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Open Source Wins, AGI Is Here, and Scorsese’s AI Toolkit with CEOs of Cerebras & Black Forest Labs

July 10, 2026 / 01:03:57

This episode features Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras, discussing the rapid buildout of AI infrastructure and the demand for data centers. Key topics include the unprecedented scale of AI development, the insatiable demand from companies like OpenAI and Google, and the implications of AI on industries and society.

Feldman shares insights on the construction of massive data centers across the globe, including locations in Texas, Canada, and Europe. He highlights the enormous power requirements and the $25 billion backlog of orders for Cerebras chips, indicating that demand is outpacing supply.

The conversation also touches on the evolution of AI capabilities, including reasoning and intent understanding, and how these advancements are transforming the way businesses operate. Feldman emphasizes the importance of systems thinking in deploying AI technology effectively.

Additionally, the episode addresses the role of open-source models in AI development and the need for companies to maintain control over their intellectual property. Feldman expresses optimism about the potential of AI to create abundance and solve significant global challenges.

Overall, the episode provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of AI infrastructure, the challenges faced by companies like Cerebras, and the future possibilities of AI technology.

TLDR

Andrew Feldman discusses AI infrastructure buildout, demand for data centers, and the evolution of AI capabilities with a focus on Cerebras' role.

Episode

1:03:57
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We are in the race for super intelligence and uh Andrew Feldman is back uh and obviously CEO and founder of
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uh Cerebras doing inference chips pioneered the space had a successful IPO. We've talked about this a couple of
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times. We got to see each other in January at Davos. IPO happens. Uh the boys and I got to sit with you recently.
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>> That was fun >> at liquidity. >> That was really that was really fun. >> Had a great discussion with the boys. I
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wanted to deep dive with you about a couple of topics. The first one is the buildout of AI. We've never seen a build
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out like this since, you know, the Great Wall of China, >> right? Who knows? >> The pyramids. I mean, it feels like the
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amount of capital, time, and intelligent people on the planet dedicating themselves to the buildout of something.
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Um I I can't think of anything in our lifetimes with per perhaps uh you know before our lifetimes the war effort
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>> right >> this is a mobilization and a scale that we read about we hear about but you're
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actually doing it you have customers who are building data centers and you're a key piece of that
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to launch your first campaign today. >> Maybe you could just enlighten us in 2026. What is Cerebras doing and what is
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happening with this buildout out in Texas? These are some gigantic gigantic efforts. The the size and scope of what
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is being built, the physical size and scope. Usually when we talk about software or we talk about hardware,
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we're talking about chips or boxes and and they don't have the same sort of physical enormity. Right.
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>> Right. And what we're talking about now are data centers that are in the next
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several years going to use more power than the previous 50 years on Earth took. Wow. Right. We're talking about
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individual buildings the size of football fields that have more power coming into them than midsize cities.
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And they're being built they're being built across the US. They're being built in Canada. They're being built
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throughout the Nordics. are being built here in Paris and throughout France, in Europe, in the Middle East in nations
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that sort of weren't front and center in anybody's mind previously. You know, Kazakhstan, Tajjikstan are building out
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Georgia building out data centers of size. Armenia, everybody's sort of focused.
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>> Every country >> um and every state obviously in America feels they need to participate in this
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>> and the people who are buying the capacity, the open AI, anthropics, SpaceX, SpaceX AI,
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uh the Googles, they are insatiable right now. >> Yeah. and they're building how many years out
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when you talk to them? They were ordering chips from Cerebras before you were finished with the chips.
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They're putting orders in ahead of time. The irony is unlike many sort of exciting times in technology. They're
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trying to capture yesterday's demand, right? The demand is way outstripping our ability to build data centers and to
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fill them with hardware. >> All right? And so, you know, we have a $25 billion backlog,
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>> $25 billion backlog >> and we we are not alone in that that that OpenAI uh Anthropic, you go through
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this list of of uh Google wants more data centers, Microsoft wants more data centers, AWS wants more data centers,
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right? All of these players are not chasing sort of if you build it, they will come. They're chasing the demand is
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booked, >> right? How do we keep them from leaving? Right. And and that that's extremely
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unusual. >> It's very unusual. And now we have people who are, you know, we have a term
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for a token maxing. >> Yeah. >> And there's a great debate. Is this actually creating value? I'm curious
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where you stand. You know, is it even possible that this much demand could be created if value did not exist? There is
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clearly massive value happening. >> Yeah. But there's also massive experimentation.
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>> Oh, for sure. You know, I you know what I I I liken this to when we first started with uh AWS
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and it was so good to get around your own IT organization, >> right? >> That you told every engineer, yeah, go
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ahead, put on your credit card kite and sign up. >> Yeah. >> Right. And a lot of it was really useful
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and some of it was like, God, I wish we didn't do that. >> Yeah. And so for sure there's
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experimentation, but it doesn't mean that the net value isn't enormous. It it means some of it is going to go nowhere.
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>> And you know, it was the same. I remember when Costco opened up in in in in the Palo Alto area in 1988. And
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people used to shop Costco like they shop Safeway. They go down every aisle. >> Yes.
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>> And that's a horrible way to shop Costco because you end up with four things you
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didn't need and each was $22. >> Right. And as people got more sort of accustomed to it, you go to the back,
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you get the chicken, >> 18 cupcakes for the kids' birthday party, bang, you are strategic. And it's
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exactly the same. >> I think at first people opened up and said everybody as much tokens as you
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want. >> And the in enterprises, there's no open loop. We don't give sort of any resource
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unconstrained to people. And now we're jumping on saying, "Whoa, all right. These guys should have as much as they
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need. They're enormously productive over here. We can use maybe an open- source model, maybe a cheaper model over here.
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And now we're sort of running like a business and we're really seeing a certain type of person emerge who knows
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how to deploy this technology. Systems thinking, >> yeah, >> which developers kind of have innately
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CEOs tend to be great strategists and understand systems. Uh but this the intelligence is getting so much better
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every step along the way that I'm watching individuals typically startup founders but also venture capitalists
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and associates who work at my venture firm. They start playing with the tool and then the tool starts playing with
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them. They start to go, "Oh, I haven't clearly defined what my goal is. I don't understand what a system is. I don't
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under I've never heard about making a requirements document." And the software's like, "Do you have a
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requirements document? What's your goal?" The AI starts telling people, "You're token maxing and you need to get
