Tom Brown, co-founder of Anthropic, shares his journey from a YC founder to a key figure behind AI's scaling breakthroughs. He discusses the discovery of scaling laws that underpinned GPT-3, the mission-driven founding of Anthropic, the surprising success of Claude for coding, and his perspective on what he calls "humanity's largest infrastructure buildout ever."
Jared Kaplan, co-founder of Anthropic, explains how the discovery of predictable, physics-like scaling laws in AI training provides a clear roadmap for progress. He details the two main phases of model training (pre-training and RL), discusses how scaling compute predictably unlocks longer-horizon task capabilities, and outlines the remaining challenges—memory, nuanced oversight, and organizational knowledge—on the path to human-level AI.
Drawing on research from complexity science, this presentation explores why organizations slow down as they grow and how architectural and organizational patterns, like those in microservices and at Amazon, can create superlinear scaling. It explains that by fostering networked structures over rigid hierarchies, companies can mimic the innovative and resilient properties of cities.
Ben Mann, co-founder of Anthropic, discusses the accelerating progress in AI, forecasting superintelligence by 2028. He details Anthropic's safety-first mission, the "Economic Turing Test" for AGI, the mechanisms of Constitutional AI, and why focusing on alignment created Claude's unique personality.