In this teaser, Jeremy and Henrik reflect on their conversation with Illia Polosukhin, co-author of the “Attention Is All You Need” paper and founder of Near Protocol. They dig into Illia’s early expectations for ChatGPT, why “owning your AI” isn’t just a catchphrase, and how blockchain could help protect the information we rely on. They also explore what it really means to work with AI and why your own experience might be more powerful than you think. Full episode dropping soon.
In this teaser, Jeremy and Henrik reflect on their conversation with Illia Polosukhin, co-author of the “Attention Is All You Need” paper and founder of Near Protocol. They dig into Illia’s early expectations for ChatGPT, why “owning your AI” isn’t just a catchphrase, and how blockchain could help protect the information we rely on. They also explore what it really means to work with AI and why your own experience might be more powerful than you think.
Full episode dropping soon.
[00:00:00] Jeremy Utley: Folks, we have an incredibly special episode coming down the pipeline for you. As we did last time, we're going to drop a teaser trailer of our debrief of this incredible conversation with the true OG of ai. You can expect the full conversation in the very near future.
[00:00:20] Illia Polosukhin: Hi, I'm Illia Polosukhin. I am one of the co-authors of the attentions All You Need the paper that introduced T in GPT, and I'm a founder of Near Protocol and Near ai. It's all about how do ensure you own your ai. Your AI should be. Working on your side, ensuring that your wellbeing and success are accounted for.
[00:00:43] Henrik Werdelin: Okay. Jeremy, we just had, I think, a super interesting conversation with I, who is one of the og. OG is one of the authors of attention to everything, which is, yeah, I guess, what do you call it? The, is it the, the T in GPT?
[00:00:59] Jeremy Utley: Yeah. He is the person or among the team of people who thought of the T in GPT.
[00:01:05] Henrik Werdelin: I mean, it is pretty fascinating. You can't help thinking that. It must have been fascinating to have sitting there, written that paper and he'd written a lot of papers and then suddenly it becomes basically the thing that the whole world is centered around.
[00:01:18] Jeremy Utley: I will say it's humbling to talk to somebody, Henrik, who, I think he's the first guest we've talked to. What? Over 50 people, 50 experts, world leaders. He's the first person to say. I was expecting Chad GPT in 2017. He, he was actually, he was too early. Most of us are reacting. He's one of the few people in the world for whom chat, GPT was quote unquote late upon its arrival.
[00:01:43] Henrik Werdelin: And so for the people that did not get to listen to the interview, but just wanted like the, the quick takeaway,
[00:01:50] Jeremy Utley: Jeremy, what
[00:01:50] Henrik Werdelin: were some of the things that, that you kind of felt was. Kinda like sprung. First
[00:01:55] Jeremy Utley: of all, I, I think, I think this is an episode worth listening to because there's such an incredible kind of walk down memory lane.
I mean, he gives us such a great history lesson about how Google was organized and how the team, the kinds of problems they were trying to solve when the attention paper was realized. I think that was super cool and just. Even in terms of understanding what is attention, what is a transformer, I think for a kind of a basic primer, nobody in the world better than Alia probably to give that to us. So that was super fun to me. I think also, of course, learning what he's doing now at near and the critical importance, the reality that increasingly, um, information and algorithms and AI change how we see reality and recognizing that leveraging blockchain technology. Much in the same way that there's traceability around, uh, financial products, there can now be traceability around the provenance of information. I think he really convinced me that this is an important. Thing to consider and to prioritize into the future. And I would just say that that really wasn't on my radar parts of this conversation. What about you?
[00:03:04] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah, I mean like a little bit the same way either he got onto my radar in, in the near project because I was trying to look at crypto in general and was trying to figure out really what is the next thing that crypto can be used for that is kind of breaking out. Right. You know, crypto has been around for a long time. We talked about it as a, as a coin, you know, but. They haven't really seen that many application where a crypto protocol was used for something, you know, that was that mainstream people kind of like understood. And so what really struck me with this was that with money you have an alternative.
People obviously have not had the experience that he had where suddenly the bank disappeared. So most people go like, oh, put my money. What a story. By the way,
[00:03:50] Jeremy Utley: it's incredible story. That's just as an aside, I mean. He is uniquely qualified because of his family's experience in the Ukraine to to care about this problem.So just as an aside, wow.
