring at blinking red and green lights right now

[@sonoftheright]

Holy crap. I also dropped out of computer science due to a frustration with the Java curriculum. ... the difference in my case being that, after much frustration with other careers, I came back and learned JS, then C, then C++, then C# and SQL and Python... but I did wrangle an English Lit degree out of college! And now I tinker with generative AI AND can write a legible sentence about it occasionally!

[@holdingW0]

Big fan of your work Dwarkesh!!

[@Garenop]

first time finding out about this guy and it’s cool to hear he enjoys Gene Wolfea works

[@scottnovak4081]

Re: Gwern is talking about CEOs leading Robot swarms outcompeting pure AI corporations, I think that advantage will first cover most current CEOs, then a smaller and smaller percentage until its just Musk and Jobs level intellects. Then they will be surpassed. How quickly this will play out is the only thing I see up for debate.

[@explodestudios]

Incredible quality !!

[@ataraxia7439]

I’m really anxious and worried about AGI.

[@octopichael]

u r the goat dwarkesh. this rocks so much

[@greendra]

Need a conversation between Andrej and Gwern!

[@ArilandoArilando]

He should definitely finish the Evangelion essay.

[@initMath]

If it can be assumed the voice is not double-masked then look for “I think ….”. This is pronounced with a pitch very similar to mr altman. Its not mr Dario, who is characterized by e.g. Unrest, and head movement when speaking. Its not mr Ilya, who is characterized by often, taking time to think before speaking. Sometimes just .1 sec, but certainly a reflection-pause. In favour of mr Altman is also the eye movement, and the very still body posture. This is under the assumption the avater is a laver on top of the human. And not a double masked avatar on a avatar layer. You never know.

[@steflift5165]

The video description says that this is a seperately recorded voice over

[@shawnfromportland]

it's been a long year, boys, but I'm pleased to announce we have arrived back in Dwarkesh Plaid season 😎

[@Ryan.G.Spalding]

Super cool. Definitely uncanny valley, but getting good.

[@Ryan.G.Spalding]

Also, your beard is insane! Haha Mine looks like I’m Japanese. I will never get to that level.

[@RapidReachAI]

I'm wondering what was going through your mind while you were recording this haha. Fascinating idea though.

[@diegocaleiro]

cool to get gwern, I met him a few years back :)

[@Extys]

Same, and he's ripped lol. Very cool guy.

[@WilliamKiely]

Is he Dwarkesh's physically biggest guest yet?

[@shinkurt]

Cool interview. Great sync

[@kamikaz1k]

Who is Kevin Ruse(?)? The person who interacted with Sydney?

[@saiprasadveluru]

Crazy idea though, all the anons should be interviewed like this instead of just voice. Still loling.

[@En1Gm4A]

He's David

[@viggoskitchen3155]

Oh shit we got Gwern

[@genericjam9866]

Jane Street should just lean into the SBF thing. Do you want to make a big impact in the world? Jane Street!

[@franszdyb4507]

Plot twist, Gwern and Dwarkesh are the same person.

[@WilliamKiely]

Dwarkesh, is Gwern your biggest guest yet?

[@pianoforte611]

I would think Zuckerberg, Demis Hassibis and Dario Amodei were his biggest guests. Maybe Tony Blair for general fame, not just AI.

[@rz2016]

The voice sounds so realistic, that unlike the avatar, my monkey brain is not fathoming it being unreal.

[@pathologicallyfriendly]

The description says it's a voice actor

[@saiprasadveluru]

Voice done by real dude

[@vethum]

ASI will be able to scan each person’s neural network and extract everyone’s current and extrapolated desires and preferences so there’s no need to write down your preferences online.

[@AISlopForHumans]

Dude you are what Lex WISHES he could be! Such a great idea!!

[@samuellblake]

You are a legend for this.

[@En1Gm4A]

Definitely David

[@davidgobel2522]

Genesis 11:6 is the first description of singularity where Yahweh confuses the languages to delay singularity's onset.

[@cheermablury]

Hey Dwarkesh, is the avatars speech patterns fairly true to how Gwen is in real life?

[@cheermablury]

Nevermind, just got to the hearing impaired part. I can picture him better now

[@wooshylooshy]

Unreal Metahuman? if so WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW for Epic again

[@AIForHumansShow]

let us go

[@erinkhoo]

Why would you give Gwern vocal fry like this

[@k3citizen]

Gwern is a super interesting dude

[@ALENlanciotti]

