The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025
An inside view of the AI revolution, from the people and companies making it happen.

How did we build large language models? How do they think, if they think? What will the world look like if we have billions of AIs that are as smart as humans, or even smarter?

In a series of in-depth interviews with leading AI researchers and company founders—including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, MIRI cofounder Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—Dwarkesh Patel provides the first comprehensive and contemporary portrait of the technology that is transforming our world.

Drawn from his interviews on the Dwarkesh Podcast, these curated excerpts range from the technical details of how LLMs work to the possibility of an AI takeover or explosive economic growth. Patel’s conversations cut through the noise to explore the topics most compelling to those at the forefront of the field: the power of scaling, the potential for misalignment, the sheer input required for AGI, and the economic and social ramifications of superintelligence. 

The book is also a standalone introduction to the technology. It includes over 170 definitions and visualizations, explanations of technical points made by guests, classic essays on the theme from other writers, and unpublished interviews with Open Philanthropy research analyst Ajeya Cotra and Anthropic cofounder Jared Kaplan. 

The Scaling Era offers readers unprecedented insight into a transformative moment in the development of AI—and a vision of what comes next.
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The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025
An inside view of the AI revolution, from the people and companies making it happen.

How did we build large language models? How do they think, if they think? What will the world look like if we have billions of AIs that are as smart as humans, or even smarter?

In a series of in-depth interviews with leading AI researchers and company founders—including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, MIRI cofounder Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—Dwarkesh Patel provides the first comprehensive and contemporary portrait of the technology that is transforming our world.

Drawn from his interviews on the Dwarkesh Podcast, these curated excerpts range from the technical details of how LLMs work to the possibility of an AI takeover or explosive economic growth. Patel’s conversations cut through the noise to explore the topics most compelling to those at the forefront of the field: the power of scaling, the potential for misalignment, the sheer input required for AGI, and the economic and social ramifications of superintelligence. 

The book is also a standalone introduction to the technology. It includes over 170 definitions and visualizations, explanations of technical points made by guests, classic essays on the theme from other writers, and unpublished interviews with Open Philanthropy research analyst Ajeya Cotra and Anthropic cofounder Jared Kaplan. 

The Scaling Era offers readers unprecedented insight into a transformative moment in the development of AI—and a vision of what comes next.
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The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025

The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025

The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025

The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025

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Overview

An inside view of the AI revolution, from the people and companies making it happen.

How did we build large language models? How do they think, if they think? What will the world look like if we have billions of AIs that are as smart as humans, or even smarter?

In a series of in-depth interviews with leading AI researchers and company founders—including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, MIRI cofounder Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—Dwarkesh Patel provides the first comprehensive and contemporary portrait of the technology that is transforming our world.

Drawn from his interviews on the Dwarkesh Podcast, these curated excerpts range from the technical details of how LLMs work to the possibility of an AI takeover or explosive economic growth. Patel’s conversations cut through the noise to explore the topics most compelling to those at the forefront of the field: the power of scaling, the potential for misalignment, the sheer input required for AGI, and the economic and social ramifications of superintelligence. 

The book is also a standalone introduction to the technology. It includes over 170 definitions and visualizations, explanations of technical points made by guests, classic essays on the theme from other writers, and unpublished interviews with Open Philanthropy research analyst Ajeya Cotra and Anthropic cofounder Jared Kaplan. 

The Scaling Era offers readers unprecedented insight into a transformative moment in the development of AI—and a vision of what comes next.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781953953551
Publisher: Stripe Matter, Inc.
Publication date: 07/29/2025
Pages: 248
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Dwarkesh Patel is the host of Dwarkesh Podcast, where he produces deeply researched interviews with both obscure intellectuals and the most influential figures of our time.

Table of Contents

Preface
Profiles

Chapter 1: Scaling
Chapter 2: Evals
Chapter 3: Internals
Chapter 4: Alignment
Chapter 5: Inputs
Chapter 6: Impact
Chapter 7: Explosion
Chapter 8: Timelines
Conclusion

Appendix: Essays
Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
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