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a little more focused here." >> One of one of my colleagues 20 years ago, a really smart smart computer
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scientist said, "Computers really dumb. They do exactly what you tell them." >> Yeah.
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>> And at first, prompting was like that, right? You modified your prompt a little
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bit and it changed the answer >> dramatically. >> Dramatically. And increasingly it's
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understanding what your intent was. >> Right. Right. And if you if you have a chance to to to play with Fable or or 56
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from from OpenAI, increasingly what you don't have to get the prompt just right.
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You don't have to be a prompt whisperer. Instead, you ask it and it says, "Well,
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here are some things and and by the way, maybe you wanted the chart to to to go two ways. You wanted a line and a bar."
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And it's like, "Well, that's exactly what I wanted. I didn't ask for it, but that is better. And and so it's it's
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understanding intent and that's a huge leap which if we were sitting here two years ago, the idea
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>> we would never have been able to predict in a short 24 months that it would go
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from being a great summarizer researcher of web results, >> right, >> to actually understanding your intent
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and then providing a solution and abstracting it all from you. >> That's right. That's right.
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>> Which is a very weird thing. I don't know if you've played with the Hermes agent yet.
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>> Yeah. >> Have you played with it yet? >> I mean, I asked it just this morning.
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Uh, and I I was given a secret bit tensor project that has the new um ZAI's uh model 52
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>> and they gave me >> GLM 52. Yeah. >> GLM 52. So, somebody in that Bit Tensor,
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I think you understand Bit Tensor, you've heard of it, the distributed >> um crypto project. And so they have all
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this extra capacity. I was a whisperer told me probably some capacity in China that has free energy. Okay, fine. So
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they gave me unlimited capacity. So I started having to do some really crazy jobs where I was saying like every hour
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I want you to tell me what the trends in the world are that nobody else has identified yet. And you can do whatever
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you want to do that. But my goal is to be the smartest trend hunter in the world. And I watched what it was doing
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in the background and it started debating itself >> on where it should find the things. He
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said, "Well, we should probably go to Hacker News and Reddit." And then I was like, "Yeah, but there's also social
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media and trends tend to manifest on Instagram." >> That's a reasoning model. You were
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watching a reasoning model work out. >> Yeah. Isn't that interesting? I mean, that's amazing. And and
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it was collapsed. So, as a civilian, >> right, who doesn't hit the uncolapsed moment, and if you were using chatbt 3.5
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or you were using 4.8, whatever it was and you haven't used this new level of reasoning and inference and unlimited
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compute essentially, >> right? >> It opened my eyes just this morning of what a world
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>> of unlimited tokens might look like, >> right? >> Cuz unlimited tokens, I believe, means
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unlimited reasoning. It does. What does that mean? Yeah, it's uh I mean if you run these
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for 25 or 48 hours, you get amazing things now and what what if by using Cerebrus we were 15 times faster and
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then you ran it for 24 hours, >> right? A and you got weeks or months worth of thinking.
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>> Yeah. And I mean it it is uh it is extraordinary. And I I think one of the things is people like Ilia and Sam in
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the early days were saying this was coming. >> Right. >> Right. And I think when you look back
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you say to yourself, "Holy crap." Those guys saw it. >> Yeah. They were They could see around
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the corner. >> That's right. And the rest of us could see like what? I'm not sure. It's when
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we had Sam on Allin uh at one point he uh and he said, "Oh, you know, I'd love to come on at some point." I said,
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"Sure, come on." And he he was talking about it. He said, >> you know, I said, "What's next?" He
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said, "Reasoning." I said, "Unpack that. What does it mean?" Well, >> understanding what your intent was just
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as you're saying and then figuring out a strategy and then maybe talking to other
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agents and other threads about like is this the right thing to do and vetting each other's work and I'm like wow we
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have come a long way from guess the next word >> right right fill the sentence in you
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know summarize this PDF >> now Cerebrus is at the center of this because this reasoning is inference
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>> this reasoning is inference and it's computationally intensive >> right >> right and So fast compute makes this
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sort of work fast and sort of tractable. It doesn't it by taking a huge amount of time to get a good answer.
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>> And so it's exactly the fact that that that this reasoning consumes a huge amount of tokens internally
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>> that allows a blisteringly fast machine like ours. And I I brought one because I
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I'm never far without you know when one costs half a billion to make you you bring it everywhere with you. Uh we we
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were um we were tossing this back and forth at Davos. >> Uh what's the model number of this one?
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Th >> this was in the first eight or 10. Um >> so this has a special place. >> This has a special place. I mean my wife
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says it's like I'm a kid with a a dirt bike for his 8th birthday. It was in his bedroom at night. I I carry him with me.
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>> I I mean when you have um you know your your next party at the house, I highly
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recommend just a little or something or I >> I think it would be like a great fit. It
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would be a great bit if you had some. >> That's right. Um, but what we're looking
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at here is the ability to do that reasoning at scale. And what is Moore's law for inference and
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for cerebrus? Do you have something internally you discuss as we're going to double this every x time
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period? So all chips prior to us in the processor world followed Moore's law. >> Got it.
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>> And we broke >> doubling every 18 months. >> Doubling about every 18 months. >> Got it.
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>> Um and we crushed it with this chip >> and we've carved out a whole new trajectory.
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And uh my view is in the next 18 months we'll be way over 2x >> interesting. And so, uh, I I think that,
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uh, early in an architecture, you have room to to do much better than what was traditionally Morris law. Now, if you've
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got a 20-year-old architecture like the GPU, it's much harder, >> right? >> You you have to rely on things like
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smaller geometry, >> right? Going to the next fab node. But in a newer architecture, you have a huge
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amount of room still to to to learn about the the work that that is being presented and make optimizations that
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that give you huge gains. H how do you run the company? Like just being the CEO now in the age of AI, um you have $25
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billion in demand. You have to you have to deploy at an just an incredible blistering pace. You have to hire
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people. You have to create a roadmap. I don't mean to give you a panic attack here.
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>> You have to keep up with somebody like OpenAI who's moving so unbelievably quickly. Yes.
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>> Right. And they're they're competitive. You got to keep up. >> Right. >> Right. Your hardware, your software,
