Azeem Azhar's Exponential View

• A tour of the tech boom — 5 waves you need to understand

  Azeem Azhar welcomes Packy McCormick, founder and investor at Not Boring, to discuss the current tech landscape. In this episode you'll hear: (01:50) What Packy got wrong (and right) about Web3 (10:17) The shift to "know thyself and know thyself-nots" (14:28) Europe just woke up (18:46) Bits and atoms are cool again (21:10) London airport shutdown reveals a deeper challenge (23:32) A new kind of home energy infrastructure (29:28) A theory on Eric Schmidt's new CEO role (34:08) What's the role of nuclear in a solar + battery world? (40:33) The coming tech boom Our new show This was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar", a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET. You can tune in through my Substack linked below. The format is experimental and we'd love your feedback, so feel free to comment or email your thoughts to our team at [email protected]. Packy's links: Substack: https://www.notboring.co/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/packyM Azeem's links: Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/ Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd

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• Are we ready for human-level AI by 2030? Anthropic's co-founder answers

  Anthropic's co-founder and chief scientist Jared Kaplan discusses AI's rapid evolution, the shorter-than-expected timeline to human-level AI, and how Claude's "thinking time" feature represents a new frontier in AI reasoning capabilities.In this episode you'll hear:Why Jared believes human-level AI is now likely to arrive in 2-3 years instead of by 2030How AI models are developing the ability to handle increasingly complex tasks that would take humans hours or daysThe importance of constitutional AI and interpretability research as essential guardrails for increasingly powerful systemsOur new show This was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar", a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET on Exponential View. You can tune in through my Substack linked below. The format is experimental and we'd love your feedback, so feel free to comment or email your thoughts to our team at [email protected]:(00:00) Episode trailer(01:27) Jared's updated prediction for reaching human-level intelligence(08:12) What will limit scaling laws?(11:13) How long will we wait between model generations?(16:27) Why test-time scaling is a big deal(21:59) There’s no reason why DeepSeek can’t be competitive algorithmically(25:31) Has Anthropic changed their approach to safety vs speed?(30:08) Managing the paradoxes of AI progress(32:21) Can interpretability and monitoring really keep AI safe?(39:43) Are model incentives misaligned with public interests?(42:36) How should we prepare for electricity-level impact?(51:15) What Jared is most excited about in the next 12 monthsJared's links:Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/Azeem's links: Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azharTwitter/X: https://x.com/azeemProduced by supermix.io

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• The future of Human-AI coexistence, according to Kevin Kelly (co-founder of Wired, futurist, author)

  Kevin Kelly is a co-founder of Wired Magazine and a renowned author and futurist.  Decades ago, Kevin predicted much of today's technological and cultural landscape. In this discussion, he presents his new bold vision for what’s coming next: The Handoff to Bots.In this episode, you’ll hear:Why declining populations will radically reshape economiesWhat a bot-to-bot economy could look and feel likeWhy people of the future might be paid to read emailsHow AI could help humanity find deeper purposeWhy this future might be closer than you thinkKevin’s links:Website/blog: https://kk.org/Twitter/X: https://x.com/kevin2kellyInstagram: / kevin2kelly  Azeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar?ori...Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeemTimestamps:(00:00) Intro(02:17) The baby black hole behind Kevin's theory(10:49) Kevin's thesis: The handoff to bots(15:05) This world is closer than we think(19:32) The role of humans in this new world(21:23) Could monopoly influence pose a problem?(28:33) The nature of “struggle” in this new world(32:42) Could we see countries competing for population?(36:06) How a scarcity of humans might change what we value(42:30) What would 1994 Kevin think of 2025 Kevin's blog? Production:Production by supermix.io 

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• AI in 2025 – A global perspective, with Kai-Fu Lee

  Kai-Fu Lee joins me to discuss AI in 2025. Kai-Fu is a storied AI researcher, investor, inventor and entrepreneur based in Taiwan. As one of the leading AI experts based in Asia, I wanted to get his take on this particular market.Key insights:Kai-Fu noted that unlike the singular “ChatGPT moment” that stunned Western audiences, the Chinese market encountered generative AI in a more “incremental and distributed” fashion.A particularly fascinating shift is how Chinese enterprises are adopting generative AI. Without the entrenched SaaS layers common in the US, Chinese companies are “rolling their own” solutions. This deep integration might be tougher and messier, but it encourages thorough, domain-specific implementations.We reflected on a structural shift in how we think about productivity software. With AI “conceptualizing” the document and the user providing strategic nudges, it’s akin to reversing the traditional creative process.We’re moving from a training-centric world to an inference-centric one. Models need to be cheaper, faster and less resource-intensive to run, not just to train. For instance, his team at ZeroOne.ai managed to train a top-tier model on “just” 2,000 H100 GPUs and bring inference costs down to 10 cents per million tokens—a fraction of GPT-4’s early costs.In 2025, Kai-Fu predicts, we’ll see fewer “demos” and more “AI-first” applications deploying text, image and video generation tools into real-world workflows.Connect with us:Exponential View

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• AI in 2025 – The great normalisation, with Nathan Benaich

  Nathan Benaich, Founder and General Partner of Air Street Capital, joins me to discuss AI in 2025. From runaway consumer adoption to evolving enterprise moats, from still-elusive AI-driven drug breakthroughs to the renewed vigour in robotics, several core themes stood out.1. Frontier models & AI at scaleIn 2024, we witnessed the astonishing growth of frontier models and their deployment on a massive scale. OpenAI’s GPT-4 and GPT-4 o1, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini have all demonstrated that being “at the frontier” is increasingly the price of admission.2. Consumers, voice and infinite worldsOn the consumer side, we have reason to believe 2025 will be the year of AI-enabled workflows that feel truly natural. Voice, multimodality and integration into daily routines—like transcribing my morning thoughts during a commute—are becoming routine.3. Accelerating science & drug discoveryWhile AI accelerates lab automation and data analysis—improving reproducibility and speeding up processes—the promised “AI-designed blockbuster drug” is still in the pipeline. Clinical timelines and regulatory hurdles do not compress easily.4. Geopolitics, funding and the sovereign questionAs training costs skyrocket and models require unimaginable scale, questions mount… Who funds these massive compute requirements? Will nation-states view these labs as strategic assets, akin to telecoms or chipmakers?5. From explosive capability gains to refined utilityWe’ve grown numb to what was once astonishing—perfect speech synthesis, infinite text generation, zero-shot coding. The capabilities of models now surpass human levels in many benchmarks. The next major shifts may be subtler, or simply less obviously spectacular.Connect with us:Exponential ViewNathan Benaich 

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