Ep 58: Google Researchers Noam Shazeer and Jack Rae on Scaling Test-time Compute, Reactions to Ilya & AGI

Listen to this episode from Unsupervised Learning on Spotify. On the latest episode of Unsupervised Learning, Jacob is joined by two of the most influential minds in AI today. 🔹 Noam Shazeer, co-inventor of the Transformer🔹 Jack Rae, Research Director at DeepMind and one of the leads behind Gemini’s Flash ThinkingWe got to ask them all of the top-of-mind questions in AI today about where we are, where we’re headed and what it means for businesses and the world. Some key take-aways: (0:00) Intro(1:30) Exploring Gemini 2.0(4:04) Challenges with Evals and Benchmarks(6:14) Reinforcement Loops and AI Productivity(8:15) Agentic Coding and AI in Development(13:02) Multimodal Capabilities and Applications(15:21) Future of AI: Complexity and Reliability(19:02) Test Time Compute and Data Efficiency(31:20) AI Research Culture and Breakthroughs(38:59) Reflecting on Large Language Models(39:37) The Rise of Vision-Based Models(41:01) Native Image Generation and General Purpose Models(41:35) AI in Healthcare and Specialized Models(43:32) Shifting Timelines and Rapid Adoption(46:48) Open Source Models and Competitive Edge(49:30) AI's Impact on Education and Personal Lives(55:10) AGI Risks and Safety Considerations(57:33) Future of AI Companions(1:02:17) Quickfire With your co-hosts: @jacobeffron - Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health @patrickachase - Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn @ericabrescia - Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare) @jordan_segall - Partner at Redpoint