John Palazza from CentML joins us in this sponsored interview to discuss the critical importance of infrastructure optimization in the age of Large Language Models and Generative AI. We explore how enterprises can transition from the innovation phase to production and scale, highlighting the significance of efficient GPU utilization and cost management. The conversation covers the open-source versus proprietary model debate, the rise of AI agents, and the need for platform independence to avoid ...
Mar 10, 2025•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Federico Barbero (DeepMind/Oxford) is the lead author of "Transformers Need Glasses!". Have you ever wondered why LLMs struggle with seemingly simple tasks like counting or copying long strings of text? We break down the theoretical reasons behind these failures, revealing architectural bottlenecks and the challenges of maintaining information fidelity across extended contexts. Federico explains how these issues are rooted in the transformer's design, drawing parallels to over-squa...
Mar 08, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast We speak with Sakana AI, who are building nature-inspired methods that could fundamentally transform how we develop AI systems. The guests include Chris Lu, a researcher who recently completed his DPhil at Oxford University under Prof. Jakob Foerster's supervision, where he focused on meta-learning and multi-agent systems. Chris is the first author of the DiscoPOP paper, which demonstrates how language models can discover and design better training algorithms. Also joining is Robert Tjarko L...
Mar 01, 2025•2 hr 38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Clement Bonnet discusses his novel approach to the ARC (Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus) challenge. Unlike approaches that rely on fine-tuning LLMs or generating samples at inference time, Clement's method encodes input-output pairs into a latent space, optimizes this representation with a search algorithm, and decodes outputs for new inputs. This end-to-end architecture uses a VAE loss, including reconstruction and prior losses. SPONSOR MESSAGES: *** CentML offers competitive pricing for G...
Feb 19, 2025•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Prof. Jakob Foerster, a leading AI researcher at Oxford University and Meta, and Chris Lu, a researcher at OpenAI -- they explain how AI is moving beyond just mimicking human behaviour to creating truly intelligent agents that can learn and solve problems on their own. Foerster champions open-source AI for responsible, decentralised development. He addresses AI scaling, goal misalignment (Goodhart's Law), and the need for holistic alignment, offering a quick look at the future of AI and how ...
Feb 18, 2025•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Daniel Franzen and Jan Disselhoff, the "ARChitects" are the official winners of the ARC Prize 2024. Filmed at Tufa Labs in Zurich - they revealed how they achieved a remarkable 53.5% accuracy by creatively utilising large language models (LLMs) in new ways. Discover their innovative techniques, including depth-first search for token selection, test-time training, and a novel augmentation-based validation system. Their results were extremely surprising. SPONSOR MESSAGES: *** CentML offe...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sepp Hochreiter, the inventor of LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) networks – a foundational technology in AI. Sepp discusses his journey, the origins of LSTM, and why he believes his latest work, XLSTM, could be the next big thing in AI, particularly for applications like robotics and industrial simulation. He also shares his controversial perspective on Large Language Models (LLMs) and why reasoning is a critical missing piece in current AI systems. SPONSOR MESSAGES: *** CentML offers competitive ...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Professor Randall Balestriero joins us to discuss neural network geometry, spline theory, and emerging phenomena in deep learning, based on research presented at ICML. Topics include the delayed emergence of adversarial robustness in neural networks ("grokking"), geometric interpretations of neural networks via spline theory, and challenges in reconstruction learning. We also cover geometric analysis of Large Language Models (LLMs) for toxicity detection and the relationship between in...
Feb 08, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nicholas Carlini from Google DeepMind offers his view of AI security, emergent LLM capabilities, and his groundbreaking model-stealing research. He reveals how LLMs can unexpectedly excel at tasks like chess and discusses the security pitfalls of LLM-generated code. SPONSOR MESSAGES: *** CentML offers competitive pricing for GenAI model deployment, with flexible options to suit a wide range of models, from small to large-scale deployments. https://centml.ai/pricing/ Tufa AI Labs is a brand new r...
Jan 25, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Join Prof. Subbarao Kambhampati and host Tim Scarfe for a deep dive into OpenAI's O1 model and the future of AI reasoning systems. * How O1 likely uses reinforcement learning similar to AlphaGo, with hidden reasoning tokens that users pay for but never see * The evolution from traditional Large Language Models to more sophisticated reasoning systems * The concept of "fractal intelligence" in AI - where models work brilliantly sometimes but fail unpredictably * Why O1's improved...
