<![CDATA[Retort AI]]>https://www.retortai.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AzON!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcbad298c-6074-441b-ad43-d5df6dbf101d_800x800.pngRetort AIhttps://www.retortai.comSubstackFri, 03 Apr 2026 19:53:33 GMT<![CDATA[Tom leaves stealth: Hortus AI]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/tom-leaves-stealth-hortus-ai-5adhttps://www.retortai.com/p/tom-leaves-stealth-hortus-ai-5adTue, 18 Feb 2025 21:26:52 GMTAn 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/

]]><![CDATA[We ask again: Is AI a science?]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/we-ask-again-is-ai-a-science-3a7https://www.retortai.com/p/we-ask-again-is-ai-a-science-3a7Fri, 10 Jan 2025 12:00:00 GMTTom 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:

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

]]><![CDATA[The Retort's biggest AI stories of 2024]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/the-retorts-biggest-ai-stories-of-c5ahttps://www.retortai.com/p/the-retorts-biggest-ai-stories-of-c5aFri, 06 Dec 2024 12:00:00 GMTWe'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

]]><![CDATA[The Nobel Albatross]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/the-nobel-albatross-a02https://www.retortai.com/p/the-nobel-albatross-a02Fri, 11 Oct 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom 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
Retort on Twitter: https://x.com/retortai
Retort website: https://retortai.com/
Retort email: mail at retortai dot com

]]><![CDATA[Claude Needs a Constitutional Convention]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/claude-needs-a-constitutional-convention-357https://www.retortai.com/p/claude-needs-a-constitutional-convention-357Fri, 13 Sep 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom 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

]]><![CDATA[Avoiding the AI burnout]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/avoiding-the-ai-burnout-6e6https://www.retortai.com/p/avoiding-the-ai-burnout-6e6Mon, 26 Aug 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom and Nate catch up on core themes of AI after a somewhat unintended summer break. We discuss the moral groundings and philosophy of what we're building, our travels, The Anxious Generation, AGI obsessions, an update on AI Ethics vs. AI Safety, and plenty more in between.

As always, contact us at mail@retortai.com

Some links we mention in the episode:
* The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail https://motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/emotional_dog_and_rational_tail.pdf
* The Anxious Generation https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036
* Shadow Lake Lodge https://shadowlakelodge.com/
* Recent Dwarkesh Podcast https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/joe-carlsmith

]]><![CDATA[What we are getting wrong about AI regulation]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/what-we-are-getting-wrong-about-ai-63bhttps://www.retortai.com/p/what-we-are-getting-wrong-about-ai-63bFri, 19 Jul 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom and Nate catch up on the rapidly evolving (and political) space of AI regulation. We cover CA SB 1047, recent policing of data scraping, presidential appointees, antitrust intention vs. implementation, FLOP thresholds, and everything else touching the future of large ML models.

Nate's internet cut out, so this episode ends a little abruptly. Reach out with any questions to mail at retortai.com

Some links:
- night falls on the cumberlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Comes_to_the_Cumberlands
- hillbilly elegy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy
- wired piece on data https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-training-data-apple-nvidia-anthropic/
- nate's recent piece on AI regulation https://www.interconnects.ai/p/sb-1047-and-open-weights

00:00  Intro 
01:19 Training Data and the Media 
03:43 Norms, Power, and the Limits of Regulation
08:52 OpenAI's Business Model
12:33  Antitrust: The Essential Tool for Governing AI
17:11 Users as Afterthoughts
20:07 Depoliticizing AI 
26:14  "Breaking Bad" & the AI Parallel
28:11  The "Little Tech" Agenda
31:03  Reframing the Narrative of Big Tech  
32:20  "The Lean Startup" & AI's Uncertainty

