The Retort AI Podcast

An exciting week for Tom, who tells Nate about his company Hortus AI, whose mission is to make AI accountable to local communities. We cover a lot of classic Retort themes as Tom makes a case for what's missing from AI development, and how models could be more healthily integrated into everyday people's lives.
Press release: https://hortus.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Hortus-AI-Press-Release_Feb25.pdf
Company website: https://hortus.ai/
Link to whitepaper: https://www.newamerica.org/rethinkai/policy-papers/a-sustainable-path-for-ai-development/


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Tom and Nate sit down for a classic discussion of the role of AI in the modern philosophy of science. Much of this discussion is based on Thomas Samuel Kuhn's influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. We ask -- is AI a science in the Kuhn'ian sense? Will the "paradigm" worldview apply to other sciences post AI? How will scientific institutions manage the addition of AI?
We promised an AI for science reading list, so here it is:
[Dario interview with Lex] https://youtu.be/ugvHCXCOmm4?si=1hnlvue8M4pV2TqC
Levers for biological progress https://open.substack.com/pub/cell/p/levers?r=68gy5&utm_medium=ios
X thread on theories of change in scienceshttps://x.com/AdamMarblestone/status/1845158919523664019
whitepaper linked by seb krier
Dwarkesh physics pod https://open.substack.com/pub/dwarkesh/p/adam-brown?r=68gy5&utm_medium=ios — Nobel in physics went to ai
Ai policy perspectives piece A new golden age of discoveryhttps://www.aipolicyperspectives.com/p/a-new-golden-age-of-discovery
Owl posting checking recent NeurIPS papers https://www.owlposting.com/p/can-o1-preview-find-major-mistakes based on idea from Ethan Mollick https://x.com/emollick/status/1868329599438037491
also another post on the subject https://open.substack.com/pub/amistrongeryet/p/the-black-spatula-project?r=68gy5&utm_medium=ios
Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
intrinsic perspective https://open.substack.com/pub/erikhoel/p/great-scientists-follow-intuition?r=68gy5&utm_medium=ios
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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

We're back! Tom and Nate catch up after the Thanksgiving holiday. Our main question was -- what were the biggest AI stories of the year? We touch on the core themes of the show: infrastructure, AI realities, and and antitrust. The power buildout to scale out AI is going to have very real long-term impacts.
Some links this week:
* Ben Thompson's, The End of the Beginning: https://stratechery.com/2020/the-end-of-the-beginning/
* Miles Brundage's Substack: https://milesbrundage.substack.com/p/why-im-leaving-openai-and-what-im
* Stochastic Parrots paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922
Thanks for listening! 
Get The Retort (https://retortai.com/)…
… on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRetortAIPodcast
… on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0FDjH8ujv7p8ELZGkBvrfv?si=fa17a4d408f245ee
… on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-retort-ai-podcast/id1706223190
… Follow Interconnects: https://www.interconnects.ai/
… email us: mail@retortai.com


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

Tom and Nate catch up on the happenings in AI. Of course, we're focused on the biggest awards available to us as esteemed scientists (or something close enough) -- the Nobel Prizes! What does it mean in the trajectory of AI for Hinton and Hassabis to carry added scientific weight. Honestly, feels like a sinking ship. 
Some links:
* Schmidhuber tweet: https://x.com/SchmidhuberAI/status/1844022724328394780
* Hinton "I'm proud my student fired Sam": https://x.com/Grady_Booch/status/1844145422824243290
00:00 Introduction
04:43 Criticism of AI-related Nobel Prize awards
09:06 Geoffrey Hinton's comments on winning the Nobel Prize
18:14 Debate on who should be credited for current AI advancements
25:53 Changes in the nature of scientific research and recognition
34:44 Changes in AI safety culture and company dynamics
37:27 Discussion on AI scaling and its impact on the industry
42:21 Reflection on the ongoing AI hype cycle
Retort on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRetortAIPodcast
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Retort website: https://retortai.com/
Retort email: mail at retortai dot com


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com

Tom and Nate catch up on recent events (before the OpenAI o1 release) and opportunities in transparency/policy. We recap the legendary scam of Matt from IT department, why disclosing the outcomes of process is not enough, and more. This is a great episode on understanding why the process technology was birthed from is just as important as the outcome!
Some links:
* Nathan's post on Model Specs for regulation https://www.interconnects.ai/p/a-post-training-approach-to-ai-regulation
* Nathan's post on inference spend https://www.interconnects.ai/p/openai-strawberry-and-inference-scaling-laws
Send your questions to mail at retortai dot com


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.retortai.com