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your deployments have to keep up with some of the fastest moving organizations in history.
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>> They're demanding customers. >> They are not they're not pushovers for sure. >> Yeah. A and also potentially competitors
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down the road. >> I look I I think there is so much demand right now that that that
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there is no silicon that will go unused, >> right? >> But why isn't OpenAI releasing Jalapeno?
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Why is Amazon making their own chips? You see this reoccurring trend? Is it a way to let you know to let Jensen and
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Nvidia know, hey, we can do this, too. So we we need good pricing. Is it is it a little bit of a flex that way or is
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that the future that they're going to be in your business? >> No, I I I think nobody likes being
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dependent >> and I I think some of the lessons learned by the the hyperscalers of the
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x86 world is they were dependent on Intel. And uh some of the lessons learned by uh
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the GPU makers was they were dependent on a small number of hyperscalers. >> Yeah.
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>> And they wanted more customers and so they set about to to help fund these neoclouds.
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>> And so I I think mostly it's about uh an opportunity to control at least an important part of your destiny.
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>> Got it. >> And I I think that's a very reasonable thing. I think you don't have to sort of
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make the fastest chip. You you just can't be entirely dependent on other people's chips.
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>> And that dependency has become a hot topic. Not sure if you caught the episodes over the last two weeks, but
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we've been talking over the last year about open source. I've been championing that a lot just because I was early into
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Open Claw and quickly started using Kimmy and was like, "Wait a second. I'm blowing out my claw tokens, but this
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Kimmy, I can't tell the difference. And then we started smart routing it and suddenly this open source started to
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figure out reasoning and the gap has >> suddenly closed this year. >> Well, I I you know, you you don't want
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to take your your Ferrari to the grocery store, >> right? You you you there there are times
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you want to drive your fun car. >> Yeah. >> Right. And there are times you want to
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throw the kids in and and don't worry if they're Cheerios on the floor. >> Minivan time,
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>> right? There's minivan time. And and and I think that as the sort of sophistication of the user grows, right,
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you're going to have hard problems and those are going to be frontier model problems. They're going to be open AI
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problems. They're going to be anthropic problems. Going to be Gemini problems. And behind that, they're going to be a
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lot of ordinary problems. Right? I mean, if you think about a company, you know how much time is spent cutting things
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out of workday and getting it in a different cell for Yeah. >> Right. Think about
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>> the cutting and pasting economy is real. >> That's right. And and this doesn't need,
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right, gold medal math. No. >> What what this needs is sort of rock solid open-source capabilities. Yeah.
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And if you think about what I mean, well, we've been thinking a lot about it in DNA, but a huge amount of DNA, all
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right, is not invention, >> right? And you you may not need sort of the most sophisticated agents for this.
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And another card that's turned over recently is some folks uh maybe have concerns with the
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ambition of the frontier models and maybe sharing their data data leakage and sovereignty of intelligence and
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they're saying hey our company is going to choose maybe we're in a regulated industry finance healthcare HIPPA you
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know FINRA all kinds of different regulations >> we need to have this on >> prem
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domestically and we'd liken an open-source version where we have uh a little bit more control. Yeah. And I I
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think >> are you seeing that now? >> We are seeing that for sure. And I I think OpenAI made a good call releasing
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OSS 12B some months back. That was a good open-source model. Um but I think in the US we need more domestic open
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source models. We need to give the world a choice, >> right? Right. If they want to run open
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source right now, it's OSS 12B or Chinese models. >> Nvidia has some in >> Nvidia has seen the same opportunity to
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push open- source models. I I I think giving them more power might might be sort of
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>> Well, I was about to that was you cut me off at the past like my understanding
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was Jensen was like, "Hey, we we don't even want to talk about these open source models we have because our
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customers, >> right? >> We're now going to be competing with Sam, Daario, Elon, >> uh Sergey, like do we want to be in that
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position, >> right? >> So, but we do need some more champions here and it's open source so people can
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fork it." Um, but that puts you in a more neutral position. >> That's right. We we we run today, we run
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GLM, we run Kimmy, we run the Quen set of models and we run OpenAI's models, the closed source ones. We run models
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for say Galaxos Smith Klein, which they wrote and developed. Um, we run models for uh our partner uh in the UAE uh G42
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and MBZ UAI. Yeah. Um that are are are their models that they designed. So we we have a a a wide variety.
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>> So sovereignty is a trend. >> Sovereignty is a trend. And I think uh the the government's actions with regard
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to fable and uh uh 56 um where they said, "Oh, whoa, let's think and then we can act."
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>> Um I I think sort of particularly here in Europe was a bit of a wakeup call. And when you saw this going down,
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there's a layer of partisanship in our country right now. It's pretty fervent. Daario is pretty explicitly, you know,
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not part of this administration. They they've been very adversarial. Both sides have been have admitted that
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they're starting to work it out now. So, it's hard, I think, for us not being in
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the room with these parties to understand what's partisanship, what's games here. But do you believe that what
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they released was truly dangerous for cyber warfare, for cyber attacks, and that if you were to rate Daario's
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not communication, because he's a very effrovescent communicator, um I think is a diplomatic way to say it, um but to
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have a scheduled rolled out release, >> right? We'll put aside the government's control of it, but do you think that is
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is a wise thing for us to do at this point? And do you think it's there was actually a major threat there?
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>> So what's interesting is I hadn't seen it before, >> right? And I I think you know if we just
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step back and say is it reasonable I don't know whe whether this was the right time but at a time
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>> that that that a model is sufficiently uh creative in its thinking that it poses a meaningful threat for the
00:21:50
government to say we'd like you to roll it out in steps. >> Yeah. >> Now this doesn't seem unreasonable to
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me. >> Not at all. >> Right. I mean we we do this with powerful pharmaceuticals.
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>> Right. We we we'd like I mean we're certainly not encouraging seven years of trial and the amount of paperwork and
00:22:05
all the garbage that has acred to the FDA, >> but with a powerful new technology, it
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certainly doesn't seem unreasonable to say, "Hey guys, um let's at least do some red teaming at the government so we
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know our defenses can block this." >> Yeah. Have we checked Have we checked >> the infrastructure of the country like
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>> of the NSA? Have we checked the infrastructure up? Right. And can you give us two or 3 weeks to patch any