]]><![CDATA[AI, feedback, and population public health]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/ai-feedback-and-population-public-5e0https://www.retortai.com/p/ai-feedback-and-population-public-5e0Fri, 28 Jun 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom and Nate revisit one of their old ideas -- AI through the lens of public health infrastructure, and especially alignment. Sorry about Tom's glitchy audio, I figured it out after the fact that he was talking into the microphone at the wrong angle. Regardless, here are some links for this week. Links:
- Data foundry for AI https://scale.com/blog/scale-ai-series-f 
- Information piece on Scale AI ($) https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-a-14-billion-startup-is-now-hiring-phds-to-train-ai-from-their-living-rooms?shared=168f685a864ca709 
- ChatGPT compounding math: https://chatgpt.com/share/2c19a357-acb2-441d-8203-946b74ce785c 

contact us at mail at retortai dot com

00:00 Intro
00:39 Chicago's Tech Scene and the "The Bear"
01:22 AI and Public Health: A New Framework
08:17 Lessons for AI from Sanitation Infrastructure
12:58 The Mental Health Impact of Generative AI
23:28 Aligning AI with Diverse Societal Values
27:06 Power Dynamics in AI's Development
33:02 The Need for a Neutral AI Research Body (NAIRR)
36:57 New Regulations for a New Era of AI
41:05 Outro: Join the Conversation

]]><![CDATA[Apple sends a memo to the AGI faithful]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/apple-sends-a-memo-to-the-agi-faithful-700https://www.retortai.com/p/apple-sends-a-memo-to-the-agi-faithful-700Fri, 21 Jun 2024 14:48:18 GMTTom and Nate caught up last week (sorry for the editing delay) on the big two views of the AI future: Apple Intelligence and Situational Awareness (Nationalistic AI doom prevention). One of our best episodes, here are the links:
* The Kekulé Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kekul%C3%A9_Problem
* Truth and Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Method
* Situational Awareness https://situational-awareness.ai/

00:00 A Hypothetical Life: From Germany to AGI
01:20 Leopold Aschenbrenner: Situational Awareness and Extrapolation
02:01 The Retort: Apple vs. Doomsday AI
03:40 Credentials and Social Choice Theory
05:14 Dissecting "Situational Awareness": Hype vs. Reality
07:16 The Limits of Language Models: Are They Really Intelligent?
11:04 Apple's Vision: AI for Consumers, Not Conquerors
13:53 Silicon Valley Myopia and the Geopolitics of AI
18:25 Beyond Benchmarks: The Scientist vs. The Engineer
22:04 What is Intelligence? The Narrowness of Human Fixation
24:32 A Growing Disrespect for Language?
27:40 The Power of Talking to Language Models
32:50 Language: Representation or Revelation?
38:54 The Future of Meaning: Will AI Obliterate Art?
45:32 A Vision for AI as Public Infrastructure

]]><![CDATA[Murky waters in AI policy]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/murky-waters-in-ai-policy-b5dhttps://www.retortai.com/p/murky-waters-in-ai-policy-b5dFri, 31 May 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom and Nate catch up on many AI policy happenings recently. California's "anti open source" 1047 bill, the senate AI roadmap, Google's search snaifu, OpenAI's normal nonsense, and reader feedback! A bit of a mailbag. Enjoy.

00:00 Murky waters in AI policy
00:33 The Senate AI Roadmap
05:14 The Executive Branch Takes the Lead
08:33 California's Senate AI Bill
22:22 OpenAI's Two Audiences
28:53 The Problem with OpenAI Model Spec
39:50 A New World of AI Regulation

A bunch of links...
Data and society whitepaper: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/66465fcd83d1881b974fe099/t/664b866c9524f174acd7931c/1716225644575/24.05.18+-+AI+Shadow+Report+V4.pdf
https://senateshadowreport.com/ 

California bill
https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/california-senate-passes-sb-1047 
https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB1047/id/2999979 

Data walls
https://www.interconnects.ai/p/the-data-wall 

Interconnects Merch
https://interconnects.myshopify.com/

]]><![CDATA[ChatGPT talks: diamond of the season or quite the scandal?]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/chatgpt-talks-diamond-of-the-season-850https://www.retortai.com/p/chatgpt-talks-diamond-of-the-season-850Fri, 17 May 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom and Nate discuss two major OpenAI happenings in the last week. The popular one, the chat assistant, and what it reveals about OpenAI's worldview. We pair this with discussion of OpenAI's new Model Spec, which details their RLHF goals: https://cdn.openai.com/spec/model-spec-2024-05-08.html

This is a monumental week for AI. The product transition is completed, we can't just be researchers anymore.

