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#107 – Chris Olah on what the hell is going on inside neural networks

Big machine learning models can identify plant species better than any human, write passable essays, beat you at a game of Starcraft 2, figure out how a photo of Tobey Maguire and the word 'spider' are related, solve the 60-year-old 'protein folding problem', diagnose some diseases, play romantic matchmaker, write solid computer code, and offer questionable legal advice.

Humanity made these amazing and ever-improving tools. So how do our creations work? In short: we don't know.

Today's guest, Chris Olah, finds this both absurd and unacceptable. Over the last ten years he has been a leader in…

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