00:22:32
obvious holes that are found? This doesn't seem to be >> an unreasonable thing for the government
00:22:38
to ask. >> Right. We But we in this very polarized time >> put on top of it, well, oh my god, it's
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President Trump doing it. And then you have to think, well, what if it was President OA AOC or President anybody in
00:22:52
between the the two extremes? >> I I think the polarization hurts a great deal. It hurts clear thinking,
00:22:58
>> right? It hurts clear thinking and and and both sides are going to do some dumb
00:23:02
things and some really smart things. >> Right. >> Right. And in fact, what I found is that
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the people in the government are are trying really hard. >> Um >> the rank and file,
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>> the rank and file are trying really hard and this is moving fast. And I I think
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that that an ability to to set aside some some of the the polarization and say h how do we do this in a reasonable
00:23:26
manner? I mean we we want Dario and Sam competing like crazy. It's awesome, right? It's good for the
00:23:34
technology. It's good for it's good for entrepreneurs to see even with thousands
00:23:39
of people this is what what you can continue to achieve. Right. >> Right. This is Google in the ass made
00:23:45
them get sharper. Amazon got everybody got better because of that. We want that and we certainly don't want to become
00:23:52
sort of a region where the first thing we want to do is regulate it. >> Right. >> Right. But as it gets more powerful
00:23:59
and the industry really should do a better job of regulating itself perhaps and and it did seem like they were
00:24:05
starting that process but then the communication was lacking maybe. >> Yeah. Uh, you know, I I think not only
00:24:14
are they racing hard, but they're inventing this as they go too. >> Yeah. Right. There's not a playbook. No.
00:24:21
>> Right. They're inventing the we we say, "Oh, just put on guardrails." Well, they
00:24:24
have to design the guard rails. >> Sure. >> Right. They the guardrails have an impact. Um, you know, one of the things
00:24:30
that fast does is it makes the guard rails less painful. And so that that we we discovered that in the last six
00:24:36
weeks. Yeah. is that the very guard rails can add time and make it feel slower and so fast ships like ours can
00:24:45
really help that. But so they're racing against competition. They're racing against their own sense of greatness.
00:24:52
>> Yeah. >> Right. Which is maybe even the biggest driver here. A and I think that they're
00:24:58
in earnest trying to think about how I do the right thing. A and all of those are are are mixed in this bucket. and
00:25:07
and sometimes you're on one side rather than the other. And >> yeah, and as you're saying, this is a
00:25:13
first time, right? When we when 3.5 came out, it wasn't like when we're using chatbt 2.5, 3.5, it was taking down
00:25:20
networks, but in talking to Nicash uh from PaloAlto Networks, I asked him like, "Hey, well, how would you grade
00:25:28
this?" And he said, "We put it against our software and we found bugs we were not aware of and
00:25:34
>> it killed them." >> Yeah. He said we had to stop everything we're doing and do patches for 6 weeks,
00:25:39
>> right? And and that's when you know, right? I mean, Nick leads, you know, maybe the leading security software
00:25:46
firm, right? >> And when it finds in an hour, right, tens of critical opens, you're
00:25:54
like, whoa, this is a powerful tool >> and we need to think and and maybe you you show it to a a group first, right?
00:26:02
May maybe you I I don't know what the right thing is but >> yeah I mean red teaming and uh we've
00:26:07
always had just when you were releasing the new version of um an operating system you know when you have your
00:26:14
iPhone you can say I want to be part of the beta. >> That's right. you know, right? And
00:26:18
there's like two other baiters that you don't even get the chance to opt into as
00:26:21
consumers. And those ones are for security. Those ones are for, you know, making sure you don't lose your data or
00:26:27
data. >> That's right. Disappear or leak or >> corruption. Any any number of these
00:26:33
things. >> I think we can also know that that there will be a massive data leak.
00:26:39
>> Of course, >> we we know this. Yeah. >> Right. And it's like uh Warren Buffett
00:26:43
talked about the reinsurance industry that you know something bad's going to happen. You don't know when.
00:26:48
>> Yeah. >> But you got to save up for it, right? You put money away for reinsurance,
00:26:53
>> but there will be a tornado. There will be a massive earthquake. I mean, we we
00:26:57
know this and we can do our best to plan, but there'll be a massive breach and they there'll be and we we have to
00:27:05
steal ourselves in advance and we have to think about it and think about the right response at the time and sort of
00:27:10
prepare ourselves for a future that is in specific unknown. But in general, we're pretty sure it's something's going
00:27:16
to happen. >> Something will happen and >> yeah, it's typically a black swan, right? By definition, it's going to be
00:27:25
something we didn't consider or a question we didn't know to ask, >> right? But but even knowing that there's
00:27:30
some unknown unknowns is a useful place to start. >> Yeah. What are we not asking ourselves?
00:27:36
>> That's right. >> With reasoning, the AI is going to be able to tell us, "Hey, schmuck humans."
00:27:40
>> That's right. By the way, here's what you're not thinking about. This is now my closing sentence when I do my
00:27:46
prompting is I need you to make me a prompt that will help me do this trend scouting for an example. And then I
00:27:53
always say at the end um please check your work >> right and uh then tell me what I haven't
00:28:01
considered in terms of my goals and uh give me ask me some questions every time you run the job and that has changed
00:28:08
everything because it's like I checked my work by the way this was incorrect right
00:28:12
>> and uh I'm wondering hey uh would you like me to also do this and some of the
00:28:16
tools like perplexity do that automatically they give you your next three prompts but if you give it
00:28:20
explicit instructions My lord is it um good at that. >> So, you know, over the course of the
00:28:27
last 10 years as I was raising money, I I thought one of the smarter questions I
00:28:31
got at the end of a conversation where someone asked, "What was the smartest question you heard that that wasn't
00:28:37
covered by what I asked?" >> It's incredible. right now. Now, that's somebody who's curious and thinking and
00:28:42
humble and and trying to >> sort of use this to get a picture of of the space and and to the extent that you
00:28:50
can ask the AI that >> and and and that it can sort of broaden your your view, you know, maybe what
00:28:56
question should I have asked >> to to be an expert in this? What what what would a a PhD level uh uh
00:29:04
questioner ask of this or a gold medal math? I mean I I think those are the sort of questions that you you you know
00:29:12
you don't even know how to ask >> which you know if you start thinking about AGI and super intelligence
00:29:20
um you know they're just definitions but they're important definitions I think to
00:29:25
kind of keep in mind because they're way points. >> That's right. And AGI I think I suspect
00:29:32
you'll agree with me that we've hit it. we just haven't exactly deployed it fully. We we we have artificial general
00:29:40
intelligence now. It feels like when we're talking about these reasoning moments and you know the the the ability
00:29:46
for it to be as smart as any human but >> let's talk about >> by any definition we had 20 years ago
00:29:51
we've hit it. >> Yes. >> Right. I mean if you think about oh there's a touring test blew it away.
00:29:56
Yes. >> I mean, you think about that that any period of time sort of 10, 15, 20, 30,
00:30:01
40, 50 years ago, we we we any definition we would have previously put forward, right?
00:30:07
>> We've blown past it. And so, which goes back to our previous point of like, do
00:30:10
we know the questions to ask 20 years ago, science fiction authors, you know, had their say and we answered all their
00:30:18
questions, >> right? >> If they were to look at this today, they'd be like, "Well, I'm out of
00:30:23
>> I'm out of questions. >> I'm out of questions. Sorry." And that's where sort of the the sort of listening
00:30:29
to people who we who sound sometimes like they're on the fringe, >> right? When when when Ilia was talking
00:30:36
eight or 10 years ago about the need for safety and then and you're like, "What?"
00:30:41
And dead right. >> Yeah. >> Right. When when when Elon was talking about building rockets and driving the
00:30:47
cost to to to near zero of of of a launch vehicle, you're like, "What?" And there it is. And now you can see and
00:30:55
that's I think that's why it's really fun to be a technologist now. >> Well, and with these tools specifically,
00:31:02
you know, we're talking about building all these tools and then the tools are starting to build themselves in this
00:31:08
recursive loop. >> That's right. >> We're kind of just starting to see people apply loops. Uh, in fact, loop
00:31:17
maxing became when I was doing my trend, when I did my trend thing, it kept picking up loop looping and it kept
00:31:23
picking up the maxing stuff and it created a buzz word for me, loop maxing, right? And then it
00:31:29
>> magically people started talking about loop maxing and I was like, "Wow, this
00:31:32
is really weird." It anticipated that this would other humans would come up with this word. But talk a little bit
00:31:37
about recursive and then the road to super intelligence. And do you have a way Andrew that you think about super
00:31:43
intelligence and what it will mean for humanity and how we will define it and how we'll experience
00:31:51
it? Yeah. >> I I I think let's begin on on on loop maxing or sort of recursive learning. I
00:31:57
I I think um I think what what what Sam and Ilia and then later Daario and and and Dana
00:32:07
Dennis saw um six years ago or five years ago was that um powerful recursive gains
00:32:19
are are exponential, >> right? you get better, you do it again. And if you continue to get gain, the the
00:32:26
the the slope of that curve is so steep. >> Yeah. >> And that um we're just beginning to see
00:32:34
