Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Knoop: Startups just doing model training are lighting money on fire

Mike Knoop · Mike Knoop (Arc Prize) on Why Scaling AI Won’t Get Us to AGI · Apr 6, 2025 · at 25:37

Zapier co-founder and ARC Prize creator Mike Knoop discusses how small AI startups should approach competing against foundation model labs.

0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I think anyone who's like Just doing model training at this point is like lighting money on fire. If you really want to make a unique difference, especially if you're a small startup, like a founder, like you gotta go take an orthogonal approach. You gotta try something different than what everyone else is doing. That's the only way you're going to be able to potentially like, I think capture attention and provide a lot of new value to the world.”

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 Mike Knoop

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Knoop: Scaling Test-Time Compute Will Not Get Us to AGI
“And then there's a new story that's emerged over the last like five months, which is, oh, we're going to scale up this test time compute and that's going to get us to AGI. And I think what V two shows is that that's not quite either. We still need some structu…”
Mike Knoop Apr 6, 2025 ▶ 6:40 Mike Knoop (Arc Prize) on Why Scaling AI Won’t Get Us to AGI
Opinion
Knoop: Language models operate by memorization rather than solving novel patterns
“Language models. Generally working like a memorization style regime where they're right. Learning lots of data. They're able to apply it to very similar types of patterns that they've seen before, but not novel patterns. That's what RKGI shows.”
Mike Knoop Apr 6, 2025 ▶ 17:32 Mike Knoop (Arc Prize) on Why Scaling AI Won’t Get Us to AGI
Assertion Supported
Knoop: ARC Saw No Progress Despite 50,000x Model Scaling
“Surprise that it basically hadn't, and not only hadn't been beaten, there'd basically been no progress in it which I thought was really fascinating given the fact that we've like scaled up these language model systems by almost like 50,000 times over the last,…”
Mike Knoop Apr 6, 2025 ▶ 1:31 Mike Knoop (Arc Prize) on Why Scaling AI Won’t Get Us to AGI
Assertion Supported
Knoop: Pure LLMs Score 0% and o1 Scores 1% on ARC-AGI-2
“Pure LLM systems are scoring like zero percent now again on on arc B two single COT systems like R one and O one score like one percent.”
Mike Knoop Apr 6, 2025 ▶ 6:01 Mike Knoop (Arc Prize) on Why Scaling AI Won’t Get Us to AGI
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Knoop: AI agents will start working in 2025 due to ARC progress
“I actually think we're going to start to see agents start to work this year specifically because of progress on arc.”
Mike Knoop Apr 6, 2025 ▶ 14:16 Mike Knoop (Arc Prize) on Why Scaling AI Won’t Get Us to AGI
Opinion
Knoop: Gary Marcus has been more right than wrong on deep learning
“I generally think he's been more right than wrong. I think if you like just take a limited five year view on this from 20, 20 up until 20, 20, end of 20, 24, you know, I think it was a generally right. Like he was making the right ideas.”
Mike Knoop Apr 6, 2025 ▶ 27:38 Mike Knoop (Arc Prize) on Why Scaling AI Won’t Get Us to AGI
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 500 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.