00:00 Guess the Donkey Kong Character
00:50 OpenAI's New AI Girlfriend
07:08 OpenAI's Business Model and Responsible AI
08:45 GPT-2 Chatbot Thing and OpenAI's Weirdness
12:48 OpenAI and the Mystery Box
19:10 The Blurring Boundaries of Intimacy and Technology
22:05 Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality and the Impact of Technology
26:16 OpenAI's Model Spec and Its Objectives
30:10 The Unintelligibility of "Benefiting Humanity"
37:01 The Chain of Command and the Paradox of AI Love
45:46 The Form and Content of OpenAI's Model Spec
48:51 The Future of AI and Societal Disruptions

]]><![CDATA[Three pillars of AI power]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/three-pillars-of-ai-power-f08https://www.retortai.com/p/three-pillars-of-ai-power-f08Fri, 10 May 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom and Nate discuss the shifting power landscape in AI. They try to discern what is special about Silicon Valley's grasp on the ecosystem and what other types of power (e.g. those in New York and Washington DC) will do to mobilize their influence. 

Here's the one Tweet we referenced on the FAccT community: https://twitter.com/KLdivergence/status/1653843497932267520

00:00: Introduction and Cryptozoologists
02:00: DC and the National AI Research Resource (NAIR)
05:34: The Three Legs of the AI World: Silicon Valley, New York, and DC
11:00: The AI Safety vs. Ethics Debate
13:42: The Rise of the Third Entity: The Government's Role in AI
19:42: New York's Influence and the Power of Narrative
29:36: Silicon Valley's Insularity and the Need for Regulation
36:50: The Amazon Antitrust Paradox and the Shifting Landscape
48:20: The Energy Conundrum and the Need for Policy Solutions
56:34: Conclusion: Finding Common Ground and Building a Better Future for AI

]]><![CDATA[Llama 3: Can't Compete with a Capuchin]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/llama-3-cant-compete-with-a-capuchin-b38https://www.retortai.com/p/llama-3-cant-compete-with-a-capuchin-b38Fri, 26 Apr 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom and Nate cover the state of the industry after Llama 3. Is Zuck the best storyteller in AI? Is he the best CEO? Are CEOs doing anything other than buying compute? We cover what it means to be successful at the highest level this week. 

Links:
Dwarkesh interview with Zuck https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/mark-zuckerberg 
Capuchin monkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_monkey 

00:00 Introductions & advice from a wolf
00:45 Llama 3
07:15 Resources and investment required for large language models
14:10 What it means to be a leader in the rapidly evolving AI landscape
22:07 How much of AI progress is driven by stories vs resources
29:41 Critiquing the concept of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
38:10 Misappropriation of the term AGI by tech leaders
42:09 The future of open models and AI development

]]><![CDATA[Into the AI Trough of Disillusionment]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/into-the-ai-trough-of-disillusionment-900https://www.retortai.com/p/into-the-ai-trough-of-disillusionment-900Fri, 12 Apr 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom and Nate catch up after a few weeks off the pod. We discuss what it means for the pace and size of open models to get bigger and bigger. In some ways, this disillusionment is a great way to zoom our into the big picture. These models are coming. These models are getting cheaper. We need to think about risks and infrastructure more than open vs. closed.

00:00 Introduction 
01:16 Recent developments in open model releases 
04:21 Tom's experience viewing the total solar eclipse
09:38 The Three-Body Problem book and Netflix
14:06 The Gartner Hype Cycle
22:51 Infrastructure constraints on scaling AI
28:47 Metaphors and narratives around AI risk
34:43 Rethinking AI risk as public health problems
37:37 The "one-way door" nature of releasing open model weights
44:04 The relationship between the AI ecosystem and the models
48:24 Wrapping up the discussion in the "trough of disillusionment"

We've got some links for you again:
- Gartner hype cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle 
- MSFT Supercomputer https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-plot-100-billion-stargate-ai-supercomputer 
- Safety is about systems https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-safety-is-not-a-model-property 
- Earth day history https://www.earthday.org/history/ 
- For our loyal listeners http://tudorsbiscuitworld.com/

]]><![CDATA[AI's Eras Tour: Performance, Trust, and Legitimacy]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/ais-eras-tour-performance-trust-and-363https://www.retortai.com/p/ais-eras-tour-performance-trust-and-363Fri, 22 Mar 2024 11:00:00 GMTTom and Nate catch up on the ridiculous of Nvidia GTC, the lack of trust in AI, and some important taxonomies and politics around governing AI. Safety institutes, reward model benchmarks, Nathan's bad joke delivery, and all the normal good stuff in this episode! Yes, we're also sick of the Taylor Swift jokes, but they get the clicks.