that now. >> You ask it a question, you learn from the results, you ask it to do it again,
00:32:39
it the results get better and more information is added. Your answer gets better. You ask it to do again, it
00:32:45
covers more material. And the these sort of loops are producing sort of not a little bit better answers but vastly
00:32:53
better answers. >> Yeah. A >> and that is enormously powerful because we don't quite know where it ends,
00:33:00
>> right? >> You keep throwing compute at it. I mean, how much better does the answer get?
00:33:04
>> You know, we we run out of tokens or our budget or or or but but holy cow. I mean, when does the exponential stop or
00:33:12
does the answer keep going up and up and up to the right? >> Yeah. And that's sort of an enormously
00:33:17
interesting intellectual question right now. >> Yeah. Like when do we run out of
00:33:23
problems to solve and >> Well, that's right. And and when are are the the problems
00:33:29
no longer sort of intellectual problems and they're now people problems? >> Yeah.
00:33:35
>> Right. How to organize people to to get done what the AI asked for. >> Right. Right. I mean, as you know, in
00:33:41
running your company, a lot of your problems aren't hard intellectual problems. They're people working
00:33:46
together problems. >> Yeah. >> Right. And you >> motivation. >> Motivation. You spend a lot of time as a
00:33:51
leader spraying WD40 on your team. >> Right. >> Right. It just so so friction is reduced
00:33:57
and >> um how do we learn about those from AI? >> How do we get behavioral insight from
00:34:06
from AI? And and I think that's some of the things the world models are going to
00:34:09
bring us as they begin to watch human behavior. >> Yeah. We didn't even get to that. This
00:34:14
is going to be for another interview. But um when these things jump off the screens,
00:34:20
>> right, and they're in the real world and the recursiveness starts, not trying to
00:34:25
solve math problems and right, you know, humanity's most difficult ones, but hey,
00:34:30
you know, there's an incredible world out here and here's the palace of Versailles, right? You're just like now
00:34:35
we're like make me a new version of Salesforce and we're like hey you know what I'd like a palace of Versailles
00:34:41
I've got a hundred acres somewhere out Texas or Nevada I'll just send a thousand optimistes out there make me
00:34:48
the Palace of Versailles >> right >> sounds fantastical but the Palace of Versailles would seem fantastical to
00:34:54
people who lived a thousand years before it >> and it was fantastical I think to the
00:34:58
people who built it. >> Yeah. >> Right. Even to the builders, I I think they were awed
00:35:04
>> at it as they built it. >> Yeah. They're compounding. They're compounding recursive learning.
00:35:08
>> That's right. A >> and generations. We talked about you had a really such a great insight of in
00:35:13
building this place, you had generations of masons. >> Yeah. I I think in in in all these large
00:35:19
projects um often there were families uh who were specialists who you and uh you
00:35:26
you apprenticed under your father, your uncle and when you had a project that took 50 or 70 or 100 years, you might
00:35:32
have three or four generations of the same family, right? The same stonemason family working on the same structure
00:35:39
>> and passing on passing on the learnings, >> new innovations, >> right? which is what we've modeled with
00:35:47
this new >> That's right. >> models and and what you're building in the infrastructure.
00:35:52
>> It's pretty incredible when you think about it. >> Especially when we're sitting here and
00:35:57
the and that's what I mean I I think the the problem with human learning is um it
00:36:05
often moves it at the pace of a generation. uh and like uh elephants and other large mammals, we don't have
00:36:13
generations but every 15 or 20 years. And if you want to move really quickly across generations,
00:36:20
you want them happening more like Drosophili, like fruitfly. You want two a day.
00:36:24
>> Yeah. >> Right. Then and you see that in genetics, that's why we study them in
00:36:28
genetics because learning encoded in the DNA, you can study over thousands of generations.
00:36:34
>> And I I think that what we're getting is that equivalent in AI. We're getting
00:36:38
sort of learning so quickly over the equivalent of thousands of generations. >> Yeah. Darwin would be
00:36:46
>> in awe of this uh pace evolution. >> That's exactly right. You think about it
00:36:52
as there was I remember when I was getting my psychology degree and they were teaching us about paradigms and I
00:36:58
was like trying to understand how the paradigms shifted and the professor said to me uh Jason uh what you have to
00:37:06
understand is paradigms don't die. >> They don't. >> People do. >> That's right.
00:37:11
>> And that's how Freud >> he and Thomas Freud and Skinner and Young like it took them dying.
00:37:19
>> That's right. It took generation question it and that was 20 years sometimes 40 years as their students
00:37:28
maintained positions of leadership until someone said maybe we could do it differently and I I think what you're
00:37:34
seeing is this iteration is a shortening of the the the intergeneration gap and the learning is so fast.
00:37:44
It's uh always so great to talk to you because uh one it's just intellectually um uh so your your approach to it is so
00:37:54
intellectually rigorous but also um with so much poom in the world. I I feel so good that you're such an optimist about
00:38:02
this technology and you're building it >> with such thoughtfulness and it I think
00:38:06
for people who are hearing these horror stories about AI and job loss and everything, they need to understand
00:38:12
there are people like yourself who are building this in an incredibly thoughtful way and this is going to be a
00:38:17
net benefit for humanity that just is unimaginable. Yeah, >> we have a shot with this technology. So
00:38:26
not our children nor anyone they know dies of cancer. >> All right. I mean say it like that.
00:38:32
There will be some dislocation in the economy. Sure. There will be there was dislocation when cars came and and and
00:38:38
it was a bad deal to to to be a guy who shed horses, right? Or built carriages. >> But you got to also against that, you
00:38:45
know, make your tea of the cons and the pros. >> Yeah. >> Right. There's a shot that our children,
00:38:51
none of them nor their people they love will die cancer. And that that's one >> thing that we can work on wi with this
00:38:58
technology and we will have great purchase on >> and and I think you begin listing those
00:39:03
and then it's a more thoughtful discussion. >> Yeah. Unlimited energy, unlimited
00:39:08
calories, unlimited knowledge, unlimited education, unlimited housing >> and how we do it. We imagine imagine
00:39:15
sort of we know how to teach children and we don't do it right. Aristotle was a tutor to Alexander the Great. Socrates
00:39:22
was his tutor. We know that if you give a child a tutor and the tutor modifies the teaching for the child, they learn
00:39:29
better. >> That's not how we do teaching classes. Factory farming. >> That's right. We we teach to some sort
00:39:34
of mid-level. Imagine if we beat built agents that that taught children for their way of learning.
00:39:42
>> Right. >> Right. And here's a way we we've been doing it the same way for a thousand
00:39:45
years. And during that entire time, we knew how to do it better and we chose not to.
00:39:49
>> And and here's a way we can do it. Put that on the pro side. And so as long as
00:39:53
we're sort of thoughtfully and fairly writing the good and the bad, I I think it'll come out.
00:39:58
>> You got to get out there, Andrew, and keep communicating your version of the world because some people see around the
00:40:04
corner and they get a little nervous and >> Okay, fair enough. But I think the ledger, as you describe it,
00:40:11
>> is heavily weighted towards abundance. >> I think it'll create abundance for sure.
00:40:17
>> Massive abundance. >> Andrew, pleasure. Always a pleasure to see you. I'll see you in six months for
00:40:21
our checkup. That'll be great. >> Industries, capital, and intelligence are converging into a single
00:40:28
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00:40:52
Robin Rombach is uh the co-founder and CEO of Black Forest Labs. You are uh based in Germany in Black Forest which
00:41:01
is a city >> in Germany. >> A mountain range actually. >> A mountain range. >> Yes.
00:41:06
>> Where you grew up. >> Where I grew up. Yes. >> And uh you are working on open- source
00:41:11
image and video models. You worked at stable diffusion for a little bit. >> That's correct.
00:41:16
>> Cut your teeth on that. and uh you're known for the open source model flux and
00:41:22
maybe also for some closed source models. Tell us about the business of Black Forest Labs. What is the business
00:41:29
and what is the goal? >> 100%. Uh one uh quick addition, we are based in uh the Black Forest. It's a
00:41:36
town called Frybook and in San Francisco. We have like >> in San Francisco of course. Yeah.
00:41:40
>> Um we >> you're splitting your time or >> uh I'm splitting my time to a certain
00:41:45
degree. Um we um yeah started a company 2 years ago. Um me and my co-owners as you said like we've worked on stable
00:41:54
diffusion in the past. Before that we invented like an algorithm called latent diffusion which is basically like the
00:42:00
fundamental algorithm behind all of like generative models that are being deployed for image generation, video
00:42:06
generation, even like physical AI now. >> Yeah. Um it basically makes use of this
00:42:10
principle that uh you can compress natural data such as images, such as video, such as audio into a much more
00:42:18
like efficient representation and then train a transformer model on that. And um I mean this is the stuff why like you
00:42:26
know like JPEG uh MP3 and all of that works. And we basically translated that into like a neural uh algorithm uh a few
00:42:35
years ago when we were still like PhD students in uh in Munich actually. And uh then build on like on top of that we
00:42:42
build stable diffusion and then um on top of that uh yeah uh the generative models that we are
00:42:50
developing today and of course like the technology has advanced um but we are now tackling I would say models that are
00:42:59
really made for understanding like the whole world around us multimodal visual models uh pre-trained on images audio
00:43:08
data at the same time and we are now like entering a new paradigm which is combining that with uh something that's
00:43:15
