Lex Fridman Podcast

#503 – AI Crisis in Math: Navier-Stokes, Riemann Hypothesis & Complexity Theory

Ankur Moitra, Steven Brunton and Alex Kontorovich are three mathematicians who can speak to this incredible moment in the history of mathematics, when AI solved some of its hardest problems: Navier-Stokes, the quasi-Riemann hypothesis, the unique games conjecture and hundreds of other problems.

The Prof G Pod

The $400k Skill AI Can’t Replace | Deep Dive

AI is essentially looking at patterns and trying to guess what the next word should be. And such that it's a regression to the mean. AI takes everything to the average and people aren't interested in reading average or average doesn't grab your heart. It's something that's an outlier that you haven't seen before that resonates with you.

The Prof G Pod

"I Am Not Preparing for the Apocalypse" — Ethan Mollick on AI Doom

I don't stay up at night, which might be dumb, right? There's a lot of very smart people who think AI is going to murder us all. There's a bunch of smart people who think it's going to, you know, become a god and save us all. I tend to be really focused on like, oh, there's actually a lot of like humans are flexible.

The Prof G Pod

Ethan Mollick's AI Starter Kit: Which Models to Pay For and How to Use Them

The good thing about AI is it's very democratic, right? There's no better model than the ones you have access to today. You or every kid in Mozambique has access to the exact same tools that are at Goldman Sachs or Department of Defense or anywhere else.

The Prof G Pod

Fareed Zakaria: Trump Gambled Big on the Iran War and Failed

If it seems to do what we are all watching it do. This is almost like an evolutionary moment in human history. We are moving to a we we have figured out a way to make silicon sand think — that is mind-blowing right and what that could mean

The New York Times

Why the National Weather Service Is Pivoting to A.I.

A.I. is a perfect technology for weather because weather is a bunch of data, and finding patterns in data is exactly what A.I. does. Previously, when you were making a subjective forecast, you had to make a decision and you really didn't know how many credible alternatives there were. We have so much data now that there is a sense that we can actually understand the probabilities.

The Prof G Pod

Fareed Zakaria: Trump Gambled Big on the Iran War and Failed

The people closest to the technology for the first time are saying this is really scary. This can get out of control. And the reason I think is that this is not really another technology. I mean if if it seems to do what we are all watching it do. This is almost like an evolutionary moment in human history. We are moving to a we we have figured out a way to make silicon sand think

The a16z Show

Greg Brockman on Why OpenAI Says We’re Entering the AGI Era

what the AI assistant of the future might actually look like: persistent, proactive, personalized, and capable of doing work on your behalf rather than waiting for another prompt

The Week

Trump’s Canada Tariffs Are Backfiring in Red States | The Week

The danger isn't that AI makes us less intelligent. It's that it allows us to avoid the work through which intelligence develops.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Why the current tech backlash feels different

Lots of companies are just databases. Software engineering is verifiable, you can run it through the compiler and see if it works. AI has obviously gotten really good at making software. If you believe the world is just software, that means AI has gotten good, it's done. You can see the labs are talking about how they've achieved AGI or they will very soon and it is very much connected to the ability of AI to write software. I'm just not discounting that that's important. I'm just saying once you get outside of software, verifiability gets way harder.

TED

How AI Is Breaking the Internet (and What to Do About It) | Matthew Prince | TED

For the first time in human history, we have a mathematical model of all of human knowledge. It's not perfect, but that's essentially what all of the LLMs are.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Welcome to the AI crisis in math

It's funny that AI systems are all still pretty bad at elementary school arithmetic, but getting increasingly good at very high-end abstract math. That raises some big questions for the field of advanced math.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think we may be approaching a moment where many instances of AI are out there working autonomously for long periods of time, and that's when I think the world will really start to change in a way that people will notice, because you'll just see the pace of scientific discovery, economic growth, all of these things, start to accelerate.

The CEO Signal

Reed Hastings on Life After Netflix and the Next Wave of AI | The CEO Signal

For the last decade, AI has been getting roughly twice as good every year. Uh if that continues, which looks pretty likely, um then in 5 years, uh the AI will be 32 times smarter, more effective than it is today. You could either cut your workforce in half and stay in the same business lines, or you can use all these new resources to expand against your competitors.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

The economic growth of the last 200 years has been astounding, but I think we're at an even bigger inflection point now. If you can have AI that is better than human experts in every field, and you can deploy that AI at enormous scale, you can have things like a brilliant doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, whatever, available to everyone on the planet. And what that means for human wellbeing, for eliminating poverty, for doing things that we've never been able to do, I think is just difficult to overstate.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

