Dwarkesh Podcast

800 years before the Black Death, the very same bacteria ravaged Rome, killing 60%+ of the population in many areas.

Also, back-to-back volcanic eruptions caused a mini Ice Age, leaving Rome devastated by famine and disease.

I chatted with historian Kyle Harper about this and much else:

* Rome as a massive slave society

* Why humans are more disease-prone than other animals

* How agriculture made us physically smaller (Caesar at 5'5" was considered tall)

Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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SPONSORS

* WorkOS makes it easy to become enterprise-ready. They have APIs for all the most common enterprise requirementsthings like authentication, permissions, and encryptionso you can quickly plug them in and get back to building your core product. If you want to make your product enterprise-ready, join companies like Cursor, Perplexity and OpenAI, and head to workos.com.

* Scales Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If youre an AI researcher or engineer, learn how Scales Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier of capabilities at scale.com/dwarkesh

To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.

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KYLE'S BOOKS

* The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire

* Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History

* Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425

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TIMESTAMPS

(00:00:00) - Plague's impact on Rome's collapse

(00:06:24) - Rome's little Ice Age

(00:11:51) - Why did progress stall in Rome's Golden Age?

(00:23:55) - Slavery in Rome

(00:36:22) - Was agriculture a mistake?

(00:47:42) - Disease's impact on cognitive function

(00:59:46) - Plague in India and Central Asia

(01:05:16) - The next pandemic

(01:16:48) - How Kyle uses LLMs

(01:18:51) - De-extinction of lost species

Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu have 2045+ timelines, think the whole "alignment" framing is wrong, don't think an intelligence explosion is plausible, but are convinced we'll see explosive economic growth (economy literally doubling every year or two).

This discussion offers a totally different scenario than my recent interview with Scott and Daniel.

Ege and Tamay are the co-founders of Mechanize (disclosure - I’m an angel investor), a startup dedicated to fully automating work. Before founding Mechanize, Ege and Tamay worked on AI forecasts at Epoch AI.

Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Sponsors

* WorkOS makes it easy to become enterprise-ready. With simple APIs for essential enterprise features like SSO and SCIM, WorkOS helps companies like Vercel, Plaid, and OpenAI meet the requirements of their biggest customers. To learn more about how they can help you do the same, visit workos.com

* Scale’s Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh

* Google's Gemini Pro 2.5 is the model we use the most at Dwarkesh Podcast: it helps us generate transcripts, identify interesting clips, and code up new tools. If you want to try it for yourself, it's now available in Preview with higher rate limits! Start building with it today at aistudio.google.com.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - AGI will take another 3 decades

(00:22:27) - Even reasoning models lack animal intelligence 

(00:45:04) - Intelligence explosion

(01:00:57) - Ege & Tamay’s story

(01:06:24) - Explosive economic growth

(01:33:00) - Will there be a separate AI economy?

(01:47:08) - Can we predictably influence the future?

(02:19:48) - Arms race dynamic

(02:29:48) - Is superintelligence a real thing?

(02:35:45) - Reasons not to expect explosive growth

(02:49:00) - Fully automated firms

(02:54:43) - Will central planning work after AGI?

(02:58:20) - Career advice

Scott and Daniel break down every month from now until the 2027 intelligence explosion.

Scott Alexander is author of the highly influential blogs Slate Star Codex and Astral Codex Ten. Daniel Kokotajlo resigned from OpenAI in 2024, rejecting a non-disparagement clause and risking millions in equity to speak out about AI safety.

We discuss misaligned hive minds, Xi and Trump waking up, and automated Ilyas researching AI progress.

I came in skeptical, but I learned a tremendous amount by bouncing my objections off of them. I highly recommend checking out their new scenario planning document, AI 2027

Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Sponsors

* WorkOS helps today’s top AI companies get enterprise-ready. OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Anthropic and hundreds more use WorkOS to quickly integrate features required by enterprise buyers. To learn more about how you can make the leap to enterprise, visit workos.com

* Jane Street likes to know what's going on inside the neural nets they use. They just released a black-box challenge for Dwarkesh listeners, and I had a blast trying it out. See if you have the skills to crack it at janestreet.com/dwarkesh

* Scale’s Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh

To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - AI 2027

(00:06:56) - Forecasting 2025 and 2026

(00:14:41) - Why LLMs aren't making discoveries

(00:24:33) - Debating intelligence explosion

(00:49:45) - Can superintelligence actually transform science?

(01:16:54) - Cultural evolution vs superintelligence

(01:24:05) - Mid-2027 branch point

(01:32:30) - Race with China

(01:44:47) - Nationalization vs private anarchy

(02:03:22) - Misalignment

(02:14:52) - UBI, AI advisors, & human future

(02:23:00) - Factory farming for digital minds

(02:26:52) - Daniel leaving OpenAI

(02:35:15) - Scott's blogging advice

I recorded an AMA! I had a blast chatting with my friends Trenton Bricken and Sholto Douglas. We discussed my new book, career advice given AGI, how I pick guests, how I research for the show, and some other nonsense.

My book, “The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025” is available in digital format now. Preorders for the print version are also open!

Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Timestamps

(0:00:00) - Book launch announcement

(0:04:57) - AI models not making connections across fields

(0:10:52) - Career advice given AGI

(0:15:20) - Guest selection criteria

(0:17:19) - Choosing to pursue the podcast long-term

(0:25:12) - Reading habits

(0:31:10) - Beard deepdive

(0:33:02) - Who is best suited for running an AI lab?

(0:35:16) - Preparing for fast AGI timelines

(0:40:50) - Growing the podcast

Humans have not succeeded because of our raw intelligence.

Marooned European explorers regularly starved to death in areas where foragers thrived for 1000s of years.

I’ve always found this cultural evolution deeply mysterious.

How do you discover the 10 steps for processing cassava so it won’t give you cyanide poisoning simply by trial and error?

Has the human brain declined in size over the last 10,000 years because we outsourced cultural evolution to a larger collective brain?

The most interesting part of the podcast is Henrich’s explanation of how the Catholic Church unintentionally instigated the Industrial Revolution through the dismantling of intensive kinship systems in medieval Europe.

Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Sponsors

Scale partners with major AI labs like Meta, Google Deepmind, and OpenAI. Through Scale’s Data Foundry, labs get access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale’s Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.

To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/p/advertise.

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Joseph’s books

The WEIRDest People in the World

The Secret of Our Success

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Timestamps

(0:00:00) - Humans didn’t succeed because of raw IQ

(0:09:27) - How cultural evolution works

(0:20:48) - Why is human brain size declining?

(0:32:00) - Will AGI have superhuman cultural learning?

(0:42:34) - Why Industrial Revolution happened in Europe

(0:55:30) - Why China, Rome, India got left behind

(1:21:09) - Loss of cultural variance in modern world

(1:31:20) - Is individual genius real?

(1:43:49) - IQ and collective brains