called action prediction such that you can actually use the same model to make images to make videos to make audio and
00:43:22
to predict actions which means you can ultimately deploy it on a robot in the real world.
00:43:27
>> Wow. So from the image to the video, the audio and then eventually the real world
00:43:34
with robotics and a real world model because if you can make the image you and you can train the model that means
00:43:43
by default you understand the world. In order to make a video of the world you have to understand the world. Yeah.
00:43:50
>> And the objects in >> I I think that's Yeah. I think that's like a a really good like way to think
00:43:55
about it. Yeah, it's like it's like an intuitive way uh to interact with the world, right? Like I I
00:44:02
would say there's like these like complimentary forms of intelligence ultimately. There's like intuitive
00:44:06
intelligence and then there's like a deep reasoning layer. Now ultimately you need for like a kind of like complete
00:44:12
form you need both um and you need them to interact and I think like we've been approaching it more from like the
00:44:18
intuitive side um images is like a very natural way to approach this whole field
00:44:23
because it's not as computationally intensive as let's say video right but now yeah I think like we're combining it
00:44:30
it's converging into like a a multimodal model and yeah we see like exactly like
00:44:36
pre-training on videos gives like implicit understanding of the physics of interactions with the real world and
00:44:42
then you can get stuff like action prediction like robotics out of the same model. And with these models and the
00:44:49
training there kind of um been a limitation in creating videos and creating images
00:44:57
where the criticism of generative AI is it's a bit of a slot machine. I give a prompt, it gives me something back. But
00:45:06
how did it come up with that the training data, but you know, maybe I want a different style? Maybe I want u a
00:45:15
different color. Maybe I want a different uh you know, aesthetic. >> Yep. >> Has that how does that problem get
00:45:24
solved? And do you actually understand what's happening when the image is being made under the
00:45:31
hood? Yeah. Yeah, I I think like ultimately it's about like exposing as many like manipulation layers as
00:45:40
possible to like I don't know like a user or developer that builds on top of this model, right? And um I think like
00:45:48
we've seen that in the past with like in the past uh image models they basically
00:45:53
started from simple text to image systems, right? Then they've expanded into a text plus image to image systems
00:45:59
which means you could suddenly take an image like a real image or generated image um and iterate on that based on a
00:46:06
text font like edit it um modify it right and then this expanded into taking multiple images um and a text font and
00:46:15
combining them in a in a semantic way and producing new content. And the same principle now applies to video. And I
00:46:22
think now it becomes actually even more interesting when like all of these like modalities are actually combined inputs
00:46:27
and outputs of the same model. >> So let's talk about video. There's an announcement that you're
00:46:33
working with the greatest director of all time or living director Martin Scorsesei. We'll talk about that in a
00:46:39
second. Yeah. >> Fantastic. Uh but in a movie uh this promise of being able to make a movie in
00:46:47
which the camera angle uh the sound could be something that a Martin Scorsesei would
00:46:57
be proud to release to his fans. How close are we? And maybe tell us a little bit about this partnership, the
00:47:05
technology being able to make an actual movie like Good Fellas or a scene from Good Fellas, uh, versus where it is
00:47:14
today where you can make interesting five or 10 second clips and then maybe people struggle making 10 of them and
00:47:22
then they use some post- editing software to put them together, but you immediately understand this is not that.
00:47:30
It's not a movie. It's AI slop. It's cluji. It's doesn't pass the uncanny valley. Well, I think it's important and
00:47:41
that's at least like the view that we have is that um these AI models, they are a medium, right? They we don't want
00:47:48
to set like any way of how they are supposed to be used. We don't want to tell anyone especially not someone like
00:47:53
Martin Kazi how how is he supposed to use these models? Like he is one of the like greatest filmmakers ever. Uh it was
00:47:59
insane sitting in the same room with him multiple times and actually him seeing like exploring our models like as like
00:48:05
one of the like core researchers behind it was like just an insane feeling. Right. And at the same time I'm also
00:48:11
like a big fan. Um >> so you sat in a room with Marty Scarces and showed him your tools.
00:48:16
>> Exactly. Yeah. >> And what was his reaction? What what did he key off of? What was the thing that
00:48:23
he found most inspiring or interesting? Okay. Um I think it was really this idea
00:48:28
of like he has clearly um a a vision in his head of like a scene or a scenery where like maybe a new movie um will be
00:48:40
shot and he's trying to explore that and kind of like um we we we basically looked at the scenery of like a village
00:48:47
in Eastern Europe somewhere and he was describing it. we saw some outputs, we iterated on the outputs. Um, and
00:48:54
ultimately I think and that's what he said in the end is like the like getting like the mental picture of something out
00:49:00
of your head and communicating it in a visual way by making like these images um or the series of images um is
00:49:09
something yeah that just makes it like easier to communicate and con convey like an idea of like what is actually in
00:49:14
your head and I think that's like one of the like very interesting and powerful ways to use this technology and I think
00:49:20
ultimately >> is to get the inspiration to get the vision out of his head onto an image.
00:49:27
>> Yeah. I mean like language ultimately is like a little bit of like a lossy um
00:49:32
communication medium, right? >> Yeah. >> Um it's also interpreted in different ways, but then visual information is so
00:49:38
rich. So rich uh like an image or video, there's so much signal in it and it's just like another way of communicating.
00:49:45
And I think that's like one of the beautiful things that this technology ultimately enables. And I think like to
00:49:50
your question of making like full movies with I don't know like a video uh generation
00:49:57
model for example, I'm not sure if that is like the ultimate goal. Maybe it's like interesting to plug this into like
00:50:04
some kind of aic workflow and make like a very long video. And I think that's really cool to explore, but I think
00:50:09
ultimately like the real interesting use cases they come when you have like a human in the loop who iterates and uses
00:50:15
it as a medium. And I think this is this is at least like a perspective that that
00:50:19
I take um that makes it interesting and that this is most often when the most interesting outputs um arrive or are
00:50:26
actually being made. >> The brainstorming production level is so obviously a huge win for
00:50:32
>> you can paralyze your brainstorming basically. >> Yeah. And yeah, I like that. Paralyze
00:50:37
your brainstorming and and they have an analogy for this. They do storyboards and some of the great directors Ridley
00:50:43
Scott of Aliens and Gladiator was known for making his own. I also believe Spielberg was also like to sketch
00:50:50
Raiders of the Lost Arc and some of these. George Lucas was known for collaborating with many amazing artists.
00:50:57
Um even making miniatures and making storyboards for the Star Wars franchise. He had those people on full-time helping
00:51:04
him with that. So that's the obvious place to start. But if we look at startups, startups uh always want to try
00:51:12
to figure out how to do something cheaply. And people used to make a launch video for their startup for, you
00:51:19
know, $100,000, $250,000. So they take their $10 million venture raise and spend $250,000 on a launch video. I've
00:51:27
seen with a lot of the startups I'm investing in now, they'll just spend a week or two working with um you know, a
00:51:34
director to make a launch video. You've probably seen this trend. Yeah. And I'm sure people use Flux and some of your
00:51:40
models for this. Uh have you seen this? >> Yeah, of course. Yeah. >> Yeah. What's your take on that? Because
00:51:46
that feels like the early stage of storytelling. You're trying to communicate a product or service in a
00:51:53
fun, engaging, punchy 30-second, 90second way. Yeah. >> I mean, like again, like I think we
00:52:01
support these like exploration based on these tools, right? And I think ultimately it's great to see like all
00:52:07
different kind of like >> I don't know like launch videos products being built on top of like the same kind
00:52:13
of like base model or the same technology. Um and I think that's what's making it so interesting and also so
00:52:20
powerful. >> Yeah. And what else are people using the technology for? I understand there's a
00:52:26
Bitcoin movie coming out. instead of using a green screen in this Bitcoin movie. Um, I was talking to Galado, you
00:52:33
know, the woman who played the actress who played Wonder Woman. >> Oh, Galado, of course. She I was talking
00:52:38
to her at an event and she was telling me um it was the Breakthrough Prize uh Yuri Milner's event and she was telling
00:52:46
me she just did a Bitcoin movie and they did it on a sound stage without green screens
00:52:51
>> but all the actors just worked in like a sound stage >> and then all of the scenery behind them
00:52:57
was being done by Generative AI. That's a real movie. That's a $30 million budget movie. She said it would have
00:53:03
cost $150 million if they had to build sets and the film would have never been green lit. Are you starting to see
00:53:10
people use that in production? Not just in the back end and the ideation phase, but actually in production yet with your
00:53:18
tools. >> Yeah. >> Um, yeah, we see some use cases like that in production. I think like
00:53:23
high-end film production is kind of like the one of the like most demanding use cases. And I I think I'm glad that it's
00:53:28
being explored, but I also >> really want to um like it's I think it's important to see
00:53:34
that this technology is like on a trajectory and it's improving. It's improving rapidly. I don't know if I
00:53:39
look back at like where we started like a few years ago when I was doing my PhD in this field like the only thing that
