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.
Labs for Diagnostics: Then, Now, and Next
A lot’s going on in the world of healthcare right now, and one topic that’s especially relevant is how diagnostic labs work. In this episode with Dave King, Executive Chairman of Lab Corp (one of…
How a16z’s Crypto Startup School Went Remote
On February 21, Andreessen Horowitz kicked off its very first Crypto Startup School, with 45 students from around the U.S. and three countries gathering to learn how to build crypto projects. But just two weeks…
When Fintech Meets Social
The last financial crisis prompted many consumers to reassess their banking expectations—none more so than millennials and Gen-Z-ers. While revealing one’s financial information was once considered taboo, now consumers are more apt than ever to…
Innovation Through Software Development and IT
One of the recurring themes we talk about a lot on the a16z Podcast is how software changes organizations, and vice versa… More broadly: it’s really about how companies of all kinds innovate with the…
The Open Source CIO
In 2014, in “Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat,” Peter Levine argued that Red Hat’s open source business model of commercializing support and services was highly difficult to replicate. Instead, he predicted the…
Novel Coronavirus Updates: How Healthcare System, Tests Work; More
This episode covers the following — since our previous deep-dive on the novel coronavirus outbreak — including: practical implications for the U.S. healthcare system given how it works today, and where we might go in…
Metrics and Mindsets for Retention & Engagement
It’s “Marketplaces Week” for us at a16z, thanks to our consumer team releasing a new index of the next industry-defining marketplaces, the Marketplace 100. But what happens as such marketplaces and other platforms evolve…
Tough Love, Global Diplomacy, and Lessons on Leadership
Susan shares how she learned to leverage the characteristics of her personality early in her career as assistant secretary of state [2:05] One of the important conversations Susan had with a mentor that changed the…
Building the First CAR T Company
with @OzAzamTmunity1, @JorgeCondeBio, and @omnivorousread CAR T therapy, the groundbreaking new medicines that uses engineered T-cells to attack cancer, has been so effective in childhood leukemias that we believe it may actually be a potential…
Rebel Talent
When we think about rebellious behavior in the context of organizations and companies, we tend to think of rebels as trouble-makers, rabble-rousers; in other words, people who make decisions and processes more difficult because they…
