I Think Specialism Wins Over Generalism

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In episode 48 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Nathan Benaich.

Nathan is Founder and General Partner at Air Street Capital, a venture capital (VC) firm focused on investing in AI-first technology and life sciences companies. Nathan runs a number of communities focused on AI including the Research and Applied AI Summit and leads Spinout.fyi to improve the creation of university spinouts. Together with investor Ian Hogarth, Nathan co-authors the State of AI Report.

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Outline:

* (00:00) Intro

* (02:40) Nathan’s interests in AI, life sciences, investing

* (04:10) Biotech and tech-bio companies

* (08:00) Why Nathan went into VC

* (10:15) Air Street Capital’s focus, investing in AI at an early stage

* (14:30) Why Nathan believes in specialism over generalism in AI, balancing consumer-focused ML with serious technical work

* (17:30) The European startup ecosystem

* (19:30) Spinouts and inventions born in academia

* (23:35) Spinout.fyi and issues with the European model

* (27:50) In the UK, only 4% of private AI companies are spinouts

* (30:00) Solutions

* (32:55) Origins of the State of AI Report

* (35:00) Looking back on Nathan’s 2021 predictions: Anthropic and JAX

* (39:00) AI semiconductors and the difficult reality

* (42:45) Nathan’s perspectives on AI safety/alignment

* (46:00) Long-termism and debates, safety research as an input into improving capabilities

* (49:50) Decentralization and the commercialization of open-source AI (Stability AI, Eleuther AI, etc.)

* (53:00) Second-order applications of diffusion models—chemistry, small molecule design, genome editors

* (59:00) Semiconductor restrictions and geopolitics

* (1:03:45) This year’s State of AI predictions

* (1:04:30) Trouble in semiconductor startup land

* (1:08:40) Predictions for AGI startups

* (1:14:20) How regulation of AGI startups might look

* (1:16:40) Nathan’s advice for founders, investors, and researchers

* (1:19:00) Outro

Links:

* State of AI Report

* Air Street Capital

* Spinout.fyi

* Rewriting the European spinout playbook

* Other sources mentioned

* Bridging the Gap: the case for an Incompletely Theorized Agreement on AI policy

* Choking Off China’s Access to the Future of AI

* China's New AI Governance Initiatives Shouldn't Be Ignored