00:53:45
you could do was like images of 64x 64 pixels. Now you can do like multi-inut videos, right, at like a high
00:53:53
resolution, but it's like it's not going to stop there. It's going to it's continue to improve and I think like
00:53:58
then it's going to unlock like even more of these like high-end use cases. But I
00:54:01
think the main thing >> before we get to that, yeah, >> hard to predict. I think hard to predict
00:54:06
and I think ultimately >> couple of years >> ultimately I think you still want to
00:54:11
have like the tool that enables like this human in the loop kind of >> of course. Yeah.
00:54:15
>> Um production workflow, right? But I think when I look at multimodal generative models um as a
00:54:25
whole, I think what really excites me is you can use the same kind of um AI model
00:54:33
to make a movie and deploy that as a brain on a robot. Ah, and I think this is like this is so interesting. Um and I
00:54:42
don't know like there's like some thoughts around trying that in the digital world, right? which would
00:54:48
be for example computer use remains to be seen if that is actually something that works or not but I think like the
00:54:54
technology is so powerful and so versatile and it's just just moving into that and all the all the talk around
00:55:02
like world models world action models all of that it's basically all the same and I think that's what's making it so
00:55:08
interesting and what I find like most exciting >> so do you believe that the technology
00:55:13
will be used to analyze or primarily to analyze is real world like here's a video of somebody you know making a
00:55:22
sandwich. Now we have the robot study it and make the sandwich or do you think there'll be a lot of synthetic data made
00:55:30
that then the robots will just study the synthetic or they're going to just in some way innately know based on all this
00:55:36
massive amounts of training data. Um I think it's a combination of prediction right and p prediction and is a way of
00:55:47
you can think about it as simulation as generation it's um predicting actions which is you have to understand the
00:55:54
input the visual inputs in order to actually predict a reasonable next action um and it's about perception it's
00:56:01
like you can only do that if you understand if you perceive the content you then you can only I don't know like
00:56:07
transform it into a new piece of content or predict an action or describe what you actually see in that um scene. And
00:56:13
the and the combination of all of that is I think um yeah is I think what's what's driving
00:56:20
it. There's not a single one of them. It's a combination of these thoughts. >> And what's the best way to get that
00:56:25
training data? Do you need to have people put on glasses, get a firsterson perspective, have them put on gloves so
00:56:33
you have that, >> you know, fidelity of understanding, hey, this glass is moving. I'm pouring
00:56:39
this glass. I'm putting ice into it, you know, and and here's how that's works and the splashing and the condensation
00:56:45
water so I can pick it up and not drop it because it's wet on the outside. Or is it going to be just, hey, take the
00:56:52
corpus of YouTube videos and the robots know exactly what to do because they'll find a thousand videos of people pouring
00:56:59
drinks. >> I mean, ultimately, I think you would want to go to a place where you could
00:57:04
like prompt a robot in context, right? as you can do with like a language model basically just tell it hey go and I
00:57:11
don't know pick up this glass with the I don't know orange juice or whatever it is yeah exactly
00:57:17
>> we're not there yet um but I think this this is like one of the goals and I think like how these models are deployed
00:57:23
currently is there's like a lot of like different hardware different robots that
00:57:28
are running in factories um that all have like some different kind of action representation that you need to kind of
00:57:35
tune the models towards right So in practice um what you do is you have like all this like visual understanding in
00:57:42
the models um and then you need only a very little bit of like a few hours of um fine-tuning data to adjust the model
00:57:51
on that specific task and I think the goal would be to kind of move away from that uh towards like as much in context
00:57:58
as possible but it is a little bit of a research problem. Uh, I I think that >> open source is kind of having a moment
00:58:06
right now. We've been discussing it on the podcast a whole bunch recently and people are also talking about
00:58:12
sovereignty. You have companies that own incredible IP libraries. I mentioned Star Wars before. Disney owns an
00:58:19
incredible library. What should your advice, what would your advice be to a company like Disney? Should they take
00:58:25
your open source software, train their own models or work with you to train their own models to control it and then
00:58:32
hey this is our IP? They've already made a point of working with chat GBT and saying hey you you can and cannot use
00:58:39
certain characters. In fact, OpenAI had a relationship with them that's for Sora
00:58:43
that's no longer happening but they officially licensed on the output some characters. So how do you think about
00:58:49
those major IP holders? What's your advice to them? Are you in discussions with them? We know about the Martin
00:58:54
Scorsesei or tour deal, but how do you think about content libraries? >> I think it is um look, I think like the
00:59:02
most interesting use cases of this like if you think about like content creation
00:59:06
um is in generating something making something that hasn't been there before, right? Like that that's a fundamental
00:59:13
like interesting aspect of this technology. And then I think like yeah when it comes to IP what we implement
00:59:19
for example on like our public facing tools is you cannot generate certain IP with these models right and I think
00:59:25
that's something that is a a sensible approach and then yes we do work with certain IP uh holders to develop models
00:59:35
together with them um some of them based on our open source models some of them based on like our more powerful
00:59:40
proprietary models but I think that is like a very like attractive >> value there what do you think that will
00:59:47
look like for consumers in another couple of years? What would potentially happen when you open up Disney Plus?
00:59:53
>> I mean, that's a good question. I'm not I'm I'm not in Disney, right? So, it's
00:59:56
up up to them to decide that. But, I think we want to enable them to build all kinds of stuff that they that they
01:00:01
that they envision. And I think we can support them. We can support like other companies in that space to
01:00:07
>> I don't know integrate the technology in the best possible way. I think like one
01:00:10
of the very interesting angles of it is that it is like it's becoming much faster. It's becoming more interactive.
01:00:15
I can imagine like a whole bunch of like very interesting interactive content creation tools that you could host on
01:00:21
Disney Plus Plus or elsewhere. >> I think the most interesting thing I've seen in this regard is uh fan films,
01:00:28
>> right? So there's a category before generative AI fanfiction. People would write their own Star Wars story.
01:00:36
Then there came fan films where people would dress up as Jedi Knights and record their own films. And George Lucas
01:00:44
said, "As long as you're not doing it commercially, you're not selling it, I give you permission to go make Jedi
01:00:50
movies." And they even released how to, you know, how-tos on how to make a lightsaber or, you know, sound files of
01:00:57
like how to make the lightsaber sound. Now, people are taking the stories that haven't been told from the Star Wars
01:01:06
universe and they're recreating them using AI. And for the fans, they're becoming quite
01:01:13
popular on YouTube. Uh Star Wars Stories Untold is, I think, the biggest one. It's getting millions of views per video
01:01:20
already. And I think that's really the future is letting the customer base pay a licensing fee or pay a fee, uh maybe
01:01:29
rent software or maybe based on the output and let them be creative with the characters, let them make their own
01:01:35
stories, and you could be in a unique position to empower that. >> No, 100%. I think like if you find like
01:01:40
a model that works for like the um IP owners uh but then also can enable like these super like creative customization
01:01:47
use cases I think that's great. Yeah. I mean like like I mean like for myself like I when I read a book or whatever
01:01:53
like watched the movie I had like so many like ideas how it could be done differently or this could have happened
01:01:58
right this is like so nice that you can actually enable people to visualize these ideas.
01:02:02
>> Yeah it's uh going to be incredible continued success with it. You have an office in San Francisco. You're hiring
01:02:09
people? Yeah, >> we do. Yeah, we just >> we raised a bunch of money. >> We raised a bunch of money. Uh we just
01:02:14
crossed 100 people. We're hiring in Germany and in San Francisco. >> Fantastic. Who are you looking for?
01:02:19
What's the right type of person, the right type of scale? >> Yeah. Um on the one hand, we're always
01:02:24
looking for researchers who have experience in large scale model training. Um experience in
01:02:31
diffusion model training, flow matching training. We're looking for engineers who want to be working with the
01:02:37
customers to you know develop these like customized um physical AI solutions or for example with like a IP owner like
01:02:46
develop these models jointly with them. Um we are looking for engineers who have
01:02:50
experience in just like large scale compute infra managing that um and making sure that the training runs runs
01:02:58
smoothly that we maximize our MFU and all that um and we're looking for people who have interest in
01:03:08
you know like uh getting the technology out there >> in the hands of people >> the the the for deployment of this
01:03:14
there's just so many great ideas and so many great partners for you I think you're going to with the open source
01:03:19
specifically. You know, it seems like the corporates really want to have some additional level of control, but they
01:03:26
also need the frontier models or your proprietary ones for some of those refined features. So, I think you have a
01:03:31
very bright >> future. All right. Continued success. Thank you so much for doing the show. Pleasure.
01:03:36
I'm going all in. I'm going all in.

