a16z Podcast
AI models feel smarter than their real-world impact. They ace benchmarks, yet still struggle with reliability, strange bugs, and shallow generalization. Why is there such a gap between what they can do on paper and in practice
In this episode from The Dwarkesh Podcast, Dwarkesh talks with Ilya Sutskever, cofounder of SSI and former OpenAI chief scientist, about what is actually blocking progress toward AGI. They explore why RL and pretraining scale so differently, why models outperform on evals but underperform in real use, and why human style generalization remains far ahead.
Ilya also discusses value functions, emotions as a built-in reward system, the limits of pretraining, continual learning, superintelligence, and what an AI driven economy could look like.
Resources:
Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ilya-sutsk…
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast…
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7naO…
Stay Updated:
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!
Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16z
Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z
Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX
Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711
Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg
Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures](http://a16z.com/disclosures.
Stay Updated:
Find a16z on X
Find a16z on LinkedIn
Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify
Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts
Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg
Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Creators, Creativity, and Technology with Bob Iger
with @robertiger @cdixon @smc90 A wide-ranging conversation with Bob Iger on the interplay between technology, content, and distribution; as well as Bob’s journey — and that of various creators! — especially as the industry evolved…
Best Clips of 2022
We’ve had some incredible guests join us on the a16z podcast this year, ranging from moonshot entrepreneurs, to top creators, to some of the most forward thinking technologists – all of which are busy shaping…
Pay Without Borders with Deel, GitLab, and Safetywing
The predecessor to the office was Florence’s Uffizi Gallery – an admin building to the Medici mercantile empire. That was in… 1560. In the centuries to come, work was revolutionized, with perhaps the most well-known…
Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization
In this episode, we tackle three carbon removal projects of varying scale, business models, and technical challenges. Biomass pyrolysis via Charm Industrial An electrochemical process via Travertine Mineralization via 44.01 We cover these companies through…
Ben Horowitz and Brian Armstrong on Building and Overcoming the Hard Things
If you’ve been following the news, you’ve probably heard of the recent FTX scandal. While there’s much still unknown, in this episode we get the unique opportunity to hear from Brian Armstrong – co-founder and…
Building a Marketplace for Carbon
In part 1 of our carbon removal series, we talked to Nan Ransohoff — Head of Climate at Stripe — about what it might take to jumpstart the market of carbon removal solutions. But what…
The Economics of Carbon Removal with Nan Ransohoff
What happens when there’s demand for a solution that doesn’t quite exist yet? Today, we bring on Nan Ransohoff to talk about this exact problem as it relates to carbon removal, and how Frontier —…
Ryan Petersen on Rearchitecting the Supply Chain
In today’s episode, we have a special treat. Flexport’s co-CEO and Founder, Ryan Petersen, chats with a16z Growth Editor Das Rush. They start with the question of why Ryan has chosen – of all the…
Neal Stephenson on The Future of the Metaverse
When Neal Stephenson coined “the metaverse” three decades ago, his book Snow Crash was found on the shelves of “science fiction”. While the book remains in that category, many of its concepts are now found…
The Factory of the Future with Chris Power
Today, we have an episode with Chris Power, the founder and CEO of Hadrian. Hadrian is a company trying to build the most efficient factories on the planet. In this conversation, we’ll introduce the audience…
