Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

Today Razib talks to Theo Jaffee, co-host of Monitoring the Situation, a show backed by Andreessen Horowitz that covers the rise of the "intelligence explosion" and AI. Jaffee is writer and podcaster who grew up in Boca Raton, Florida. He studied computer science and economics at the University of Florida. His writing on Theo's Substack explores artificial intelligence, technology, business, history, and philosophy. He has also contributed to Quillette and received an Emergent Ventures fellowship in 2024. The podcast covers AI's accelerating capabilities, broader societal impact, and safety risks. Jaffee talks about estimates of a 10% probability of human technological civilization collapsing within ten years, distinguishing between the disempowerment of humanity and the potential continuation of civilization under AI control. But, he notes, coordination, political intervention, and the logistical difficulty of automating physical infrastructure can mitigate that catastrophic risk. Progress remains broadly on track with AI 2027 expectations, despite there being no predicted labor disruptions and Chinese consolidation failing to materialize as forecast. Jaffee notes events like the Hugging Face incident and an apparent Millennium Prize problem solution heighten concerns surrounding alignment and control. Razib and Jaffee also discuss how critical uncertainties persist over how rapidly recursive self-improvement might yield superintelligence, whether mounting political backlash will establish viable safeguards or trigger heavy-handed stagnation, and how society must ultimately evaluate AI consciousness and moral status.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Brian Chau. A graduate of the University of Waterloo and former software engineer with a background in pure mathematics, today Chau is CEO of Effort.News. He was previously with The Alliance for the Future. Most of this conversation is around why it took so long to put together something like Effort.News, and what they've discovered (e.g., "The 19th-century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth"). Chau also discusses their recruitment and capital needs as a seed-stage startup.

Nikolai Yakovenko is back on the podcast because of the Hugging Face hack. Yakovenko is a former professional poker player, and was a research scientist at Google, Twitter and Nvidia. With a decade in computer science, Yakovenko has been at the forefront of the large-language-model revolution that has driven to prominence companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind, and an ecosystem that has birthed hundreds of smaller startups. He is also the founder of DeepNewz, an AI-driven news startup. His latest startup is HuggingNews. Razib and Yakovenko talk about the implications of OpenAI's inadvertent hack of Hugging Face, and whether he has been too sanguine about the possibility of AI-apocalypse. Though Yakovenko hasn't gone full doomer, he admits that this sort of behavior by AI agents is alarming. That being said, he cautions we need to keep perspective. They also discuss predictions of the coming obsolescence of software engineers…Yakovenko notes that in some ways Dario Amodei was correct to predict the end of software engineering as a profession: very few write code unaided by LLMs today. In a few years, many professions, especially in tech, have transformed, but warnings of mass unemployment have not materialized.