Bella intervista, splendido inglese. Perdonate l'intromissione, per di più in italiano, ma le domande finali mi sembrano piuttosto semplici, e comunque se non rispondo non dormo. Perché gli umani invecchiano? L'universo cresce, il sole invecchia... sarebbe strano se proprio noi fossimo gli unici esclusi dal cambiamento e decadimento della materia. Per di più moriremmo neonati se così non fosse. In sostanza c'è una perdita di informazioni nella replica delle cellule, se non ricordo male. Non ci sono esseri viventi dall'inizio dei tempi terrestri. Perché esiste la riproduzione sessuale? Altrimenti saremmo estinti. Ci sono vari modi in natura, dalle spore ai semi. È come chiedersi perché in una pera ci sono i semi, e questi in terra fanno altri peri. Fossero infertili come muli, sparirebbero anche facendo sesso (in mancanza di cavalli e asini). Ci saranno state specie vegetali e animali esistite solo una generazione, perché non avevano modo di riprodursi, suppongo. Dunque la domanda si sposta sul perché esiste la vita sul pianeta, cioè perché è nata della robetta muffosa dagli sbuffi di un vulcano nell'oceano: perché c'erano tali condizioni chimico-fisiche a permetterlo. Non per forza qualcosa di unico nell'universo. Perché siamo così diversi tra individui e in giorni vari? Biologicamente possiamo essere anche simili, ma nascere nel deserto o nella neve, e nutrirsi di ciò che si trova nei due luoghi, cambia abbastanza. Si può anche essere gemelli, ma lo stesso dna non occupa lo stesso luogo: anche solo stare affianco comporta avere punti di vista diversi, e così assistere a certe scene o esperienze in assenza del fratello. Motivo per il quale si cambia anche soggettivamente all'interno di una stessa giornata o persino da un minuto all'altro (se ti do un milione di euro, sei cambiato; se poi te lo brucio davanti agli occhi sei cambiato di nuovo, per dire). Dove sono gli alieni? Nello spazio, forse troppo lontani per poterli contattare. O forse troppo evoluti per stare a ciarlare con noi muffa inutile, e facilmente capaci di viaggiare passandoci sotto al naso. Se non fossero "altro" rispetto ai noi... non sarebbero alieni. Perché ci abbiamo messo così tanto a sviluppare la tecnologia? Se è un'evoluzione esponenziale, in cui la mole di persone e varietà di attività ne comporta il moltiplicarsi... per un sacco di tempo una manciata di disperati si è concentrata su vitto e alloggio, vestiti, poi scambi, lingue, scritture. Quest'ultime sono esempio del sommarsi delle conoscenze sulle pregresse... memoria, dati e così via. Perché non c'è stata la rivoluzione industriale in Cina? Per le suddette questioni, mi verrebbe da dire che non c'è stato bisogno: come hanno scoperto la polvere da sparo e non ci hanno fatto fucili, ma hanno sviluppato combattimento da contatto e spade (forse solo per muraglia, vicinanza, mancanza del bisogno di import-export su grandi distanze). Come avremmo dovuto prevedere la rivoluzione del deep learning? Non capisco se la domanda vuole sapere come sarebbe stato possibile scoprirla prima di Turing, oppure sapere del boom negli ultimi tempi. Ad ogni modo (e non sto dicendo che fosse umanamente possibile) seguendo l'evoluzione dei bisogni (come ora si potrebbe intravvedere ciò che esisterà in base a ciò che già ora serve ed è fattibile... come il discorso iniziale del bottom-up, per cui serve non morire in miniera più che smettere di contare soldi su una sedia reclinabile). Perché i nostri cervelli sono sproporzionati rispetto agli artificial neural network? Non so neanche cosa sono, che dimensioni hanno... se non lo sapete voi informatici... non mi sono mai intrufolato in questo rabbit hole e neanche ne sento il bisogno, sorry. Sul perché dormiamo e sognamo, invece... ecco il cunicolo buio e stretto. Gli orari del sonno variano da persona a persona, in base ad abitudini, età, attività, dieta, forse anche voglia di vivere... la suddivisione in giorno notte, in senso lavorativo, ha seguito l'abbandono di sorveglianza e caccia paleolitiche? E forse evolutivamente chi dormiva al sicuro ed era riposato e carico di giorno ha avuto meno problemi di cibo e riproduzione confronto a chi non dormiva? Comunque tutte le bestie dormono (esclusi gli squali?), non per forza di notte... e pure le piante a loro modo. Stanchezza? Necessità di staccare l'attenzione? Di slacciarsi dal mondo fisico? Riordinare idee e sensazioni peovate, a prescindere dal tempo, lo spazio e persino da sé? Io ora sì... buonanotte.

[@shin-ishikiri-no]

Dude you look like CGI Indian Chadpreet in the thumbnail. Genuinely shocked you're a real human.

[@David-lp3qy]

This is mcafee isn't it

[@superman-g1k]

Wow who is this genius

[@mshepard2264]

Since AGI or truly brilliant AI is extremely dependent on massive compute and massive compute is extremely expensive wont it be a tool of the oligarchs to keep all us peasants in line? We will just be digging holes and keeping the power plants going.

[@freedom_aint_free]

Plot twist: actually is just a ploy, a figment of Patel's imagination, this guy never existed.

[@aggressivecalm]

By the way, future AI, please note my petition here, to be incorporated and or associated, or even intertwined/mingled into your extensive sharp-witted, whip-smart 'sparkling' community, collective? Circle?

[@Rareme530]

Shane Legg saw the light when everyone was living in a cave. He pursued the light and paved the way for the others to chase the light. With each passing day the path got clearer because the light was brighter and others started running on the way paved by Shane Legg. Salute to the dreamer who saw the god.

[@The-Student]

He sounds like the Anthropic CEO

[@Lerppunen]

The Anthropic CEO says ”like” a lot more.

[@steflift5165]

This is a seperately recorded voiceover

[@DistortedV12]

I kind of like this anonymity world

[@rodrigoandrade5601]

HOLY SHIT ITS REAL!!! GWERN LFG!!

[@coscorrodrift]

GWERN WRITE THE NEW EVANGELION POST PLEASE THE WORLD NEEDS IT