"The Cognitive Revolution"
00:25:39 · Brian Zhou, Nathan Labenz
[00:25:39] S3: I don't think so necessarily, but I do think we have observed that with better models that currently exist right now, for example, they exhibit a larger willingness to fan out, do experiments, a better both ability to think of, like, what might be interesting experiments and execute on those experiments. Like, we definitely do see with worse models, more of, a general, like, linear approach to whether it's post training or other things. And then with more and more capable models that we observe and test, we do see this general behavior of, oh, it's, like, spending its first few hours trying to like fan out, do a bunch of different experiments, allocating its resources in a pretty intuitive way and doing what we might be thinking of. None of this is necessarily a Move 37 moment because a lot of this is just the agent thinking, oh, like, let me try an initial SFT batch and see how that affects the results, for example. Right? So we don't necessarily see anything that would be indicative of superhuman taste or anything else. But we definitely do see that more capable models are just better at long horizon work and better at the sort of autonomy that we would expect we would want with better researchers. [00:26:53] S0: Great to meet you. We'll be looking out for the next version of post train bench, and you've got me wondering what the agents will say about how much acceleration we're gonna see in AI over the next couple quarters. If they can predict the election as well as the experts, we should probably start asking them about the future of AI itself.
00:26:53 · Nathan Labenz, S5
[00:26:53] S0: Great to meet you. We'll be looking out for the next version of post train bench, and you've got me wondering what the agents will say about how much acceleration we're gonna see in AI over the next couple quarters. If they can predict the election as well as the experts, we should probably start asking them about the future of AI itself. Ad[00:27:14] S5: Hey. We'll continue our interview in a moment after a word from our sponsors.
00:27:19 · Nathan Labenz
Ad[00:27:19] S0: The Cognitive Revolution is brought to you and powered by Tasklet. I've been running Tasklet agents for almost a year, and they've become a major part of how the show gets made. Before every recording, one agent researches the guest and sends me a suggested outline of questions, complete with links to all sources. Meanwhile, another agent scores the overwhelming number of pitches that I'm getting from PR firms. And that's really the core idea behind Run your business on agents by giving them real jobs to do on an ongoing basis. Setup is incredibly easy. Just describe the work in plain English. Research a new sales lead, update the CRM, and draft a personalized reply. Tasklet connects to your business tools and can run around the clock on a schedule or when something happens, like a new email arrives. Each agent works with your tools and business context and remembers useful information across threads. You can also share agents, connections, and reusable skills with your team so the workflows that one person figures out become something the whole company can use. No developer needed. You decide what agents can do on their own and what needs your approval, and there are no per seat fees. You pay for usage, not for adding teammates. Start with one recurring job, like researching the people you're meeting, and then just keep building from there. Visit tasklet.ai and use code cog rev for $50 in free credits. That's code cog rev at tasklet.ai. Part three, paying up for compute. Thursday show came two days after election day when voters on 41 local data center measures sided against the data centers in all but one. Prakash went first.
00:29:12 · Prakash Narayanan
[00:29:12] S1: So I actually think the AI data centers have been very unpopular precisely because it has been seen as number one, Trump, number two, corporate corruption, and number three, this miasma of rich people making money and with plans to throw the rest of us out of work. So I think there is this entire entanglement of the population just not feeling well taken care of? If it's AI data center, it's such a big issue. Do you really believe if Trump had a 60% approval rating and unemployment was low and gas prices were low, you'd see this. And I think the answer is no. So I don't think actually data centers were a big issue, but I think they were an issue to tar the president with.
00:30:00 · Nathan Labenz
[00:30:00] S0: But at the same time, we do have these ballot initiatives. And, like, 40 ballot initiatives, from what I had read a little bit, is, like, one of the bigger waves of ballot initiatives. Like, these these sorts of things only come around when you have something like gay marriage, you know, was one where there was, like, a whole wave of initiatives. There was a a similar wave in terms of affirming or protecting abortion rights in the in the wake of the Roe v Wade, overturning. And so this does seem like there... And what what I'd like about ballad is I've long been a big direct democracy fan and advocate. Not to say that people never make mistakes, but it is something where you can unbundle your concerns about a particular issue from the broader political conversation. And the fact that we did see so much of that and that they all won, I guess, with one exception, does to me seem like a sign of things to come. And I would... You know, we'll see. Maybe we'll get the companies like cutting people in on the deal. I think, you know, we've talked about that a few times as well, and I I... People should get paid. I definitely am on board with that. But doesn't it seem like there is, like, a pretty real signal there to you that, like, yes, it's not the biggest thing, but it it does seem like there's a a pretty serious groundswell of people willing to work, you know, willing to go collect signatures. That stuff is not easy. You gotta stand on street corners and, you know, get strangers to sign petitions. And then it still has to pass on top of that. So the fact that so many of those were organized and so many of them passed does seem like a big signal of what we can expect to me.
00:31:48 · Prakash Narayanan, Nathan Labenz, Mike San Miguel
[00:31:48] S1: I agree, but I'm like, why? Why did they sign? Right? And is... Do you think they signed because it's the end of the world? [00:31:58] S0: No. No. Yeah, think your diagnosis was pretty right. [00:32:01] S1: Right. So I think the outcome of this is that if you're going to be Google or Meta, you're going to be paying Google or Meta prices for everything, for the land, for the labor, for the construction. [00:32:18] S0: Our Thursday guest was Mike San Miguel of Luxor Technology, which came up in Bitcoin mining and now trades new and refurbished GPU servers. When he says $5.50 to six fifty, he means 550,000 to $650,000 for one eight GPU server. [00:32:35] S1: So what what is what is trading frequently? [00:32:38] S2: Right now, it's mostly b three hundreds. [00:32:41] S1: Three hundreds are trading frequently. [00:32:43] S2: Yeah. [00:32:43] S1: And and do they trade as a chip or as a node or as a as a rack as eight eight eight together? Or how how does that work? [00:32:51] S2: Yeah. Great question. So typically for these servers, it's an HGX system. So eight GPUs per server, validated build built by an eight OEM. So you've got the HGX baseboard, dual CPUs, 32 sticks of RAM, depending on the size RAM, shared storage, east to west NICs. [00:33:14] S1: Do people trade used on you right now? [00:33:16] S2: Mostly for b 300, it's new. Occasionally, we'll see abandoned orders. They... They're new enough and they're profitable enough renting out that typically we we really haven't seen anything used hit the market yet.