Why So Many AI Leaders Come From Physics: First-Principles Bets on LLM Scaling
akbirthko · x · 2026-10-15
akbirthko observes that many key AI figures have physics backgrounds, attributing it to breaking problems down to fundamentals. In a follow-up, he sketches a counterfactual: if in 2021 you truly believed LLMs would deliver labor over an API, reasoning from what "labor" and "over an API" imply gets you to today's scaling bets — while conceding hindsight is 20/20.
More from AGI Musings
- 10-year Treasury yields back near 5%: is this the end of the Great Stagnation, priced by AI capex? — deanwball · 2026-10-15
- Asking Is Free, Answering Is Expensive: The Case for Building the Other Side of Communication — r0ck3t23 · 2026-10-15
- AI Slop Is Flooding Comment Sections, Pushing Creators Toward Gated Communities — alliekmiller · 2026-10-15
- UCLA paper: productivity tech like AI can trigger a workplace "rat race" that hurts welfare — soumitrashukla9 · 2026-10-15
- AI-pilled veteran pushes back: diagnostics aren't the bottleneck, unrecorded clinical knowledge is — gregmushen · 2026-10-15
- Analysts see US labs far ahead at the AI frontier; China's next leap expected Q2–Q3 2027 — teortaxesTex · 2026-10-15