Wu: Reinforcement learning can solve basically any clearly defined benchmark
Scott Wu · Inside the Fastest-Growing Category in AI: Scott Wu, CEO of $26B Cognition · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea · Jul 27, 2026 · at 30:12
Scott Wu, CEO of Cognition, discusses how reinforcement learning allows models to master well-defined benchmarks while struggling with ambiguous real-world problems.
“We're kind of getting to the point where you can solve basically any benchmark, right? Because what does it mean to have a benchmark? It means you've already defined the task. You've clarified what success or failure looks like. You've given a bunch of examples of what that task looks like and what the right behavior should be. And the truth kind of is, well, if you do that, then you can teach the model to go do that. You know, it's RL works.”
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 →