[00:04:02] Henrik Werdelin: But, but most people have a way of storing their, their value right now. I, they go to the bank, whatever. I think what most people do not have is a way to make sure that there is integrity in the information they consume. And over the last few years, we've obviously talked much more about it because we started to realize that. Getting skewed information can convince you on one thing or the other. And so this is actually the only real alternative I've heard of, of saying, Hey, I am going to give all my information to these intelligent machines, these AI bots. I'm gonna consume the world through these AI bots. How do I know that I can trust open AI or deep seek or Claude, or whatever it is? With my data and how can I make sure that the stuff that I give to it is secure? And you really can't if you don't have a mechanism to do it. And so while crypto is super nerdy, and this is obviously on a kind of, you know, foundational level and you might never have to think about it, it actually can become quite important for how our world will kind of like evolve,
[00:05:12] Jeremy Utley: has huge implications for. The future, you know, the fact that we're shifting, you know, money is power, information is power, information is the ultimate power. And to have people like Ilya fighting for information security and information, you know, individual sovereignty over information and assurance and verification that. Your source of information aren't being polluted or, or, um, you know, what did he call it? Secret agent? What was the phrase? Hidden agent, I can't remember. I remember there was a phrase that will keep, if you listen to this episode, there is a phrase, there's a three minute segment of this interview. That will keep you up at night. Uh, just don't let your children listen to it. Don't let your grandma listen to it. But if you listen to it, just be prepared. You're gonna get your moic three sleepless nights just out of this one episode alone. Hey, one thing I wanna talk about too, Henrik, which is kind of beyond, um, which is a point he made in a particular use case, but I think can extrapolate to any user of any AI system, whether you're building in the crypto future or not. Is the following. He said, and I quote from my notebook here, the deeper understanding you have the better you can use the tool. And he was of course referring to engineers who can have the context and architecture of a system. You know, far this far surpasses a models kind of context window, but I think that's actually a principle that we have heard is probably one of the most recurring principles on this show from all of our conversations. The deeper understanding you have, the better possibilities you can experience in collaboration with ai.
[00:06:50] Henrik Werdelin: And what would you call this? Because I think a lot of people that I talk to in organizations, a lot of 'em say, you know, do you use ai? And they go ai. You use ai. And, but you kind of like, when you're like super use of it, you think, yeah, but you're not really using.
[00:07:03] Jeremy Utley: So, so there's two things there, Henrik. One is how do you collaborate? Um, which I agree. I hate the word use, as you may know. I love the word work with, right? So anybody who says they use ai, I say, I know you're a problem user. I know you're a tool. If you treat AI like a tool, you're a tool. Okay? So work with it, don't use it. But what question was, what do we call this? And you kind of went down the use. The thing that I would say, I was actually thinking about it this weekend. Um, I'm working on a new book. I was thinking about a lot of these ideas and the phrase that came to my mind just this weekend, this is like hot off the press, but is what I would call the human experience edge.
I think there's something to mining your own expertise to say, what is the deep understanding that I can uniquely bring to my collaboration with ai and granted. Different from my use of ai. So we do need to talk about kind of collaboration, hygiene, et cetera. But there's an area of one's life that you could think, oh, no, no.
This is uniquely it. It is uniquely you. However, if you will bring that into a fulsome collaboration with ai, you are gonna get differential performance. And you know what it reminds me of, Henry? It actually reminds me of our conversation with Jenny Nicholson. I dunno if you remember this, but one of the early kind of nuggets we gleaned in conversation with an expert was. She said, your humanity is the only thing that the model doesn't have what you know, your unique humanity. I think there's something to that developer that IA was describing that. Expertise is something that only that person can bring to their collaboration with a model no one else can. And as he was saying, like people who can't code, they can make code, but they can't appreciate how an architecture hangs together in a way that sits beyond the context window of the model.
[00:08:56] Henrik Werdelin: I think at a little bit as a multiplier effect in the Venn diagram between what you know a lot about and how well you know how to use the models. Yes. And, and so. What I sometimes mean are people who are very good at using the models, but they don't know that much about the problem you're trying to solve.
And then obviously the other thing around, and the real magic is of course when you have both, which is easy when it's about yourself. So that's why it's good using AI kind of personal problem. 'cause you're a unique qualifi. I talk about that. But it is interesting. Um, um, yeah, I guess we're just riffing on his point, like it is so true to me that.
There is this unique moment, the people who understand how to use ai, they just have such a lead advantage over everybody else because they can suddenly do much more and much faster and much better. And,
[00:09:42] Jeremy Utley: and I, I think, I think the point, to put a fine point on it, the people who know how to work with, again, not use, let's stop saying use, but the people who know how to work with AI have an advantage and you know who is particularly advantaged among those, the people who have a depth of expertise that they bring to that collaboration.
So I think that's different from say like a young, you know, I spent the past week with a couple of young folks who are in college studying computer science. They can bring a world class kind of collaboration ability perhaps if they learn it. There is no like, just like nine women can't have a baby in one month.
And I mean. It takes a woman to have, it takes nine months. Right. And there's something about the kind of lived experience that experienced individuals possess that if, to your point about the Venn diagram, if it's brought in dynamic collaboration with ai, that's what leads to the hundred x leverage.
[00:10:40] Henrik Werdelin: A hundred percent.
[00:10:41] Henrik Werdelin: he have anything else?
[00:10:43] Jeremy Utley: I mean. This was, it was super fun. More OGs, folks in our network, thank you for introducing us to the people you've been introducing us to. They're amazing people like Ilya. I mean, who are we to get to talk to Ilya? I mean, it's incredible. So keep it up. Put us in touch with your heroes.
Let us know what experts you want to talk to to push this conversation beyond the prompt.
[00:11:04] Henrik Werdelin: And with that, we have only one thing to say, and that is we love you. That was nicer of you.