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Episode Highlights

  • The Race for Super Intelligence
    A discussion on the unprecedented scale of AI buildout and its implications.
    “We've never seen a buildout like this since the Great Wall of China.”
    @ 00m 37s
    July 10, 2026
  • Cerebras' $25 Billion Backlog
    Cerebras faces an overwhelming demand for data centers and chips.
    “We have a $25 billion backlog.”
    @ 03m 54s
    July 10, 2026
  • The Evolution of AI Reasoning
    AI is evolving from simple tasks to understanding intent and providing solutions.
    “The AI starts telling people, 'You're token maxing and you need to get a little more focused here.'”
    @ 07m 11s
    July 10, 2026
  • Open Source Models and Sovereignty
    The trend towards open-source AI models is gaining traction in regulated industries.
    “We need more domestic open-source models.”
    @ 18m 48s
    July 10, 2026
  • The Polarization Problem
    Polarization in politics is hindering clear thinking and decision-making.
    “"The polarization hurts a great deal. It hurts clear thinking."”
    @ 22m 56s
    July 10, 2026
  • Recursive Learning's Power
    Recursive learning in AI is leading to exponential improvements in problem-solving.
    “"Powerful recursive gains are exponential, you get better, you do it again."”
    @ 32m 19s
    July 10, 2026
  • Optimism for the Future
    Despite challenges, there's hope that technology can eliminate diseases like cancer.
    “"There will be dislocation, but we have a shot that our children... will not die of cancer."”
    @ 38m 30s
    July 10, 2026
  • The Future of Teaching
    Imagine a world where education is tailored to each child's unique learning style.
    “Imagine if we built agents that taught children for their way of learning.”
    @ 39m 37s
    July 10, 2026
  • AI in Filmmaking
    Exploring the potential of AI to revolutionize movie production, including a partnership with Martin Scorsese.
    “It's not a movie. It's AI slop.”
    @ 47m 30s
    July 10, 2026
  • The Power of Visual Communication
    Visual information is rich and can convey ideas more effectively than language.
    “Language ultimately is like a little bit of a lossy communication medium.”
    @ 49m 29s
    July 10, 2026
  • The Future of IP and AI
    Exploring how AI can empower creative storytelling and fan engagement with major IPs.
    “I think that's really the future is letting the customer base...”
    @ 01h 01m 26s
    July 10, 2026

Episode Quotes

  • The demand is way outstripping our ability to build data centers.
    Open Source Wins, AGI Is Here, and Scorsese’s AI Toolkit with CEOs of Cerebras & Black Forest Labs
  • Sovereignty is a trend.
    Open Source Wins, AGI Is Here, and Scorsese’s AI Toolkit with CEOs of Cerebras & Black Forest Labs
  • "There will be a massive data leak.".
    Open Source Wins, AGI Is Here, and Scorsese’s AI Toolkit with CEOs of Cerebras & Black Forest Labs
  • "We have a shot with this technology.".
    Open Source Wins, AGI Is Here, and Scorsese’s AI Toolkit with CEOs of Cerebras & Black Forest Labs
  • It's not a movie. It's AI slop.
    Open Source Wins, AGI Is Here, and Scorsese’s AI Toolkit with CEOs of Cerebras & Black Forest Labs
  • I'm going all in.
    Open Source Wins, AGI Is Here, and Scorsese’s AI Toolkit with CEOs of Cerebras & Black Forest Labs

Key Moments

  • AI Buildout00:37
  • AI Reasoning Shift08:14
  • Open Source Trend18:48
  • Wakeup Call20:24
  • Dangerous Release20:54
  • AI in Film47:30
  • Hiring Surge1:02:10
  • Open Source Future1:03:22

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown