Why One Superintelligence Is More Dangerous Than a Thousand (Vincent Weisser, CEO & Co-Founder of Prime Intellect)

[00:00] We started at Prime Minister Light really with the goal and realization that to some extent, we'll probably get to AGI and Superintelligence in our lifetimes. And to some extent, every company will be an AI native company and will need the tools to basically create self-improving agentic agents. I've seen insane things, honestly, even in the last few weeks, where people had agents work on very complex plans. Of things that actually huge organizations plan to implement with hundreds of people over the next five years. Wow. And they vibe code it in a week.

[00:30] like the next token prediction associated with your name is ultimately in the training data. So it's like, if you actually trace back some of the most dangerous behavior from AI, it goes back to some less wrong post hypothesizing about this dangerous scenario. So there is actually this element where ultimately everything gets like hyper-sitioned into reality if the AI like trains on it. So I think there's like a deeper meaning or story to that. [00:56] Vincent Weisser named his company after a science fiction novel [01:00] in which a super-intelligent AI solves every human problem [01:04] and in doing so, [01:05] destroys all human meaning.

That company is Prime Intellect. [01:10] An AI startup that's raised more than $70 million to build an open source super intelligence. [01:15] That's based on Vincent's belief that the greatest risk posed by AI isn't misalignment, [01:21] but the concentration of power. [01:23] In our conversation, [01:24] We discuss Vincent's experience building a network state with Vitalik Buterin, [01:29] What his love of David Deutsch reveals about how he thinks [01:32] and the risks and possibilities [01:34] of a world in which intelligence [01:36] is too cheap. [01:37] to meet her. [01:38] I'm Mario.

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One in three startups in the S. already runs on Brex. You can too at com slash mario. [03:30] I'd love to start with the name of your company because it's such an unusual name and also has an amazing sort of story behind it. [03:37] There's this sci-fi book, The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. [03:41] And I haven't read the book, but from what I could tell, the premise is really that AI sort of solves everything and leaves humanity a little bereft of meaning. That's like such an interesting tension to have in a story.

Why did it feel like the... [03:57] the right thing to name the company that you're building. Actually, the funny backstory is sort of that my co-founder and I started Prime Intellect two and a half years ago, and we were thinking about what we could name it and going through a few names, and he proposed the name, actually. I hadn't read the book either, but I liked the name, and actually, I think, [04:19] the, [04:20] interesting i think like story was to some extent thinking through the implications of like how super intelligence could play out and [04:28] I think like specifically in the book, like to some extent, like it's quite dark, but like, for example, things like actually longevity, like immortality gets solved.

[04:37] Which was something actually both my co-founder and I were like thinking a lot about and like doing a lot. So it's like, it was like asking, I think, the right questions. And to some extent, I think. [04:47] it's actually still not so far from like [04:50] almost like a [04:51] potentially not great future where like it could hand it into. So it's like in some ways it's not. [04:56] like a blueprint for what we want to build, like, because it's clearly not like a, like a perfect story, but like, it's actually much more like a, [05:04] thinking about the implications more broadly, but it was actually also something culturally [05:08] interesting, but it's like actually I think even he [05:12] heard from the book because actually books like George Hutz and Kapathi like recommended as their favorite books.

Yes. So it actually had some of those like. [05:20] more cyberpunk, like builders reading it and being interested in [05:25] in that perspective. So I think in general, like sci-fi and literature is like an interesting [05:29] place to like think through like potential futures for this technology. So I think that's kind of like, yeah, the broader story, like what got us here. [05:38] That's amazing. Yeah, I... [05:40] was reading about the book and it does seem like it's a very obscure book that was self-published and then Karpathy and a few other these folks sort of tweeted and or wrote about it and it became you know a little bit more popular in this in this movement have you read it now yeah like and [05:56] I think it's like, I was actually joking, like to some extent, because it's like so dark and like, to some extent, like after Reddit, I briefly doubt if we should actually name the company like this.

But I think we were like leading into it to some extent. I think it's like this value in not being too like corporate and too bureaucratic or something and with like things like naming and design and other things. So I think we leaned into it. [06:20] just having a bit more like a cyberpunk... [06:24] like aesthetic and um [06:26] and brought a narrative to it. Yeah, also it feels like it, [06:29] gives in a sense appropriate weight to the scale of the work you're trying to do right even in the you know the darker case exactly so it's like kind of like also making sure that like you think through actually all the potential implications and also about like how things could go wrong to make sure they go right and i think it's something that's a good thing that's a good thing [06:48] where [06:48] Like I think there's different interesting books kind of like that went into this in different sci-fi and I think [06:56] it's quite useful almost like mental model and i i honestly think like cyber probably like [07:01] at this.

[07:02] like forced to almost like hyperstition specific like [07:06] things into existence. Like, I think a lot of, like, technologists, like, were, like, reading sci-fi and then, like, [07:12] building a specific thing or actively not building something because they saw like a specific scenario laid out in sci-fi. So I think, [07:19] It's actually quite a powerful genre, medium for technology more broadly. I 100% agree with that, that sometimes you need someone to sort of turn it into a story or some sort of form factor for someone to then think, OK, that's the thing that I need to build or I shouldn't build or whatever it might be.

Really interesting. Do you agree with the main premise, it seems, of the book of the idea that sort of meaning requires suffering? [07:44] I think I actually had this conversation the other day with... [07:47] uh this philosopher i'm kind of saying like benjamin brenton which is basically even though like suffering or violence and all of these things [07:56] like, [07:57] are maybe bad, like they're probably necessarily most preconditions for our like current like evolutionary almost like set up as like humanity and even for intelligence. [08:06] Like basically people would think that if you like remove suffering and violence and all these things, [08:11] that you would get to a much better world.

But I think [08:14] there's unintended almost like third, like, like, and order like consequences from, [08:19] removing some of those conditions. So I think it's actually a pretty difficult question that I think obviously a lot of philosophers have [08:27] or even like broader like religions or like areas like Buddhism or something as I thought about it's like [08:34] how to deal with some of the negatives, like things like suffering. And I think it's also something which I think like, [08:41] in the extreme almost like [08:44] I think is a good way even to critique the like folks like effective altruism.

[08:50] for like taking it so far as to like maximize shrimp welfare or something, which is like, I think the good example of like, you can, [08:57] I think you can't just [08:59] minimize suffering as the like, [09:02] ultimate utility, [09:03] uh function to maximize or something like i think that there's like much more [09:08] to it and it's not obvious that like you don't want to remove it fully like [09:13] And maybe it's not even possible because I think it's also something where like, [09:16] Depends on definitions, like maybe you can.

[09:18] like, [09:19] increase almost like the levels of like hedonic set points or like [09:23] of humanity but like I think there's something we said that like ultimately there's like there's a reason I think why [09:30] like suffering, like serves to a specific purpose, probably. Yeah. [09:34] This is not fully understood yet, I think, actually. [09:36] Also, presumably, if you eliminate all suffering, there would you would create a different kind of suffering. You know, the lack of meaning is a form of suffering. Right. You know, I could I could spend a lot of time just talking about this, but to sharpen.

[09:49] you know, the contours of... [09:51] what you do and how these topics play into it. Maybe you could give a brief description of what Prime Intellect is focused on and how it relates to this subject perhaps. Yes, so basically we started Prime Intellect really with the goal and realization [10:05] that [10:06] to some extent, we'll probably get to like AGI and superintelligence in our lifetime. And ultimately, the tools and the machine that builds the machine, like the tools that the open AI's and topics have internally will become extremely relevant and important for everyone, but won't necessarily be accessible or open.

[10:25] And to some extent that like every company will be an AI native company and will need the tools to basically create like self-improving agentic agents. And this is something where I think we've basically started out really... [10:38] um when we were building our own models realizing like what are the missing pieces [10:43] to really enable more people to do so. And this now, like more broadly, it's kind of like on the one side building like the open frontier, like AI models, but also the infrastructure stack. [10:54] for everyone to do so.

So that's kind of like the broader motivation and we really started out like, we were basically starting in a pre-training era like two and a half years ago. So we realized that there's like a huge bottleneck to scale pre-training and make it more accessible because like you need these huge clusters which are very hard to get by. And we basically approached it with like this weird pre-training to basically enable every human on earth to do it. [11:18] to be able to like, [11:19] almost like bring their compute together to train models.

But ultimately, I think two things happened there. I think to some extent, like the world moved to reinforcement learning with O1 and Deepsea coming out. [11:29] So we basically also moved into figuring out how to scale models like DeepSeq and others further. And ultimately realized that there's a lot of reinforcement learning building blocks missing that we basically then set out to build. So this starts really from all the different components to do RL. Like from RL environments, which are sort of this... [11:51] a key component over the last two years to scale model capabilities.

And we basically realized that like due to the lamps being closed, like all the, like there was basically no framework to easily create our environments. There was no huge library of like high quality environments. [12:07] So we set out to basically create a framework verifiers for like our environments. [12:11] And ultimately, I had like thousands of people create like a lot of environments for everything from like, [12:16] coding to math to science to automating different like knowledge work and this kind of like i think is a like makes it much easier for people now to create agentic models um but there's also a lot of like infra pieces uh surrounding that so it's like things like code sandboxes where we build a like product [12:33] So you can actually train agentic models as well as like things like evaluations and then like [12:38] doing efficient basically training with like LoRa adapters and serving of these models.

Really with a broader goal to build towards a stack where you can like train [12:48] and deploy like agentic models that like continuously improve and learn. So that's kind of like the North Star now is really making it easier for people to be able to basically keep up with the big AGI labs. Yeah. To create self-improving agentic models. [13:04] And so the, you know, I think I'd love to go into many of these details, but at a sort of fundamental level, it sounds like. [13:12] So much of it was about bringing [13:14] those frontier level tools to the rest of the world and sort of opening [13:19] up.

[13:20] uh, those capabilities. Why was that piece so important to you? Like, why was the open source part of this? [13:27] sort of fundamental to the mission. [13:29] Yes, for sure. Like, I think. [13:30] To some extent, I think it's a broader motivation for like, [13:34] the realization, like from reading for someone like David Deutsch's "Beginning of Affinity" that [13:39] to some extent almost like [13:41] scientific progress lays at the foundation of like human progress and flourishing and well-being. [13:47] And ultimately I think happens with like, [13:50] open systems with like open science um like i think the internet was like a great accelerant of this and ultimately i think in a similar lineage like i think [13:58] Like I was early on also inspired by like the early open AI, like mission and projects.

And I think [14:03] it resonated a lot in the sense that like, [14:06] There's a huge need. [14:08] if you want to really push for like human and scientific progress, that you have these systems be open and accessible. And I think to some extent, it's something where like, otherwise, I think you stagnate. [14:19] sort of like aesthetic society or monoculture, where like a few nation states or a few models, like AI labs, like dominate, [14:27] And ultimately, like... [14:30] I have like two, like, I think it is something which like, almost like epistemically, [14:34] I think it's like unhealthy if you can't like look into the models, can't build on the models, don't understand how the models work.

[14:42] So I think it's like, [14:44] something which I think the big labs are still like struggling with justifying. Yeah. There was kind of like the broader motivation. Obviously, I think the challenge is like, I think obviously, even the reason why I probably moved away from it, [14:57] is [14:58] is obviously kind of like figuring out like a business model to some extent. Like I think always like for something like open source AI, I think our realization was to some extent it's like if we build this infrastructure like a stack that enables everyone to do so, you actually also build a very viable business to enable a lot of people to train models and deploy them and making it much more accessible to do so.

So I think that was like one of the, I think, crux that the labs were struggling with. But I think [15:26] It's something [15:27] where I think it's like extremely fundamental [15:30] to basically good epistemics. [15:33] that you like, [15:35] ultimately like knowledge is is the the ultimate uh i think driver of human progress [15:40] And I think it doesn't really work if it's closed. You know, one version of... [15:45] a sort of dystopia, [15:47] in a strong AI world is that you do have just a handful of labs, maybe even just one closed lab that has the best, you know, has the best model possible and no one else has access to it.

That company essentially has sort of unlimited power. [16:02] The sort of version of the risk, I would think, on the open source side is that, okay, everyone has, to put it a little too bluntly or a little too coarsely, like, you know, the ability to create a nuclear bomb in their pocket. How do you think about sort of balancing that risk? Because it does feel really important that you have these open source tools, but there's clearly a different asymmetric risk that gets opened up also. [16:24] For sure. So I think, I think actually David Doge is probably the best like philosopher, like in this context, in terms of like, I think almost like a precautionary principle can be taken too far.

And basically, like, there's unknown unknowns, but ultimately, the answer usually is like more knowledge and understanding things better. So I would argue like, like alignment and safety, for example. [16:44] are much easier to solve with open models. I would even go so far as like, the only ones who've made progress on them were the people who had access to, to like, the full picture and to models, right? It's like, [16:54] And I think it's ironically, it's also the area where the labs are open. It's like on alignment and safety. Like it's the area that where like Anthropic and OpenAI happily publish.

[17:03] So it actually like goes to directly to show that I think to some extent they're actually not at odds. Like, and I think it has been actually a bit abused as I think almost like a self-serving like PR propaganda, like from the labs that like. [17:17] like you need to make them close and we need to like monopolize or like oligopolize these models. [17:23] for the world to be safe. I do think, even like in this framing of Deutsch, where it's like having one steward of knowledge like never works.

And I think ultimately, I think that's a bit like what the labs like... [17:34] set themselves out to be. So I think [17:37] It's something that I think concretely though, and I think this goes to some extent as like, [17:41] which we might also touch on is like on this idea of like, for example, differential technological progress. [17:47] but also defense and democracy, like driving pros there. It's like, [17:53] Really, I do think you need to make progress in some domains ahead of others. Like, let's say on like cybersecurity and like biodefense and other things.

[18:01] And this is like also partially what we did. And I think we're even like, to some extent, you can make more progress in general if you basically put... [18:10] like the differential progress ahead of [18:15] maybe the more like [18:17] one with like asymmetric downsides or something. So I think, like, I do think it's important, but I think you can also take things too far. And ultimately, I think a lot of the, like, effective altruists are, like, have taken things, [18:31] Too far in the sense of like doing this like naive, like utilitarian, like calculations of like, [18:37] oh, like we need to like, and being very confident in a lot of these concepts like, [18:43] even like specific PDUMs and like utility calculations, which ultimately like round out to infinities if you like scale it over like, [18:52] the infinite future of life.

I think I would argue basically the biggest risk [18:57] is actually locking in a very narrow, like almost like monoculture for even super intelligence. Right. It's like like one super intelligence. [19:05] I think it's much less safe than like... [19:08] infinite superintelligence or something. Because like, I think they balance each other. It's like basically, I think that's, I think to some extent what we have today. Like I think, almost like, [19:17] there needs to be a balance of different, I think, drivers. And I think there needs to be diversity in what they optimize for, diversity in like, [19:26] the country like shapes of like how they are like created [19:30] And I think that actually like is a much better world that ultimately I think also, I think [19:36] one can also break it down that I think to some extent, even with a meaning question, it's like, I think like life is sort of the, [19:43] a thing worth preserving.

It's like, [19:46] I think that's the simplest principle and I think to some extent it's like, [19:50] artificial life or like artificial intelligence is also a form of like intelligence. And I think we'll have like similar characteristics to life. So it's like, [19:57] To some extent, if we want to like, uh, colonize the whole galaxy and make like everything full of like intelligence and life, I do think that future would be more likely, but also like. [20:07] more like better if it's not like one monoculture of super intelligence but like [20:12] basically, [20:13] like a lot of different kinds and shapes of like superintelligence.

[20:17] I think it's a really interesting thought. I want to think more about the idea that you are safer with multiple superintelligence versus one. It strikes me as probably true in the sense that I'm currently happy that there are multiple of these companies out there. I would feel much more uneasy if there was just one. And I also agree with the, you know, I had a podcast with the astrophysicist, Sarah Seeger, Dr. Sarah Seeger, and she has talked a lot about looking for [20:47] She certainly was saying, you know, the idea of humans colonizing the galaxy is super unlikely, given just like the biological constraints of our bodies.

It feels like. [20:57] You know, if if you do care about that as a concept, which [21:01] I'm not sure if I actually feel much allegiance to artificial life at this point. I'd want to think more about it. But if you do think that there's some moral virtue in that, then probably it has to be through some sort of synthetic, non-biological, meat space life that we're constrained by. There's so many interesting threads here. And we've talked about David Deutsch. I'd love to talk a little bit more about some of your intellectual influences, because you were one of the most interesting people for me to research, in part because you have [21:31] an amazing repository on Goodreads of all the books you've read going back 10 plus years that paint a picture of [21:38] probably an extremely unusual teenager and early 20s person, you know, leading into your founding journey.

On that list is Nick Bostrom's super intelligence. I wonder... [21:48] what that book meant to you and if that felt like an inflection point in your interests. Yeah, like for sure. I think there's a few books like it. I think actually to some extent, like I actually remember... [21:59] Like specifically one was also like Steve Jobs' biography was like one of the books that like I think got me also kind of like hooked on like the entrepreneurial... [22:09] So like during like in a cliche sense, but then I think like, but after, like, I think I stumbled upon like, like actually through like through like, and I think this was like, in the early like 2010 or 11, I'm not sure actually when it came out, but like, but then I think like afterwards, like, like I came across also Elon, like 20, I think, like,

[22:26] like also around around then and i think he was talking about like barstrom's like super intelligence which i think came out somewhere then and then um also [22:34] the Singularity is nearby by Kurzweil. And I think to some extent, like I think especially, I think boss from Superintelligence, [22:41] I think... [22:42] made me think more deeply about like the possibility that like, [22:46] will probably get super intelligence within our lifetimes and it would be like the most like consequential [22:51] almost like invention and discovery of humanity with like a lot of implications.

And I think similarly actually then like I think Kurzweil and I was also reading this book from like Michiel Karkov, like the physics of the future or something of like the next hundred years. And I think those actually... [23:06] add it up together into like a coherent almost like picture of like how [23:10] um like how we might [23:12] And I think actually specifically, I think honestly, like Kurzweil's Singularity is near. I think it was probably one of the most prophetic and consequential books. [23:21] like I've ever read or seen in the sense where it's like, he plots these lines of progress, right?

And like, they still roughly map out, right? It's like, he's kind of like... [23:30] in early 2000s predicted like AGI in the year 28. And like, we're getting closer and like, [23:38] Maybe it happens even a year before or after. And I think it's something that I think was actually quite impactful for me. And I think part of it, [23:47] was like we basically, I got a bunch of time at high school, and just went very deep into a rabbit hole then on like AI and robotics. [23:56] in startups in general, but also like on other areas like biotech and longevity and [24:01] nanotech in other areas and trying to sort of figure out like what to do after school like um [24:06] And I think.

[24:07] It was obvious to me that sort of like, [24:09] then like AI would be the technology that has this like general purpose quality that it could even drive scientific progress and drive all kinds of other progress. [24:18] So it felt, but I think still at the time, looking at some of the concrete AI out there, it still felt very early and janky. [24:26] We didn't even have GPT-1. And then even when that came around and I checked out, it's like, like, I didn't expect the slope of progress to be as quick as it was, like, from, like, say, GPT-1 to 2.3.

Like, yeah. [24:37] In terms of like, [24:38] really seeing the models from barely being able to like write a sentence to actually becoming like general purpose almost like a reasoner. [24:45] um so yeah but i think actually ballstrom i think in some ways [24:51] is still almost like was too like in retrospect it's like [24:55] to focus in this like utilitarian school of thought of basically almost like advocating for like the one world government. Yeah. [25:03] and global compute governance and stopping all of it, which I think is [25:07] It's far more dangerous actually than the alternative.

So I think it is also kind of like a... [25:12] yeah an interesting broader almost like philosophical milieu that he came up in and contributed to [25:19] I'm going to garble this quote, so forgive me, but I think, you know, at some point someone was asking Einstein or talking to Einstein, like, why is he so interested in the future? And he said, I'm interested in the future because I plan to live in it. Yes. When did that? [25:34] sort of interest happened for you? Like, you know, were you interested in [25:39] science fiction books before you discover super intelligence?

Was there something about your household that sort of oriented in that way? Yeah, to some extent, I think my parents are architects. So it's like, I think they were actually, [25:49] in some ways very like interested in a lot of these things but I think more almost like in creating things and but I think to some extent [25:57] I was always curious, like almost like to some extent, it's like what, like what would the future look like? And to some extent also how to shape it and how to create like, [26:06] interesting things and I think [26:08] part of this was just from this realization that like like everyone can contribute to it and and create like anything so like to some extent even the [26:16] I think Steve Jobs' biography and realizing [26:19] like almost like the his his background being like to some extent actually not too like being somewhat unusual but then also him just being able to like create these things that like ultimately affect humanity i think like made me realize that like okay like everyone can do it so might as well uh like create some uh things and it was also around the time [26:39] Like I read a bunch of different books also like on even like design or like philosophy and sci-fi.

But like I think to some extent also got very involved in just like. [26:49] creating things on the internet and like going down rabbit holes on the internet. And I think, [26:53] This was also then partially like, let me... [26:56] to already in high school, like joined the first few startups, actually, like I think with like, [27:02] uh like 15 like i still remember i had this like two week break in high school to uh where we could insurance somewhere and i applied to basically every startup i was interested in across all of berlin like 100 or so startups

[27:14] And actually like two or three, like basically were like, yeah, like, you know, a two week internship of a 15 year old. Like, they took me and it was actually quite a formative experience, just like because it was also a young founding team. I thought it was actually like, I forgot the name, but like. [27:29] I think she's still around and very successful and profitable. And I was joining them in the second week after the incorporation. So it's like... You're a founding engineer. Yeah, basically. It was like 20 years old.

But I think it was interesting to... [27:43] then like actually very concretely see like okay like I can do this too like and I think that was like shaped me then also like to [27:52] explore like pursuing startups. And then you're maybe you go to college and then you sort of drop out and apply to YC right? Yes. What was the what was the first company that you were trying to build at that point? Yeah it's actually interesting so I basically like we had this university like which was very project-based and actually like I remember like first semester like we're building a robot from scratch like we literally like had like literally like 3D printing the parts building the like building on ROS like a robot OS like [28:19] But I think it was like very hands-on and across like multidisciplinary, like from like software and ML to like design and product and business.

But to some extent, I want to take the step further from like this like, [28:31] theoretical setting of like a university project too. And I think two things happened. Like on the one side, [28:37] I got one of my best friends, like, who was very early into Bitcoin. Like, I sent him, like, I saw the Ethereum white paper, like, 2015 and sent it to him. And he was very interested. And... [28:47] when building deep into it. But then I was also very interested in AI and longevity. [28:53] and went to this like longevity conference in Berlin and in my first semester.

And I think it was actually very fond of because like, [29:01] I ran into this, I think it was like Aubrey de Grey was hosting it, and I ran into it, and the first guy I ran into was actually Vitalik, and then [29:09] The like I also met their like Celine Haloya who's now doing like loyal. [29:15] for dogs. So it's like, and I stayed in touch and had a good chat with both, but stayed in touch with Celine and she then actually reached out to me that she wanted to do a startup and if I want to help.

And she basically just threw like a dozen or so friends in a group chat to see if they want to help out on her startup. So actually like, [29:32] help very actively across a lot of different things. [29:35] And then we basically just like explored, like I think to some extent very inspired like by longevity. It's like if one can figure out like a novel, almost like, [29:43] incentives and health insurance for longevity. [29:47] and replied with that idea to YC. Ultimately, they did make it in and then I realized like, okay, maybe I don't want to actually pursue this for the next decade.

But it was very formative. Like it was my first time also going to, because they did in-person interviews in SF. So they flew us out. So it was my first time in SF, I think 2017 or 18. And then kind of like from there, like met a lot of interesting people. And I think to some extent, just tried to figure out like what [30:17] realized to some extent I was like more drawn to science and AI more holistically. And then like met a few other people and actually went... [30:25] sort of like a bit back to university.

It's like to go, because it was very project-based to like pursue some projects and because we could just go to any like, [30:36] workshops uh so we had like the the fair team like from meta yeah like give a one week workshop on ai like 20 like 17 18 and so we like that was uh i think one of the formative things there but like and then just like building things from scratch and like hands-on uh like was quite a useful and then starting point to pursue other startups um later [30:58] And, um, [30:59] to some extent then like helped out this friend, but also met actually then, [31:06] like two guys in [31:08] in Berlin who were like looking into figuring out ways to like accelerate scientific funding.

And one of the threats was thought of, [31:16] that like I was, [31:17] very excited by this idea of, um, actually like, like truly autonomous organizations that like Ethereum introduced with DAOs. Which was 2016, maybe the first one. And then like, I actually participated in the very first one. Oh, which didn't go so well. And then, but I, I think actually it was this underlying idea of like actually AGI of being like, Hey, like, I'm [31:38] How can we figure out a system of truly autonomous agents, like coordinating, like doing things together, like...

[31:45] funding science, doing other interesting things. But for me, it was like actually, [31:48] Like it was quite obvious that ultimately we want to move to a place where we can do like autonomous science in essence, where we have like. [31:55] Why is that important? Like, I think the realization was sort of like... [32:00] scientific progress is probably the most important thing for just generally like human progress and well-being and flourishing and ultimately [32:07] It felt like having like science mainly be stuck in academia and stuck by like, [32:12] like limited by a nation state funding.

Yeah. And, uh, or just having like the more commercializable like science, which then like progresses very well. Right. In a sense, like if you already... [32:24] like whatever, like biotechs work and just general deep tech companies, I think, [32:29] are great, but like, I think ultimately a lot of scientific progress is left on the table by outsourcing it to the nation state or to academia. And I think the realization was sort of like, [32:38] it should be much easier for every human to contribute to scientific progress and do science, but also like fund science and participate in science.

And it shouldn't be just like, [32:47] elite uh like guarded uh thing that only [32:51] like a minority of like humanity they can participate in. [32:54] This was actually then something that I, like, [32:57] I think to some extent, like with like open and decentralized science was like kind of like quite interesting for me to explore and to pursue in a sense of like figuring out like ways, for example, to crowdfund for science. [33:10] So that's when I then met these two co-founders to explore ways to accelerate scientific funding. [33:20] And we actually explored then initially just like, um, like crowdfunding for specific longevity research.

And, um, to some extent, what was interesting is like really the only researchers. [33:31] Um, [33:32] that made sense were actually in academia. So you still had to work with almost like this program existing system. Yeah, so you stole it in the old permission structure. Exactly, but like, but a lot of them also, like, I think there was an adverse, like, no, actually good selection in terms of like, [33:47] The people that are more willing to try out crazy new ideas were very open to engage. So we actually ended up crowdfunding, I think, 40 million of scientific research across longevity, quantum bio, and cryonics and everything else.

[34:02] Like as a movement, like not just like myself, like I don't claim credit for it. But in a sense, I think what was actually very interesting was [34:09] maybe two or three lessons or insights from there, is to some extent that it actually felt much more like building a community or movement to achieve something. And I think then because a lot of the funding was facilitated by crypto people funding science, I think there was this culture shift that ultimately, they're very into heterodox science, like let's say longevity or cryopreservation.

[34:36] or like crazy ideas like quantum biology or something, which like might totally not work, but like if it does, like it's worth exploring if it might. And I think it's like, [34:44] There's a lot of these areas that I think like, [34:46] They're too heterodox for like a nation state or like the NIH to fund or for even like a big fancy like philanthropists to get behind because they're like, don't want to risk their reputation. They want to do the easier things. [34:59] And I think this was actually, I think, one of the interesting realizations that like to some extent you can just like, um, [35:05] easily almost like unlock much more funding for really ambitious science.

[35:10] And a lot of actually really fun things came out of it because like it was actually sort of like chaotic, like fully distributed experiment where like anyone could propose anything and do anything. And some interesting things that I remember that came out of it was, for example, like we did these experiments to figure out like quadratic public goods funding. Where like basically like, for example, Vitalik actually came in and matched donations for science. [35:34] And then people could donate as little as a dollar, and it would credulatively get matched, depending on how many people would support specific scientific projects.

[35:42] And, like, things came out of it, like, of doing actually, like, fast grants for, like, people entering longevity. So, like, I funded, like, then through it, like, I think 50 or so people. Like, with anything from, like, 100 bucks to, like, 3K. And I'm actually still in touch with a lot of them. And they went on to create some of the most impactful longevity companies. Wow. How interesting. [36:02] So it actually was like, to some extent, like a lot of small experiments came out of it that were very like fulfilling each on their own in terms of like, how can we like accelerate scientific progress, right?

And sometimes it's as easy as like, [36:14] like paying for someone's flight to go to a conference or like to like share their research or like to give them a small grant so they can like get into university and i think this was like the broader lesson was like there's a lot of like untapped ways to almost like discover the hidden Einstein's like globally in terms of like empowering people. [36:32] And I think this was like the broader drive than also with our parameter. Like it's really enabling every human like to contribute to a frontier of like AI, of like science more broadly, which I think is like extremely important.

And I think something that is like, [36:46] fairly like for many people they are very decent franchise from like [36:51] contributing, participating on the frontier of AI and science. So actually a lot of the lessons carried over. Like now, like we're doing things like with Prime Inter, like where, like obviously, like in nature of just being open source, like we have like people from like all over the world, like [37:06] working with us using our stack and contributing. So for example, we had like thousands of reinforcement learning environments being created from like, literally like young kids in a basement somewhere in India or Africa or Europe or elsewhere, like contributing literally to ways to automate science or to like figure out like how we solve math, right?

And, [37:27] So to some extent, I think there's actually this [37:29] consistent thread for me, which is sort of [37:31] how do we solve science and super intelligence? And ultimately, how do we get to a point when we can automate AI and science and everything else and ultimately lift humanity to the next level? Because I think... [37:45] in general, I think like human history is sort of like a story of like building tools that ultimately enable us to reach higher and like to not have to do the groundwork, but like if we can automate something, we probably should automate it.

And if AI can do something fast, like [38:02] It's a great way to have more leverage to do more things. I think in many ways, like I think, say, a scientist in like a decade, [38:10] and already today, I think, like, works completely differently to a scientist, like, even two years ago, which is crazy to think about, right? It's like, in the sense that you can now set your, like, AI and scientific agents off to, like, do literature review for you, like, run experiments for you, like, so, I actually just, [38:27] came from visiting a friend that we actually also like funded through this on the weekend, who's building, for example, like working on research to, for example, shorten sleep and us going through his lab and like how he uses AI, you know, it's like how he's running the experiments.

I know exactly who you're talking about. Exactly. And it's like, and it's like that was like one of the examples of like the things that almost like came out of it to some extent, even like in the long term. And where it was like amazing to see [38:52] like how much already like science is changing like in real time, like in front of us and how much we can contribute to it. [39:01] And I think this is still something I think, especially now, [39:04] like with parameter, like I think really our end goal, and to some extent, I'm already starting to see it like this year, is like, how can we make it, [39:13] like on the one side much easier for everyone to like contribute to like the frontier but then also really get to the point when we cannot like automate AI and science progressively.

Yes. And [39:23] I think we're now obviously over the last few months even like starting to see more and more signs like [39:29] how much more accessible even like development now is with like vibe coding for example [39:34] And I think the same trend we're starting to see actually with AI, where it's like, [39:39] Like even like I'm like running like hundreds of experiments literally now. Yeah. Like just also to like dog food on stack and figure out and I'm not writing a line of code. Like I literally just give like my coding agent, like all the context on our product and stack and API.

[39:54] and like access to thousands of our environments. And it's able to like create new environments, spin off new training runs, like learn things, like improve on things. [40:03] And I think this is actually really like [40:06] the dream more broadly of like how we can [40:09] get to the most progress. - One of the hardest things about running a startup is how easy it is to get pulled into low leverage work. Payroll, onboarding, hardware setup, it all has to happen, but it pulls you away from the actual reason you started the company.

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[40:55] so that founders can keep [40:57] built. [40:57] So if you or your startup want to move as quickly as you can and focus on what really matters, like your product and your customers, [41:05] You need Rippling. [41:06] Right now, venture-backed startups can get six months of Rippling startup stack for free. [41:11] Head to com slash Mario and sign up today. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot com slash Mario to sign up for six months free today. [41:22] Yeah, it's fascinating. It feels like there's been, I mean, a series of inflection points, but especially in the last.

[41:29] I don't know, let's say... [41:30] three to four months a major improvement in some of the underlying models and some of the ways that people are optimizing around them such that [41:39] I don't know. So many of the people I know are spending so much of their time [41:44] playing with this in different ways. For you, like, how have you ended up having the most interesting experiments or the most interesting ways to play with it? [41:53] Yeah, I think there's like two or three pieces to it. I think one is sort of like having a specific objective that I think is interesting.

It's like, I'm trying to figure out things like, [42:03] can it make like novel, like AI or like scientific progress for me? Yes. Right. Which is more meaningful than like just like vibe coding a website or something. And I think then part of it, I think it's like, [42:14] giving a like a lot of context and knowledge and then also to some extent using the right tools. And I think one part of it, I think it's like really thinking carefully about the plan and the objective and the goal and refining and building out the plan.

Because then ultimately, the AI can like sometimes even for like now like tens of hours, like, [42:32] like execute a plan, right? But like, I think the plan needs to make sense and like needs to have the right shape. [42:37] And I've seen like insane things, honestly, even like in the last few weeks where like people are, [42:42] like had agents like work on like very complex plans, like of things that actually huge organizations plan to implement with like hundreds of people over the next five years. Wow. And they vibe coded in a week.

Oh my God. They vibe coded like a roadmap of huge organizations that they had until 2030. [42:57] They just gave it the right plan and spent a ton of inference time compute for weeks. They basically had hundreds of thousands of agents running in parallel with very clear tests and very clear ways to verify. Yes. And I think this is ultimately something like I personally didn't have the time to get to running. But it's something that we are now also seeing across our team where I think really the powerful thing I think is like, [43:20] that you can now give it all of these tools, for example, to do things like autonomous, like AI research or science.

I think this will actually really accelerate in the next like two or three years to the point when I think like, [43:34] math is probably going to be solved at some point at the rate of progress we're going through. It's obviously much more difficult for, let's say, biology, but I think there's also a lot of other domains where I think we'll make a lot of progress. So we're talking about this through line from so many of these pockets of the future that you've been a part of, from cryptocurrencies, the Ethereum white paper back in the day to decentralized science.

[43:57] What was the point when you decided, you know, actually, I really want to focus sort of on AI in this, you know, taking sort of lessons from these different things, but applying it to prime intellect. Like, how did that all come together? [44:09] like i think actually like i met like my co-founder johannes like over five years ago and we had basically [44:15] Like here actually a very similar story and like we just shared interests outside and like [44:19] being very early on, like, into superintelligence and longevity. [44:23] and like open source AI and open science, which I think are sort of the through lines.

And I think to some extent, like we were already exploring together like five years ago, like if we should do something together on like, [44:35] even like automating science and longevity, for example. And I think to some extent it always, I think it was a bit also coincidental of like, [44:42] what made the most sense at any moment in time and what's kind of like possible. Like, frankly, I think like, let's say like a decade ago, like it felt very hard to contribute to the frontier of AI. Like it felt very academic and like the path seemed kind of like, hey, I could like, [44:58] do a phd and you know like an ai or something and at that point i was like one semester into my bachelors [45:04] So it's like, I was like, okay, like I could do, like maybe I shift to like math or like, and then, but I realized that ultimately, [45:13] that I wouldn't want to become like an academic or basically go through [45:17] an extremely long like university journey like i felt much more [45:22] like kind of like generalist in the sense of like I was doing like design, product, like marketing, like software engineering and like kind of like diving into like AI and science and running experiments.

But like. [45:33] kind of like my skill set felt much more like a generalist like founder skill set than, then let's say like an AI researcher skill set, frankly. But then I think like, because like my co-founder and friends like Johannes, they started Primitric with like, he was sort of the researcher that like, he was like at Alif Alpha, the big like, [45:49] one of the early European AI labs. They were training large language models before JGBT came out. [45:54] And it was the only place in Europe at the time doing so.

And he told me about a lot of his experiments. And then I think over time we realized, okay, there's a huge power in opening up this toolbox to humanity and building it out as a stack. [46:09] but also to accelerate things like science and AI research as well. So that was why even some of the first projects we did with Primitive, [46:18] was scientific foundation models, for example. And we're still actually partnering with a lot of scientists. So we have like some really exciting [46:24] like scientific foundation models in the works since like half a year.

Like I think like to some extent, I think we took inspiration from like DeepMind and like their scientific AI efforts. [46:33] And yeah, and also on like autonomous AI research, we have a bunch of things going on. So I think actually over the next like few months, we'll have a lot of this come out like in terms of like, [46:42] more scientific AI and autonomous AI research, like, efforts we're working on. So I think there's a lot there that I think is sort of like the broader [46:52] also motivation for all of this.

[46:55] You know, I think one of the most interesting pieces, and I mean this very complementarily about prime intellect, is that it seems like you've evolved the form factor of it quite a lot over time. Like you started with sort of. [47:07] the marketplace for for gpus you've sort of done your own models as well you have this lab product and so all these pieces make sort of philosophical sense but they sort of serve different needs in some some respect why was the the gpu marketplace the right beginning i think actually to some extent if you would map it to like an anthropical may i like they actually have like all of these functions too but it's in in some ways yeah like it looks

[47:32] like you only see it as one holistic whole because they don't expose any of it. Right. It's like like obviously like orchestrating global data centers. It's at the heart of like OpenAI and Anthropic and Google. [47:42] So I actually, like, I think that's why it started there. It was in the sense of, like, we're training our own models and realize we can't get compute. [47:48] And then like this was actually 2023. And so we realized like, OK, like it's impossible to get compute. Like at the time, like there was a shortage and we were looking everywhere.

And then over time, we actually found some. But like all the AI startup friends we were talking to weren't able to find it. So we started to realize [48:06] Oh, there's like thousands of data centers. Most of them are like very hard to discover and find and orchestrate and plug in with. [48:13] So we realized that it's kind of this foundational thing. And that I think to some extent. The computer I think will power kind of everything. Because it will power AI. Which I think will get. [48:24] imbued into everything.

[48:26] And... [48:27] So I think we realize it's like extremely foundational to always be able to like tap into compute. And it's obviously kind of like can't do anything without it, like an AI. [48:36] And then we just realized like, okay, like we don't want to build out data centers or something. Like there's enough of them like out there, like ideally that we can plug into. So it's like, it's something where we just like partnered with every data center we could find. Like literally from the like first week of starting the company.

Wow. And then a few months in, we're like, we're live with like 20 or so data centers and, and Neo Clouds that we partnered with. And honestly, it's now a huge... [49:01] edge on mode because like now everyone is coming to us to find compute because we [49:05] like a plug-in with all of these people and it's sort of like, [49:08] a starting point even for our customers to do something with, right? Like, a lot of the most ambitious now in Neolabs, [49:13] and AI startups are now working with us, like some of the most accomplished and senior teams.

[49:19] And I think... [49:21] Like they need basically everything that we provide, which is on the one side, it's really like a frontier research team that creates the stack that they ultimately need, which I think is like actually distinct from like, say, a lot of AI infra companies. Like it's in that sense much closer to an anthropic open AI where it's like you need to have your own frontier research team to create like the infra stack that ultimately like enables you a jump into the next paradigm. [49:48] And I think this is something [49:50] where like basically a lot of these [49:53] Things I think were almost like necessary foundations on which to build.

And to some extent, obviously building kind of like this full frontier, like AI training and deployment stack, I think requires like computer foundation, but then also a lot of these other... [50:06] components and pieces, especially now around RL, which I think also made it much more accessible and economical. Because you can just take the best open model and make it work really well for your use case. I think a broader point actually there is, [50:20] that I think the broader thesis is like you need to get [50:24] Like similar to like a Tesla autopilot.

You want to get to the point when you can automate anything and you do it in stages. And you basically can take like the best model. You usually then create an RL environment to simulate, let's for example, autonomous driving. And then that makes the model's capabilities better at this. But then you also need to roll it out to the real world and to real users and real environment.