Today, Razib talks to Collin Hogue-Spears, a cybersecurity and artificial intelligence governance expert with more than 20 years of experience in technology, product management, federal compliance and software security. Hogue-Spears is an independent researcher and the author of From Lab to Life: How AI Works in China. His analysis has appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal and Politico. Razib and Hogue-Spears first talk abut China's rapid AI development, driven by provincial initiatives and significant investments in infrastructure. Hogue-Spears emphasizes China's focus on practical AI applications, contrasting it with the U.S.'s emphasis on AGI. He predicts China's dominance in AI, particularly in embodied AI, and warns of the potential global impact if China surpasses the U.S. in AI development. The conversation highlights the striking differences between the U.S. and Chinese technological ecosystems.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning we have a double-feature with Richard Hanania and Steve Sailer. Hanania holds a law degree from the University of Chicago and a PhD in political science from UCLA, and was previously a research fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. He founded the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI) and writes the popular Substack newsletter Richard Hanania's Newsletter, where he covers politics, foreign policy, and social science from a heterodox, broadly libertarian-leaning perspective; his book The Origins of Woke argued that civil rights law, rather than culture alone, drives modern identity politics. His latest book is Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster. Steve Sailer is an American journalist and blogger, born in 1958 in Los Angeles, who worked in market research before turning to full-time writing in the 1990s, contributing to National Review, The American Conservative, Taki's Magazine, and the webzine VDARE, as well as his long-running personal blog. He is best known for coining the term "human biodiversity" (HBD) and for pioneering a data-heavy style of commentary on race, immigration, IQ, crime, and demographics. This approach made him persona non grata in mainstream outlets. Long relegated to the fringes and often labeled a race-science promoter by critics, he published an anthology, Noticing, in 2024. In the first hour, Razib and Hanania discuss his career, his use of social media, and his new book. They delve into the rise of populism, defining it as a movement that divides society into righteous masses and corrupt elites. Hanania argues that populism often leads to poor economic performance and authoritarianism. They also touch on the impact of AI on the legal profession, the role of social media in amplifying fringe views, and the challenges of immigration and institutional trust. Hanania expresses a preference for a merit-based immigration system and criticizes the identitarian deference on both the left and right. In the second hour, Razib and Sailer discuss the demographic and economic changes in Southern California, highlighting the impact of Latino immigration and the rise of new immigrant groups from the former Soviet Union. They recount the environmental movement's role in halting development in Beverly Hills and the potential of robot taxis to transform urban commuting. Sailer reflects on the decline of Chicago's Fortune 500 companies and the challenges faced by cities built on water transport. They also discuss the evolution of race and IQ debates and the importance of affirmative action in diverse fields. Likely to the surprise of many Sailer defends affirmative action for black Americans. He also expresses optimism for the future, despite the current political climate.

On this episode, Razib talks to streamer and political commentator Destiny (Steven Bonnell II). Destiny first gained prominence in the late 2000s as a professional player and content creator in the video game StarCraft II. Over time, he transitioned from gaming into politics, philosophy, culture, and current events, becoming one of the most influential figures in online debate culture. Known for his fast-paced argumentative style, willingness to engage opponents across the ideological spectrum, and extensive live discussions with politicians, journalists, academics, and fellow creators, Destiny has built a large audience on streaming and video platforms. His content focuses on liberal politics, public policy, social issues, and media criticism, and he has played a notable role in shaping the modern ecosystem of online political commentary and debate. Razib Khan interviews Destiny about his current position on the center-left, with the rise of the far left and the ascendancy of MAGA. Destiny criticizes Trump's foreign policy as irresponsible and incoherent, citing examples like the Venezuela invasion and the Iran situation. He also discusses the challenges of defining political labels, the impact of social media on political discourse, and the need for better messaging from the Democratic Party. He emphasizes the importance of nuanced discussions on issues like transgender rights and foreign policy. Razib and Destiny touch on cultural war issues, particularly the left's obsession with racial identity and the right's response. They debate the impact of DEI policies versus the DOJ's actions under Trump. Destiny argues that conservatives' disengagement from cultural institutions led to their current dominance by the left. They also discuss the media's role in shaping public perception and the decline of ideological debate due to social media echo chambers. The conversation touches on the MAGA movement's reliance on Trump and the lack of genuine engagement in modern political discourse.

Today on Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Zineb Riboua, a research fellow and program manager of Hudson Institute's Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. She specializes in Chinese and Russian involvement in the Middle East, the Sahel, and North Africa, great power competition in the region, and Israeli-Arab relations. Riboua's pieces and commentary have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, the Jerusalem Post and Tablet among other outlets. She holds a master's of public policy from the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. She did her undergraduate studies in France, where she attended French preparatory classes and HEC Paris' Grande Ecole program. Her Substack is Beyond the Ideological. Razib and Zineb Riboua discuss the concept of Third Worldism (following up on an earlier podcast), its historical context, and its contemporary relevance. Riboua explains that Third Worldism positions the decolonizing world as a historical actor seeking revenge and redistribution from the West, emphasizing the West's role in global South underdevelopment. They explore its manifestations in politics, particularly in the US and Europe, and its influence on foreign policy, highlighting the role of Israel as a central issue. Riboua also touches on the economic and political challenges faced by Iran and the Middle East, and the evolving dynamics of Islam in global politics.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib has a wide-ranging conversation, again, with Dan Hess, the man behind the More Births account on social media. An engineer with a large family in the DC area, Hess' essays on topics like Israelis' high birth rate have gained the attention of X. He has an account that has come from a few hundred followers to more than 45,000 in less than 4 years. His tweets have been boosted by Elon. Today Razib and Hess start the conversation talking about East Asia, and its massive fertility crisis. Hess makes the case against urban density, observing how low fertility is in some of these Asian cities in particular. Razib also brings up economic and cultural creativity, as he and Hess ruminate on the consequences of reduced dynamism due to an aging population. Hess also argues that we cannot rely on evolution to fix our demographic imbalances; the source nations of immigrants are experiencing demographic collapse as well.

