Bohan

Excited to release PostTrainBench v1.0! This benchmark evaluates the ability of frontier AI agents to post-train language models in a simplified setting. We believe this is a first step toward tracking progress in recursive self-improvement 🧵:

It would not surprise me if China became the torch-bearer of the western classics. Ie. You send your grandkids to PKU to study Greek and Tsinghua to read the Federalist Papers. China has a respect for classical texts unrivaled in the west (except, perhaps, by the Jews) while the modern west is committing cultural suicide denouncing their own traditions. Few people know this, but my Western Canon podcast is already watched more in China than rest of the world combined. Despite it 1. being in Academic English (which I don’t dub) 2. launching much later. Seeing the different reactions to these texts is wild: in the West, these books are seen by the mainstream as “problematic” and dangerous, at best useless entertainment. The UK government literally flagged Shakespeare, Milton, Hobbes, Dante as potential signs of far-right extremism. In China, I was expecting significant pushback against “westernization” but instead found a reverence for Western texts that the west itself had lost. The top Chinese scholars know the western tradition like the back of their hand, and public intellectuals are celebrities. I don’t think the west is lost fwiw, but not on a good trajectory. Hopefully more projects like mine can rekindle that ancient flame.

Trump: I'm going to be going to China in April. I said, but we have to put on the biggest display you've ever had in the history of China. Last time I went to China, president XI treated me so well, a display, never saw so many soldiers the same height within a quarter of an inch. You can do that when you have 1.4 billion people. If they put their helmets down you could have played pool on top of their heads.

My prediction is that we will avoid ww3 (or put it off) by trading Taiwan to China in return for a 20 yr guarantee on semiconductor access. This is a brilliant analysis and must read.

Why is Dario Amodei so weirdly hawkish on the Chinese?