About this episode
Longtime machine-learning researcher, and University of Washington Professor Emeritus, Pedro Domingos joins a16z General Partner Martin Casado to discuss the state of artificial intelligence, whether we're really on a path toward AGI, and the value of expressing unpopular opinions. It's a very insightful discussion as we head into an era of mainstream AI adoption, and ask big questions about how to ramp up progress and diversify research directions. Here's an excerpt of Pedro sharing his thoughts on the increasing cost of frontier models and whether that's the right direction: "if you believe the scaling laws hold and the scaling laws will take us to human-level intelligence, then, hey, it's worth a lot of investment. That's one part, but that may be wrong. The other part, however, is that to do that, we need exploding amounts of compute. "If if I had to predict what's going to happen, it's that we do not need a trillion dollars to reach AGI at all. So if you spend a trillion dollars reaching AGI, this is a very bad investment." Learn more: The Master Algorithm 2040: A Silicon Valley Satire The Economic Case for Generative AI and Foundation Models Follow everyone on Z: Pedro Domingos Martin Casado Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here , including articles, projects, and more podcasts. Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.