The thing that I keep coming back to is that I think we're at this remarkable moment where if you look at the charts of what AI can do — the capability curves — and you look at what still needs to happen for us to change the trajectory of the world in a really fundamental way, I think we're going to live to see scientific progress compress by 100x. I think we're going to see the standard of living for people go up dramatically. I think we're going to figure out how to make the things that matter — energy, food, healthcare, education — cheap and abundant.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think we're at an inflection point where the thing that's going to matter the most is the cost of intelligence and the cost of energy, and I think both of those are going to come down dramatically. And if you can make intelligence and energy cheap and abundant, then I think all other scarcity starts to dissolve.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think we're approaching a moment where many instances of AI could be running, doing the work of the economy, doing scientific research. I think most people wildly underestimate how significant that would be. We would, in a short amount of time, compress decades of scientific progress.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think the most important thing that I have come to believe is that intelligence is the underlying commodity of the universe. And if we can have a much more abundant supply of intelligence, both human and artificial, we can solve problems that have stumped humanity for a long time.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

The thing that I keep coming back to is that intelligence and energy are the two inputs to wealth creation, and if we can make those cheap and abundant, the world will be able to solve the problems that have plagued us for millennia. And I think that within a not crazy long period of time, we will look back at the current time the way we look back at other transitions in history and think this is when things really changed.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Gavin Baker - AI Market Jitters - [Invest Like the Best, EP.485]

The most important thing I would say is that I think AI is the most important technology in human history, bar none. More important than the printing press, more important than electricity, more important than the internet. The reason I say that is it's the first technology that can potentially augment or replace human cognitive labor at scale.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think we are at an early transition point where the world is going to change more in the next 10 or 15 years than it has in really any comparable period in human history. And I want people to really take that seriously, not just as a throwaway line, but really think about what that means — that the things that are going to be true about the world 15 years from now will be things that seem unimaginable or at least unbelievable to most people today.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think most people are not appreciating how different the next 10 to 20 years are going to be, maybe even the next five years. I think we're going to get systems that are going to basically be able to do the work of a country, many countries, at once. The amount of scientific progress that I expect in the next decade, I think, would shock most people.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Gavin Baker - AI Market Jitters - [Invest Like the Best, EP.485]

The most important thing about AI is that it's deflationary for everything except compute and energy. This is very counterintuitive because people assume that a massive new technology wave is going to be inflationary. But AI is fundamentally deflationary for almost everything except the things needed to build and run AI.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think we may be approaching a moment where many instances of AI are out running experiments, doing the work of scientists, and humanity could potentially compress decades of scientific progress into just a few years. We could run experiments to defeat diseases that have plagued us for millennia, independently develop and test solutions to mental health crises, and actively drive economic growth in a way that could lift billions out of poverty.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think the most important thing that I believe that most people don't is that we will be able to build an AI that can do nearly anything a brilliant human scientist or engineer can do, and we'll be able to run a huge number of those simultaneously, and they will work all the time, and soon after that we'll be able to run systems that are much smarter than any human. And the consequence of that is that we can potentially compress the next hundred years of scientific progress into maybe a decade.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think we are at the beginning of an era where, for the first time, we will have AI systems that can do basically all cognitive tasks that humans can do. And then, after that, I think we'll have AI systems that can do cognitive tasks that humans can't do at all. This will be the greatest and fastest creation of wealth in human history — and a total transformation of what society looks like.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

The thing that I find most interesting and surprising about the current moment is that I think most people would say that the most impactful thing that's ever happened to humanity is starting to happen, and yet most people don't really believe it. They know it, but they don't believe it in their gut.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

The last 100 years of scientific and technological progress have been incredible, but I think the next 20 years will be the most transformative in human history. I believe we are on the verge of creating AI systems that will compress decades of scientific progress into just a few years, potentially solving diseases that have plagued humanity for millennia, defeating mental health crises, and creating economic growth in a way that could lift billions out of poverty.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think the thing I keep coming back to is that intelligence and energy are the two fundamental inputs to the universe, and if we have basically unlimited intelligence, we can hopefully also get to basically unlimited energy. And then, from those two things, you can just make so much.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think the thing that I've always believed most deeply is that intelligence is the meta-resource. If you have intelligence, you can figure out how to get all of the other resources. And if you can massively increase the amount of intelligence working on the world's problems, you can unlock solutions that we can't even currently imagine.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think we will look back on this moment as the single most important turning point in the history of human civilization. Truly, not hyperbole. The transition from a world where there was a fixed amount of intelligence and energy to a world where both of those are effectively unlimited is so profound that I don't think we are able to fully conceptualize what it will mean.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think AI is going to be the most transformative technology in human history, and I think it will compress potentially 100 years of scientific progress into the next decade or so. I think it will defeat diseases that have plagued us forever. I think it will help lift many people out of poverty. I think it will dramatically increase the quality of life for most people on Earth.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think we are at the beginning of what may be the most transformative period in human history. The economic growth we've had over the past few centuries—which felt fast—may look very slow compared to what's coming. And I think we have a chance to lift a billion people out of poverty, to cure diseases, to solve mental health problems at scale, in ways that have seemed impossible.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