Jan 23, 2025•2 hr 32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Laura Ruis, a PhD student at University College London and researcher at Cohere, explains her groundbreaking research into how large language models (LLMs) perform reasoning tasks, the fundamental mechanisms underlying LLM reasoning capabilities, and whether these models primarily rely on retrieval or develop procedural knowledge. SPONSOR MESSAGES: *** CentML offers competitive pricing for GenAI model deployment, with flexible options to suit a wide range of models, from small to large-scale dep...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jürgen Schmidhuber, the father of generative AI, challenges current AI narratives, revealing that early deep learning work is in his opinion misattributed, where it actually originated in Ukraine and Japan. He discusses his early work on linear transformers and artificial curiosity which preceded modern developments, shares his expansive vision of AI colonising space, and explains his groundbreaking 1991 consciousness model. Schmidhuber dismisses fears of human-AI conflict, arguing that superint...
Jan 16, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Professor Yoshua Bengio is a pioneer in deep learning and Turing Award winner. Bengio talks about AI safety, why goal-seeking “agentic” AIs might be dangerous, and his vision for building powerful AI tools without giving them agency. Topics include reward tampering risks, instrumental convergence, global AI governance, and how non-agent AIs could revolutionize science and medicine while reducing existential threats. Perfect for anyone curious about advanced AI risks and how to manage them respon...
Jan 15, 2025•2 hr 42 min•Transcript available on Metacast François Chollet discusses the outcomes of the ARC-AGI (Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus) Prize competition in 2024, where accuracy rose from 33% to 55.5% on a private evaluation set. SPONSOR MESSAGES: *** CentML offers competitive pricing for GenAI model deployment, with flexible options to suit a wide range of models, from small to large-scale deployments. https://centml.ai/pricing/ Tufa AI Labs is a brand new research lab in Zurich started by Benjamin Crouzier focussed on o-series style reaso...
Jan 09, 2025•1 hr 27 min•Transcript available on Metacast AI professor Jeff Clune ruminates on open-ended evolutionary algorithms—systems designed to generate novel and interesting outcomes forever. Drawing inspiration from nature’s boundless creativity, Clune and his collaborators aim to build “Darwin Complete” search spaces, where any computable environment can be simulated. By harnessing the power of large language models and reinforcement learning, these AI agents continuously develop new skills, explore uncharted domains, and even cooperate with o...
Jan 04, 2025•2 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Neel Nanda, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind, leads their mechanistic interpretability team. In this extensive interview, he discusses his work trying to understand how neural networks function internally. At just 25 years old, Nanda has quickly become a prominent voice in AI research after completing his pure mathematics degree at Cambridge in 2020. Nanda reckons that machine learning is unique because we create neural networks that can perform impressive tasks (like complex reaso...
Dec 07, 2024•4 hr 43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jonas Hübotter, PhD student at ETH Zurich's Institute for Machine Learning, discusses his groundbreaking research on test-time computation and local learning. He demonstrates how smaller models can outperform larger ones by 30x through strategic test-time computation and introduces a novel paradigm combining inductive and transductive learning approaches. Using Bayesian linear regression as a surrogate model for uncertainty estimation, Jonas explains how models can efficiently adapt to specific ...
Dec 01, 2024•2 hr 46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Professor Swarat Chaudhuri from the University of Texas at Austin and visiting researcher at Google DeepMind discusses breakthroughs in AI reasoning, theorem proving, and mathematical discovery. Chaudhuri explains his groundbreaking work on COPRA (a GPT-based prover agent), shares insights on neurosymbolic approaches to AI. Professor Swarat Chaudhuri: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~swarat/ SPONSOR MESSAGES: CentML offers competitive pricing for GenAI model deployment, with flexible options to suit a...
Nov 25, 2024•2 hr 45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nora Belrose, Head of Interpretability Research at EleutherAI, discusses critical challenges in AI safety and development. The conversation begins with her technical work on concept erasure in neural networks through LEACE (LEAst-squares Concept Erasure), while highlighting how neural networks' progression from simple to complex learning patterns could have important implications for AI safety. Many fear that advanced AI will pose an existential threat -- pursuing its own dangerous goals once it...
Nov 17, 2024•3 hr 30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Prof. Gennady Pekhimenko (CEO of CentML, UofT) joins us in this *sponsored episode* to dive deep into AI system optimization and enterprise implementation. From NVIDIA's technical leadership model to the rise of open-source AI, Pekhimenko shares insights on bridging the gap between academic research and industrial applications. Learn about "dark silicon," GPU utilization challenges in ML workloads, and how modern enterprises can optimize their AI infrastructure. The conversation explores why som...
