Some podcasts are self-recommending on the ‘yep, I’m going to be breaking this one down’ level. This was very clearly one of those. So here we go.
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As usual for podcast posts, the baseline bullet points describe key points made, and then the nested statements are my commentary.
If I am quoting directly I use quote marks, otherwise assume paraphrases.
What are the main takeaways?
- Ilya thinks training in its current form will peter out, that we are returning to an age of research where progress requires more substantially new ideas.
- SSI is a research organization. It tries various things. Not having a product lets it punch well above its fundraising weight in compute and effective resources.
- Ilya has 5-20 year timelines to a potentially superintelligent learning model.
- SSI might release a product first after all, but probably not?
- Ilya's thinking about alignment still seems relatively shallow to me in key ways, but he grasps many important insights and understands he has a problem.
- Ilya essentially despairs of having a substantive plan beyond ‘show everyone the thing as early [...]
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Outline:
(01:42) Explaining Model Jaggedness
(03:15) Emotions and value functions
(04:38) What are we scaling?
(05:47) Why humans generalize better than models
(07:00) Straight-shooting superintelligence
(08:39) SSI's model will learn from deployment
(09:35) Alignment
(17:40) We are squarely an age of research company
(22:27) Research taste
(25:11) Bonus Coverage: Dwarkesh Patel on AI Progress These Days
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First published:
December 3rd, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bMvCNtSH8DiGDTvXd/on-dwarkesh-patel-s-second-interview-with-ilya-sutskever
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
