Manifold
Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Join him for wide-ranging conversations with leading writers, scientists, technologists, academics, entrepreneurs, investors, and more.
- Update frequency
- every 13 days
- Average duration
- 74 minutes
- Episodes
- 145
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
Kyle Chan on the Future of US-China Competition — #94
Kyle Chan is a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in Sociology at Princeton University. His research focuses on industrial policy, clean technology, and infrastructure with a regional focus…
Joleen Liang: 40M+ kids educated by adaptive AI — #93
Dr. Joleen Liang is Co-founder of Squirrel AI, which pioneered adaptive learning at scale, first in China and now in the US. By 2021 its technology had served over 60,000 public schools in 1,200 citi…
Max Dama on HFT: Millisecond Algos and Bid/Ask Dynamics — #92
Max Dama is the co-chairman of Headlands Technologies LLC, a global quantitative proprietary trading firm headquartered in Chicago, with offices in New York, Austin, London, Amsterdam and Singapore. …
Andrew Song: Global Cooling with Sulfur Dioxide in the Stratosphere — #91
Andrew Song is a co-founder of Make Sunsets, a company focused on addressing climate change through solar geoengineering. The company launches balloons filled with sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the strat…
Manifold Discord Channel: Live Q&A with Steve — #90
Manifold has its own Discord channel! https://discord.gg/dvcHS6NX
The purpose of the channel is to create a community of listeners with shared interests. It developed from a series of in-person meetu…
Omar Shams: AI Founder and Google AI Agent Lead — #89
Shams was trained in theoretical physics before becoming an AI engineer at DeepMind and founding the company Mutable, which was acquired by Google. He is now lead engineer for Google's software agent…
Patrick McGee: Apple In China — #88
Patrick McGee is a longtime FT business reporter with extensive experience reporting on China. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Apple in China: the capture of the world's greatest company. St…
GODZILLA DOWN! India-Pakistan Clash and Chinese Military Technology with TP Huang — #87
Steve and TP discuss the implications of the recent air battle between India and Pakistan, which involved over 100 fighter jets and took place entirely beyond visual range (BVR). What is sensor fusio…
Robots, Small Models, and RL with DeepSeek Alumnus Zihan Wang — #86
Zihan Wang is an AI researcher at Northwestern University, where he works on vision-language models, robotics, and reinforcement learning. Previously, he interned at DeepSeek, contributing to project…
Dan Collins: Tariffs and the Future of US Manufacturing — #85
Dan Collins is Founder of Tyrell Chemical. He studied at Tsinghua University and spent 20 years working for companies like General Motors in China, helping to localize automotive manufacturing. Dan a…
Seeking Truth From Facts: AI, China, Tariffs, Geopolitics — #84
This episode is a co-release with the podcast Seeking Truth From Facts: https://seekingtruthfromfacts.substack.com/
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (01:11) - China AI
- (02:30) - DeepSeek
- (04:21) - Redirecting H…
Incels, Evo Psych, and Modern Literature with ARX-Han — #83
Steve speaks with ARX-Han, an anonymous writer, about his book "Incel."
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (02:09) - Discussing the Novel 'Incel'
- (06:08) - Character Analysis and Literary Influences
- (13:32) - The…
Callum Williams: Economics, AI, and Technological Progress — #82
Callum Williams is a senior economics writer for The Economist. He was educated at Oxford, Harvard, and Cambridge, and is the author of The Classical School: The Birth of Economics in 20 Enlightened …
Misha Laskin, Reflection.ai — From Physics to SuperIntelligence
Misha Laskin is CEO of Reflection.ai. He was trained in theoretical physics at Yale and Chicago before becoming an AI scientist. He made important contributions in Reinforcement Learning as a researc…
Taylor Ogan, Snow Bull Capital: China's tech frontier, the view from Shenzhen, Part 2
Taylor Ogan is Chief Executive Officer of Snow Bull Capital, based in Shenzhen, China. His firm invests in Chinese technology companies, with a focus on areas such as clean energy, AI, and automation…
Ken Liu: Art in the Age of AI — #79
Ken Liu (born 1976) is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Liu has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards for his novel translations and original short fiction. Liu's short story "The Pap…
US-PRC Tech War: DeepSeek AI and 6th Generation Fighters — #78
- (00:00) - Introduction: AI, Miltech, and Balance of Power
- (00:32) - DeepSeek AI R1 model
- (02:36) - DeepSeek: top performance, 30x efficient compute
- (10:37) - DeepSeek technical innovations
- (15:38) - …
Jim Haslam: Covid Origins and Coronavirus Genetic Engineering — #77
Relevant links:
- Jim Haslam on X: https://x.com/jhas5
- Jim's Substack: https://jimhaslam.substack.com/
- Jim's book, "COVID-19: Mystery Solved," on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/COVID-19-Mystery-Solved-lea…
Joscha Bach: Consciousness and AGI — #76
Joscha Bach is a German cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and philosopher known for his work on cognitive architectures, artificial intelligence, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, mu…
Adventures in Physics, Trump, and more, with the Information Theory podcast — #75
This episode is an interview I did with the new podcast Information Theory. The host of Information Theory is an anonymous technologist trained in physics and machine learning.
- Information Theory Podc…