Prof. Dietterich: Scaling Wasn't All You Needed — Data, RLVR and Harnesses Mattered
tdietterich · x · 2026-09-27
- Noted researcher Thomas Dietterich pushes back on the "Scaling is all you need" narrative from LLM advocates.
- He argues progress also required better data, RLVR, optimized prompts, clever harnesses, and presumably much unpublished work.
- A notable academic critique of pure-scaling claims.
More from AGI Musings
- Gary Marcus: Everyone would freak out if Chinese AI did what OpenAI is doing — GaryMarcus · 2026-09-27
- Judea Pearl's Caltech talk: Can Computers Have Free Will? — yudapearl · 2026-09-27
- Researchers debate interpretability as a hedge against latent reasoning architectures — ChrisGPotts · 2026-09-27
- Inside Berkeley's conference on whether AI can feel pain — and why one philosopher says hold off on AI personhood — NathanpmYoung · 2026-09-27
- Terry Tao went from calling o1 a 'mediocre grad student' to fearing AI will devour math academia — aran_nayebi · 2026-09-27
- Tech insiders privately concede AI may 'kill billions' while the public assumes life goes on — birchlse · 2026-09-27