Dwarkesh Updates AGI Timelines, Rainmaker Accused of Role in Texas Floods, Underground Robot Boxing in SF, Elon's 'America Party' | Dwarkesh Patel, Augustus Doricko, Shishir Mehrotra & Rahul Vohra, Ankur Nagpal, Preston Holland, Matej Cernosek

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Jul 7, 2025

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Dwarkesh Patel, host known for his insights on AI and economics, updates listeners on AGI timelines and the challenges of AI integration. Augustus Doricko, CEO of Rainmaker, takes on accusations regarding his company's role in the Texas floods, pushing for better regulation of weather modification. Preston Holland discusses tax implications for private jet ownership, while Matej Cernosek emphasizes the importance of maritime security technology. Shishir Mehrotra and Rahul Vohra outline Grammarly's strategic acquisition of Superhuman to revolutionize workplace email.

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INSIGHT

Why AGI Won't Arrive Anytime Soon: The Challenge of Continual Learning

Current large language models (LLMs) lack the ability of continual learning, which is the capability to improve and adapt over time by learning from failures and feedback, similar to humans.

Dwarkesh Patel explains that unlike human employees who learn and improve on tasks over months or years, LLMs start each session without memory of past interactions, resulting in an "amnesiac mind" that performs only moderately well without improvement.

This deficiency prevents LLMs from acting as true employees or agents capable of handling complex, evolving workflow tasks that require remembering previous lessons and adapting accordingly.

While reinforcement learning on specific tasks helps narrow capabilities, the problem's breadth and depth (handling thousands of varied tasks with context switching) make continual learning an exceptionally difficult challenge.

Dwarkesh further argues that breakthroughs in continual learning are key to achieving AGI and superintelligence, but current models and hardware limitations make this unlikely within the next 5-7 years, thus pushing realistic AGI timelines further out.

ANECDOTE

Robot Boxing Revives SF Scene

The underground robot boxing in San Francisco uniquely blends robotics, entertainment, and competition.
Teams build humanoid robots to fight, becoming cult heroes in a vibrant local scene.

INSIGHT

AI's Key Limitation: No Continual Learning

LLMs lack continual learning and memory across sessions, unlike humans who learn from experiences and feedback.
This makes AI less effective as an evolving employee since it forgets past interactions each time.

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(01:43) - Dwarkesh Updates AGI Timelines
(05:05) - Rainmaker Accused of Role in Texas Floods
(08:44) - Underground Robot Boxing in SF
(14:14) - TikTok Reportedly Preps US-Only App
(17:28) - Elon's 'America Party'
(21:26) - Oracle Cuts Cloud Prices for Feds
(22:45) - Meta Beats Authors' AI Suit
(24:54) - Dwarkesh Patel, host of the Dwarkesh Podcast, is known for interviewing leading intellectuals on topics like artificial intelligence and economics. In this conversation, he discusses the challenges of integrating AI into workflows, emphasizing the limitations of current language models in learning from feedback and adapting over time. He also explores the potential economic impacts of AI advancements, highlighting the need for effective management of public expectations and policies to address the transformative effects on the job market.
(58:04) - Augustus Doricko, CEO and founder of Rainmaker, discusses the recent Texas flooding, emphasizing that Rainmaker's cloud seeding operations were suspended prior to the event and did not contribute to the disaster. He expresses concern over proposed legislation by Marjorie Taylor Greene to ban weather modification, arguing that such measures are based on misinformation and could harm agricultural interests. Doricko advocates for transparent regulation and oversight of weather modification technologies to ensure their safe and beneficial use.
(01:26:40) - Shishir Mehrotra & Rahul Vohra are the CEOs of Grammarly and Superhuman, respectively, and together they outline how Grammarly’s acquisition of Superhuman will reshape workplace email. The two leaders describe a future in which Grammarly’s AI agents are woven directly into Superhuman’s lightning-fast inbox, allowing professionals to compose, triage, and act on messages far more quickly while pulling context from calendars, docs, and other workflows.
(01:56:00) - Ankur Nagpal, founder of Teachable and Carry, discusses his journey from selling his company and facing a significant tax bill to creating Carry, a platform that automates tax savings for business owners. He highlights the complexities of the U.S. tax code and emphasizes the importance of leveraging tax strategies to build wealth. Additionally, he explains recent legislative changes, such as adjustments to the Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) exemption and bonus depreciation, and their implications for entrepreneurs.
(02:12:56) - Preston Holland, founder and president of Prestige Aircraft Finance, discusses the impact of bonus depreciation on private jet ownership, explaining how owners can expense the full cost of a jet in the first year if it's used predominantly for business purposes. He highlights the importance of understanding tax implications, such as depreciation recapture when selling an aircraft, and emphasizes the need for consulting tax professionals to navigate these complexities. Additionally, Holland notes that while bonus depreciation can stimulate aircraft purchases, current higher interest rates may temper market enthusiasm compared to previous periods of similar tax incentives.
(02:32:14) - Matej "Matt" Cernosek is the CEO and co-founder of Adrenum, a company dedicated to securing the ocean through distributed sonar sensing systems for the maritime sector. In the conversation, he discusses his journey from studying at the Colorado School of Mines to founding Adrenum with Alex Chu, emphasizing the underappreciated nature of maritime intelligence and the need for advanced sensing technologies. He highlights the challenges of detecting modern threats like autonomous drug-smuggling submarines and the importance of integrating hardware and software to build scalable, intelligent sonar systems capable of distinguishing between man-made objects and biological entities in the ocean.

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