“Yeah, we are a super expensive tool call. You know, if you're a model, you can either ask me, you know, meat bag over here to you know, help with something and I'll try to think really slowly. In the meantime, it could have like used browser and read like a hundred papers on the topic and something like that.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Brandon McKinzie
Insight
McKinzie: Tools prevent reasoning models from degrading during test-time compute
“We've in the past for our reasoning models talked a lot about test time scaling, and I think for a lot of problems you know, without tools, test time scaling might occasionally work and, but at some point the model is just kind of ranting in its internal chain…”
Brandon McKinzieMay 1, 2025▶ 3:45No Priors Ep. 113 | With OpenAI's Eric Mitchell and Brandon McKinzie
Opinion
McKinzie: General reasoning models could unify with robotics foundation models
“And I personally don't see any reason why we couldn't have this, these be this, the same model.”
Brandon McKinzieMay 1, 2025▶ 22:42No Priors Ep. 113 | With OpenAI's Eric Mitchell and Brandon McKinzie
AssertionNot checkable as stated
McKinzie: Tool use noticeably changes test-time scaling for visual reasoning
“We've seen exactly that, like the test time scaling slopes for, without tool use and with tool use for visual reasoning specifically are very noticeably different.”
Brandon McKinzieOct 31, 2025▶ 11:31No Priors Ep. 138 | The Best of 2025 (So Far) with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil
AssertionSupported
McKinzie: Reinforcement learning is the key differentiator behind o3 reasoning
“I guess the short answer is reinforcement learning is, is the biggest one. So yeah, rather than just having to predict the next token and some large pre-training corpus from, you know you know, everywhere essentially now we have a more focused goal of the mode…”
Brandon McKinzieMay 1, 2025▶ 3:20No Priors Ep. 113 | With OpenAI's Eric Mitchell and Brandon McKinzie
AssertionSupported
McKinzie: Tool use improves test-time scaling slopes for visual reasoning
“And we've seen exactly that, like the test time scaling slopes for without tool use and with tool use for visual reasoning specifically are very noticeably different.”
Brandon McKinzieMay 1, 2025▶ 9:55No Priors Ep. 113 | With OpenAI's Eric Mitchell and Brandon McKinzie
AssertionNot checkable as stated
McKinzie: OpenAI has run out of reliable evaluation benchmarks for recent models
“Especially with some of our recent models where we've kind of run out of Reliable evals to track because they kind of just solved a few of those.”
Brandon McKinzieMay 1, 2025▶ 33:40No Priors Ep. 113 | With OpenAI's Eric Mitchell and Brandon McKinzie
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