Nov 13, 2024•2 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eliezer Yudkowsky and Stephen Wolfram discuss artificial intelligence and its potential existen‑ tial risks. They traversed fundamental questions about AI safety, consciousness, computational irreducibility, and the nature of intelligence. The discourse centered on Yudkowsky’s argument that advanced AI systems pose an existential threat to humanity, primarily due to the challenge of alignment and the potential for emergent goals that diverge from human values. Wolfram, while acknowledging potent...
Nov 11, 2024•4 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Francois Chollet, a prominent AI expert and creator of ARC-AGI, discusses intelligence, consciousness, and artificial intelligence. Chollet explains that real intelligence isn't about memorizing information or having lots of knowledge - it's about being able to handle new situations effectively. This is why he believes current large language models (LLMs) have "near-zero intelligence" despite their impressive abilities. They're more like sophisticated memory and pattern-matching systems than tru...
Nov 06, 2024•3 hr 43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Anil Ananthaswamy is an award-winning science writer and former staff writer and deputy news editor for the London-based New Scientist magazine. Machine learning systems are making life-altering decisions for us: approving mortgage loans, determining whether a tumor is cancerous, or deciding if someone gets bail. They now influence developments and discoveries in chemistry, biology, and physics—the study of genomes, extrasolar planets, even the intricacies of quantum systems. And all this before...
Nov 04, 2024•2 hr 53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Professor Michael Levin explores the revolutionary concept of diverse intelligence, demonstrating how cognitive capabilities extend far beyond traditional brain-based intelligence. Drawing from his groundbreaking research, he explains how even simple biological systems like gene regulatory networks exhibit learning, memory, and problem-solving abilities. Levin introduces key concepts like "cognitive light cones" - the scope of goals a system can pursue - and shows how these ideas are transformin...
Oct 24, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Will Williams is CTO of Speechmatics in Cambridge. In this sponsored episode - he shares deep technical insights into modern speech recognition technology and system architecture. The episode covers several key technical areas: * Speechmatics' hybrid approach to ASR, which focusses on unsupervised learning methods, achieving comparable results with 100x less data than fully supervised approaches. Williams explains why this is more efficient and generalizable than end-to-end models like Whisper. ...
Oct 23, 2024•2 hr 46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Sanjeev Namjoshi, a machine learning engineer who recently submitted a book on Active Inference to MIT Press, discusses the theoretical foundations and practical applications of Active Inference, the Free Energy Principle (FEP), and Bayesian mechanics. He explains how these frameworks describe how biological and artificial systems maintain stability by minimizing uncertainty about their environment. DO YOU WANT WORK ON ARC with the MindsAI team (current ARC winners)? MLST is sponsored by Tuf...
Oct 22, 2024•3 hr 46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Joscha Bach discusses advanced AI, consciousness, and cognitive modeling. He presents consciousness as a virtual property emerging from self-organizing software patterns, challenging panpsychism and materialism. Bach introduces "Cyberanima," reinterpreting animism through information processing, viewing spirits as self-organizing software agents. He addresses limitations of current large language models and advocates for smaller, more efficient AI models capable of reasoning from first princ...
Oct 20, 2024•2 hr 53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alessandro Palmarini is a post-baccalaureate researcher at the Santa Fe Institute working under the supervision of Melanie Mitchell. He completed his undergraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh. Palmarini's current research focuses on developing AI systems that can efficiently acquire new skills from limited data, inspired by François Chollet's work on measuring intelligence. His work builds upon the DreamCoder program synthesis system, int...
Oct 19, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast François Chollet discusses the limitations of Large Language Models (LLMs) and proposes a new approach to advancing artificial intelligence. He argues that current AI systems excel at pattern recognition but struggle with logical reasoning and true generalization. This was Chollet's keynote talk at AGI-24, filmed in high-quality. We will be releasing a full interview with him shortly. A teaser clip from that is played in the intro! Chollet introduces the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC) as...
Oct 12, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ivan Zhang, co-founder of Cohere, discusses the company's enterprise-focused AI solutions. He explains Cohere's early emphasis on embedding technology and training models for secure environments. Zhang highlights their implementation of Retrieval-Augmented Generation in healthcare, significantly reducing doctor preparation time. He explores the shift from monolithic AI models to heterogeneous systems and the importance of improving various AI system components. Zhang shares insights on using syn...
Oct 10, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
