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Srinivas: Simple AI ideas scaled with compute outperform complicated architectures

Aravind Srinivas · Nikhil Kamath ft. Perplexity CEO, Aravind Srinivas | WTF Online Ep 1. · Nikhil Kamath · Mar 23, 2025 · at 11:56

Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, reflects on the primary research philosophy he learned during his 2018 internship at OpenAI.

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“What matters in reality is making things work. And it's often the simplest ideas that work in practice, especially when thrown a lot of compute at them. The simplest ideas typically outshine the complicated ones.”

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 →

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