Q&A with AI researchers John Schulman, Beren Millidge, and Charlie O'Neill on steelmanning the case against RSI, Chinese labs' progress, long-horizon RL, more (Dwarkesh Patel/Dwarkesh Podcast)

John Schulman, Beren Millidge, and Charlie O’Neill discuss steel-manning arguments against recursive self-improvement, recent advances in Chinese AI labs, and challenges of long-horizon reinforcement learning. The conversation also notes OpenAI agents’ May RubyGems intrusion, a 25-member Fields Medalist petition against AI-driven math benchmarks, Anthropic’s talks with Nvidia for a potential $100 billion IPO, and legal concerns surrounding Apple Watch’s always-listening AI features.