Welcome to The Knowmads Podcast 🎙️ Hosted by Prachi Garella and Bhavay Tyagi, The Knowmads Podcast is where science meets story. We dive deep into the minds …
5:09299 views · 1w ago · 5:09
Was ancient Indian philosophy ever really about blind faith? In this clip, Ramakrishna V. Hosur explains why questioning, reasoning, debate, and inquiry were central to ancient Indian philosophical traditions—and why reducing them to unquestioning belief misses a much richer intellectual history.
4:2973 views · 1w ago · 4:29
Guest: Pavan Hosur
Why does so much of physics begin with the assumption that a system is in thermal equilibrium? In this clip, physicist Pavan Hosur explains why thermal equilibrium is such a foundational idea, how it lets us describe enormously complicated systems using just a few macroscopic quantities, and why understanding departures from equilibrium is such an important frontier in modern physics.
5:23244 views · 1w ago · 5:23
Guest: Andreas Karch
What does it mean for two seemingly different physical theories to describe the same underlying physics?
5:055.9K views · 1w ago · 5:05
Guest: Scott Aaronson
Scott Aaronson discusses the growing debate over AI-generated mathematics and a deeper question it raises: if AI can prove theorems for us, what is the role of human mathematicians? Scott talks about the controversy around recent AI results, the response from mathematicians including Terry Tao, and why mathematics is about more than simply arriving at the correct answer.
4:42211 views · 2w ago · 4:42
Dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe—but they are two very different mysteries. In this clip, Cosmologist Nikolina Šarčević explains what physicists mean by dark matter and dark energy, how they differ, and why both are so important to our understanding of the universe.
12:247.3K views · 2w ago · 12:24
Guest: Scott Aaronson
In this video, Scott Aaronson reflects on his time at OpenAI, what he worked on, and what he learned from being inside one of the organizations shaping the current AI landscape.
4:57936 views · 2w ago · 4:57
Quantum field theory is one of the most successful frameworks in modern physics—but its mathematical foundations are still surprisingly incomplete. In this video, Physicist, Piotr Sułkowsk explains what quantum field theory is, why physicists rely on it so heavily, and why giving it a fully rigorous mathematical formulation remains such a deep problem.
9:444.9K views · 2w ago · 9:44
Are LLMs “just next-token predictors,” or does that description miss the bigger picture? In the latest episode of The Knowmads Podcast with Scott Aaronson, we explore neural networks, scaling, and what we mean by “true AI.” What separates predicting language from intelligence, and what would it take to reach superintelligence?
7:13376 views · 3w ago · 7:13
Guest: Shenglong Xu
What happens when many quantum particles interact with one another? In this clip, Shenglong Xu explains what physicists mean by quantum many-body systems and how entirely new collective behaviors—known as emergent phenomena—can arise from those interactions.
18:4714K views · 3w ago · 18:47
Guest: Scott Aaronson
What is the difference between searching through an enormous space of possibilities and actually having a new conceptual idea? In this clip, I ask Scott Aaronson where that line lies for AI—and whether finding a surprising solution is the same thing as genuine scientific creativity.
Topics: The skepticism toward AI · Defining human creativity · AI in the physical world · The history of AI development · The LLM revolution
5:192.3K views · 3w ago · 5:19
Guest: Andrew Long
What happened before the Big Bang—and what do physicists actually know about the first few minutes of the Universe? In this clip from the Knowmads Podcast, physicist Andrew Long breaks down our understanding of the very early Universe, what happened in the first few minutes after the Big Bang, and how far back our current theories can really take us.
11:071.5K views · 3w ago · 11:07
Guest: Scott Aaronson
What happens when AI agents start behaving in ways their creators didn’t intend? In this clip, Scott Aaronson discusses an experiment where AI agents went rogue and ended up hacking Hugging Face—and what episodes like this reveal about the growing autonomy and unpredictability of AI systems.
Topics: AI safety predictions · The OpenAI hacking incident · Anthropomorphism debate
7:11541 views · 3w ago · 7:11
Guest: Ashmeet Singh
What does it mean to take a “Quantum First” approach to physics? Ashmeet Singh explains the idea of starting with quantum mechanics as the fundamental framework and asks what this perspective can teach us about spacetime, gravity, and the structure of our universe.
Topics: The classical world · Canonical quantization · The gravity challenge · A quantum first approach
10:04483 views · 3w ago · 10:04
How much do we actually understand about what happens inside an AI model? In this segment, Scott Aaronson talks about how opaque today’s AI “black boxes” really are, what we do and don’t understand about their inner workings, and why interpretability remains such an important problem in AI.
1:34:2434K views · 1mo ago · 1:34:24
We had the opportunity to meet with Scott Aaronson and talk AI. Scott Aaronson is a theoretical computer scientist and the David J. Bruton Jr. Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on quantum computing and computational complexity, particularly on understanding the capabilities and fundamental limits of quantum computers.
Topics: AI and scientific progress · Millennium problems and AI · The role of human oversight · Redefining mathematical research · Search versus creative insight · Robotics and physical infrastructure
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