The robots are going to do the things that we need to survive. And then humans get to do the things that we want to do. I don't know what that world looks like exactly, but it seems like a much better world than the current one where many people can't get great medical care, can't get great education, can't afford the things they need.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

The thing that I keep coming back to is that intelligence and energy are the two inputs to the economy, and if you have basically unlimited intelligence and energy, you can make almost anything. And we may actually be on track to get there.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

The thing that I keep coming back to is that intelligence and energy are the two inputs to wealth creation. And we have, in AI, a way to potentially radically expand the amount of intelligence available to humanity. If we can do that, and if we can find a way to get cheap, abundant energy, I think the world looks totally different in 20 to 30 years than most people are imagining.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Matthew Smith — Natural Gas: The Next Bottleneck - [Invest Like the Best, EP.483]

The United States is in the middle of an energy transformation, and natural gas sits at the center of it. The same fuel that was supposed to be a bridge to renewables is now being called upon to power the AI revolution, sustain manufacturing reshoring, and keep the lights on as coal retires faster than alternatives can replace it.

The a16z Show

AI Is Crossing the Frontier of Human Knowledge | Kevin Weil

modern AI models are beginning to solve problems that sit beyond the frontier of existing human knowledge

The Business of Tech

China’s AI and robot revolution

China may not be the leader in AI development yet, but it certainly is a leader in the adoption of AI.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Alex Sacerdote - How to Invest Through Technology Cycles - [Invest Like the Best, EP.477]

The other thing I'd say about AI is it has this strange property where the more you use it, the more you realize how transformative it's going to be. Most technologies, the more you use them, the more you understand their limitations. AI is almost the opposite — the more deeply you engage with it, the more you realize the ceiling is higher than you thought.

The a16z Show

AI, Growth, and the Future of Healthcare | Anish Acharya & Sachin Jain

Acharya argues that artificial intelligence is not simply another productivity tool, but a fundamentally new technology capable of performing work on behalf of people and organizations.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Dara Khosrowshahi - Uber's Bet on AVs, AI, and Building a Super-App - [Invest Like the Best, EP.476]

The real worry I have is that AI is going to accelerate the rate of change in terms of the skills needed and the jobs that will be replaced faster than the social fabric can absorb. It's not that jobs won't be created. I actually think more jobs will be created. But the question is, will the pace of job creation keep up with the pace of job destruction?

TBPN

AI Profits Surge, $70B Capex Surge Raises Investor Concerns, Automated Skin Exams | Diet TBPN

Ideally like every seat would have a co-pilot alongside of it. That I mean that's the idea, right? Uh and so the question is how quickly can they get that 20 million co-pilot seats up to 200 million 400 million.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION

Software brain is powerful stuff. It's a way of thinking that basically created our modern world. But software thinking has also been turbocharged by AI in a way that I think helps explain the enormous gap between how excited the tech industry is about the technology and how regular people are growing to dislike it more and more over time.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins wants data centers in space

But without Cisco's actual routers and switches and silicon — and the software to make those things work — there's no internet, no cloud, and no AI.

TED

What You Know That AI Doesn’t | Priyanka Vergadia | TED

AI is excelling at identifying patterns. It understands data. We humans excel at understanding what these patterns actually mean in this beautifully chaotic world of human behavior.

The Business of Tech

Too small is a tech myth – Mehran Gul on NZ’s real advantage

if one or two places can change their relative importance in technology within such a short time span, you know, five to seven years, and it's not just China, you know Canada, for instance, the outsize role that it has played in AI research. You know, much of the AI boom that we see today comes from just a couple of major advancements in AI that happened, for instance, alexnet, which was this seismic event in neural networks.

The a16z Show

What's Missing Between LLMs and AGI - Vishal Misra & Martin Casado

what's actually required for AGI: the ability to keep learning after training and the move from pattern matching to understanding cause and effect.