It's been a minute since we've had Nikolai Yakovenko on the podcast. Yakovenko is a former professional poker player,and was a research scientist at Google, Twitter and Nvidia. With a decade in computer science, Yakovenko has been at the forefront of the large-language-model revolution that has driven to prominence companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind, and an ecosystem that has birthed hundreds of smaller startups. He is also the founder of DeepNewz, an AI-driven news startup. On this podcast, Razib and Yakovenko talk about the current top of the line "frontier labs," OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's DeepMind, why xAI has faltered, and the reality that only DeepSeek in China seems up to challenging the American firms. Yakovenko notes that AI's transformative impact is mostly in the massive capital influx into the sector, as well as becoming a ubiquitous part of the software engineer's toolkit. They discuss how programming without an AI-assist is now likened to "raw dogging" coding, while artificial superintelligence seems a rather distant prospect. The technology is getting better, but predictions of the doomers seem not to have panned out.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to physicist Gregory Cochran. Cochran is best known for his work in human evolution, often at the intersection of biology, anthropology, and history. Trained in physics, he later turned to population genetics and became widely known through collaborations with researchers like Henry Harpending, producing influential but controversial work on recent human evolution, including the idea that natural selection has accelerated in the Holocene. Cochran has also been a prominent public intellectual, co-authoring the book The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. He writes at the blog West Hunter. First, Razib and Cochran examine the controversy surrounding Ancient DNA reveals pervasive directional selection across West Eurasia, including Davide Piffer's complaint that the authors did not cite his work. Then, they review chapter-by-chapter the arguments in The 10,000 Year Explosion, from Cochran and John Hawks' prediction that Neanderthals likely admixed with modern humans, to the importance of agriculture in driving adaptation in human beings and the ecological context of the increase in Ashkenazi intelligence.

The full episode is available here: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/10000-years-of-selection-in-western Despite the preprint being out for two years, Akbari et al.'s Ancient DNA reveals pervasive directional selection across West Eurasia publication in Nature this week has resulted in a massive media response. Though Razib has discussed this work before, he thought it would be useful to review it, and put it in context in a new monologue.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to returning guest Megan McArdle. She is the author of The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success and a Washington Post columnist and op-ed board member. McArdle grew up in New York City and attended Riverdale Country School. She obtained an undergraduate degree in English from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the University of Chicago. McArdle's previous positions were at The Economist, The Atlantic and Newsweek. She has a new podcast for the Washington Post, Reasonably Optimistic, and also contributes to Central Air and The Dispatch. Razib and McArdle talk about the follies of populism, left and right, and the damage being done to America in the name of anti-elitism. Razib asks McArdle if there is any way out of a national debt crisis and fiscal insolvency (answer: probably not). Then they discuss the role high cost of living and confiscatory tax rates on the flight of capital and high-income individuals from blue states, and McArdle explains the historical-structural reasons that liberal cities cannot cut back on their top-heavy labor force. Razib and McArdle discuss immigration, trade and globalization, and the short-sightedness of MAGA-populism. Finally, they address AI, McArdle's usage of it, and the promise it has in revolutionizing work and transforming our society.

You can find the complete monologue here: https://www.razibkhan.com/p/monlogue-out-of-africa-is-not-dead On this episode Razib talks about where we are when it comes to "Out-of-Africa," Neanderthal origins and the broader state of understanding the dynamics of Homo evolution.