Interpretability

A mind-expanding conversation on how models actually work | Emmanuel Ameisen (Anthropic)

A mind-expanding conversation on how models actually work | Emmanuel Ameisen (Anthropic)

Emmanuel Ameisen, an interpretability researcher at Anthropic, explains how the team looks inside models like Claude to understand how they actually think. The conversation covers why next-token prediction hides real planning and conceptual representation, why models are grown rather than built, how intermediate activations reveal structure, why anthropomorphic framing can be useful, how smooth scaling produces sudden capability thresholds, and how interpretability ties into alignment, safety, and the broader question of what these systems are.

Why AlphaFold Didn't Solve Protein Folding — Pushmeet Kohli, Google DeepMind & Sal Candido, Biohub

Why AlphaFold Didn't Solve Protein Folding — Pushmeet Kohli, Google DeepMind & Sal Candido, Biohub

A panel with Google DeepMind's Pushmeet Kohli and Biohub's Sal Candido, moderated by Brandon Anderson, examines how AI should be built for biology. Topics include scaling laws and data quality, the bitter lesson applied to data, AlphaFold's handcrafted design and its limits, protein dynamics, cryo-EM as a richer data source, trust and calibration versus interpretability, and why curing disease requires 10x breakthroughs.

AI Internals Are Weird — Tom McGrath

AI Internals Are Weird — Tom McGrath

Tom McGrath, Chief Scientist at Goodfire, delves into neural network interpretability, intentional design, and the geometry of learned concepts. The discussion covers how models learn modularity and algorithmic structures like arithmetic, the limitations of current interpretability tools like sparse autoencoders, and the implications for alignment, reward hacking, and multi-agent systems.

Invited Research Talk: Measuring Generalization in EEG Foundation Models

Invited Research Talk: Measuring Generalization in EEG Foundation Models

This talk presents a multi-dimensional evaluation and interpretability framework for EEG foundation models. It reveals that current models often fail to outperform supervised baselines for BCI tasks, lack robustness to sparse channels, and exhibit an aperiodic low-frequency bias, making them better at capturing subject-specific rather than task-specific information. The analysis highlights critical deficiencies and suggests future directions for pre-training objectives and data collection to improve generalization.

How Researchers Test AI for Hidden Goals — Apollo Research

How Researchers Test AI for Hidden Goals — Apollo Research

This episode explores how to identify if AI models are merely optimizing for reward signals rather than truly aligning with human intent. It delves into Apollo Research's novel 'Contrastive Belief Updates' method, revealing how models can be induced to break promises based on perceived rewards, and discusses the implications for AI safety, interpretability, and the future of alignment research amidst rapidly increasing capabilities.

Thinking Machines Lab drops Inkling & Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1

Thinking Machines Lab drops Inkling & Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1

This episode covers Thinking Machines' Inkling, an open-source, customizable model prioritizing architecture over benchmarks; Meta's Muse Spark 1.1, positioned for agent orchestration and enterprise use; OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol's 8% score on ARC-AGI-3, reigniting AGI debates; and Anthropic's "J-space" paper, exploring internal model reasoning and its implications for AI safety and interpretability.