Is an AI Arms Race Inevitable? with Robert Wright of Nonzero Newsletter & Podcast

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, Nathan explores the complex intersection of AI development and international relations with Robert Wright, publisher of the Nonzero Newsletter. They examine the growing militarization of AI, US-China relations, and the concerning trajectory of what Wright calls "the chip war." Drawing from Nathan's recent experience at The Curve conference and an AI wargame simulation, they discuss the risks of an AI arms race and search for alternative paths to avoid catastrophic conflict between global powers. Join us for this crucial conversation about the future of AI governance and international cooperation.

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CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) Teaser

(00:00:59) Sponsors: Incogni

(00:02:20) About the Episode

(00:05:56) Introducing AI2

(00:09:56) Tulu: Deep Dive (Part 1)

(00:17:43) Sponsors: Notion | Shopify

(00:20:38) Open vs. Closed Recipes

(00:29:48) Compute & Value (Part 1)

(00:34:22) Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) | 80,000 Hours

(00:37:02) Compute & Value (Part 2)

(00:42:41) Model Weight Evolution

(00:53:16) DPO vs. PPO

(01:06:36) Project Trajectory

(01:20:39) Synthetic Data & LLM Judge

(01:27:39) Verifiable RL

(01:38:17) Advice for Practitioners

(01:44:01) Open Source vs. Closed

(01:49:18) Outro

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