The Taylor moment: https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1769817948930072930

00:00 Intros and discussion on NVIDIA's influence in AI and the Bay Area
09:08 Mustafa Suleyman's new role and discussion on AI safety
11:31 The shift from performance to trust in AI evaluation
17:31 The role of government agencies in AI policy and regulation
24:07 The role of accreditation in establishing legitimacy and trust
32:11 Grok's open source release and its impact on the AI community
39:34 Responsibility and accountability in AI and social media platforms

]]><![CDATA[Claude 3: Is Nathan too bought into the hype?]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/claude-3-is-nathan-too-bought-into-67ehttps://www.retortai.com/p/claude-3-is-nathan-too-bought-into-67eFri, 08 Mar 2024 15:37:24 GMTTom and Nate sit down to discuss Claude 3 and some updates on what it means to be open. Not surprisingly, we get into debating some different views. We cover Dune 2's impact on AI and have a brief giveaway at the end. Cheers!

More at retortai.com. Contact us at mail at domain.

Some topics:
- The pace of progress in AI and whether it feels meaningful or like "progress fatigue" to different groups

- The role of hype and "vibes" in driving interest and investment in new AI models 

- Whether the value being created by large language models is actually just being concentrated in a few big tech companies

- The debate around whether open source AI is feasible given the massive compute requirements

- The limitations of "open letters" and events with Chatham House rules as forms of politics and accountability around AI

- The analogy between the AI arms race and historical arms races like the dreadnought naval arms race

- The role of narratives, pop culture, and "priesthoods" in shaping public understanding of AI

Chapters & transcript partially created with https://github.com/FanaHOVA/smol-podcaster.

00:00 Introduction and the spirit of open source
04:32 Historical parallels of technology arms races
10:26 The practical use of language models and their impact on society
22:21 The role and potential of open source in AI development
28:05 The challenges of achieving coordination and scale in open AI development
34:18 Pop culture's influence on the AI conversation, specifically through "Dune"

]]><![CDATA[Model release therapy session #1]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/model-release-therapy-session-1-928https://www.retortai.com/p/model-release-therapy-session-1-928Fri, 23 Feb 2024 12:00:00 GMTThis week Tom and Nate cover all the big topics from the big picture lens. Sora, Gemini 1.5's context length, Gemini's bias backlash, Gemma open models, it was a busy week in AI. We come to the conclusion that we can no longer trust a lot of these big companies to do much. We are the gladiators playing the crowd of AI. This was a great one, I'm proud on one of Tom's all time best jokes. 
Thanks for listening, and reach out with any questions.

]]><![CDATA[Waymo vs. the time honored human experiences, vandalism and defacement]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/waymo-vs-the-time-honored-human-experiences-90ahttps://www.retortai.com/p/waymo-vs-the-time-honored-human-experiences-90aFri, 16 Feb 2024 12:00:00 GMTA metaphor episode! We are trying to figure how much the Waymo incident is or is not about AI. We bring back our Berkeley roots and talk about traditions in the Bay around distributed technology. Scooters and robots are not safe in this episode, sadly. Here's the link to the Verge piece Tom read from: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/11/24069251/waymo-driverless-taxi-fire-vandalized-video-san-francisco-china-town

]]><![CDATA[We believe in the metaverse]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/we-believe-in-the-metaverse-fd2https://www.retortai.com/p/we-believe-in-the-metaverse-fd2Fri, 09 Feb 2024 12:00:00 GMT... and you should too. We catch up this week on all things Apple Vision Pro and how these devices will intersect with AI. It really turned more into a commentary on the future of society, and how various technologies may or may not tap into our subconscious. 
The only link we've got for you is DeepDream: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepDream 

]]><![CDATA[How to OLMost find a Waifu]]>https://www.retortai.com/p/how-to-olmost-find-a-waifu-fdahttps://www.retortai.com/p/how-to-olmost-find-a-waifu-fdaFri, 02 Feb 2024 12:00:00 GMTWow, one of our favorites. This week Tom and Nate have a lot to cover. We cover AI2's new OPEN large language models (OLMo) and all that means, the alchemical model merging craze powering waifu factories, model weight leaks from Mistral, the calling card for our loyal fans, and more topics.

We have a lot of links you'll enjoy as you'll go through it:

]]>