{"podcast":{"title":"Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)","slug":"machine-learning-street-talk","podcast_index_feed_id":781643,"rss_url":"https://anchor.fm/s/1e4a0eac/podcast/rss","website_url":"https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/machinelearningstreettalk","image_url":"https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/staging/podcast_uploaded_nologo/4981699/4981699-1757416025703-f026fa81b6d04.jpg","author":"Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)","episode_count":250,"summary":"Welcome! We engage in fascinating discussions with pre-eminent figures in the AI field. Our flagship show covers current affairs in AI, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy of mind with in-depth analysis. Our approach is unrivalled in terms of scope and rigour – we believe in intellectual diversity in AI, and we touch on all of the main ideas in the field with the hype surgically removed. MLST is run by Tim Scarfe, Ph.D (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ecsquizor/) and features regular appearances from MIT Doctor of Philosophy Keith Duggar (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-keith-duggar/).","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/machine-learning-street-talk"},"episode":{"title":"Pushing compute to the limits of physics","slug":"pushing-compute-to-the-limits-of-physics","published_at":"2025-07-21T20:07:52+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/machine-learning-street-talk/pushing-compute-to-the-limits-of-physics","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/machine-learning-street-talk","url":"https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/machinelearningstreettalk/episodes/Pushing-compute-to-the-limits-of-physics-e35r8ru","audio_url":"https://anchor.fm/s/1e4a0eac/podcast/play/105799998/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-6-21%2F404299996-44100-2-abef86652c6ad.mp3","summary":"Dr. Maxwell Ramstead grills Guillaume Verdon (AKA “Beff Jezos”) who's the founder of Thermodynamic computing startup Extropic. Guillaume shares his unique path – from dreaming about space travel as a kid to becoming a physicist, then working on quantum computing at Google, to developing a radically new form of computing hardware for machine learning. He explains how he hit roadblocks with traditional physics and computing, leading him to start his company – building "thermodynamic computers." These are based on a new design for super-efficient chips that use the natural chaos of electrons (think noise and heat) to power AI tasks, which promises to speed up AND lower the costs of modern probabilistic techniques like sampling. He is driven by the pursuit of building computers that work more like your brain, which (by the way) runs on a banana and a glass of water! Guillaume talks about his alter ego, Beff Jezos, and the "Effective Accelerationism" (e/acc) movement that he initiated. Its objective is to speed up tech progress in order to “grow civilization” (as measured by energy use and innovation), rather than “slowing down out of fear”. Guillaume argues we need to embrace variance, exploration, and optimism to avoid getting stuck or outpaced by competitors like China. He and Maxwell discuss big ideas like merging humans with AI, decentralizing intelligence, and why boundless growth (with smart constraints) is “key to humanity's future”. REFS: 1. John Archibald Wheeler - "It From Bit" Concept 00:04:45 - Foundational work proposing that physical reality emerges from information at the quantum level Learn more: https://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/wheeler.pdf 2. AdS/CFT Correspondence (Holographic Principle) 00:05:15 - Theoretical physics duality conne…","meta_description":"Dr. Maxwell Ramstead grills Guillaume Verdon (AKA “Beff Jezos”) who's the founder of Thermodynamic computing startup Extropic. Guillaume shares his unique…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":5012,"processing_state":"processed","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/machine-learning-street-talk/episodes/pushing-compute-to-the-limits-of-physics/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/machine-learning-street-talk/pushing-compute-to-the-limits-of-physics.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}