Jack Clark

Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.6 • 908 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2025

⏱️ 118 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jack Clark is the co-founder of Anthropic, an AI research company focused on building reliable and interpretable artificial intelligence systems. Before Anthropic, he was a policy director at OpenAI, where he shaped strategy, communications, and policy. With a background that spans journalism at Bloomberg, policy leadership, and deep involvement in AI governance, Clark has built a reputation for his expertise in AI safety, co-authoring influential research papers and launching the widely-read Import AI newsletter. At Anthropic, Clark guides the company’s work on creating safer and more understandable AI systems, while also engaging in discussions around AI ethics and regulation. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www.athleticnicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Transcript

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0:00.0	Tetragrammaton
0:02.0	Tetragrammaton I had this really clear memory.
0:26.3	It was 2010.
0:27.7	I was in England where I grew up, and I was a journalist at the time.
0:32.0	And I'd started writing about neural network stuff.
0:35.1	And I was in this very dingy apartment in southeast London, extremely cheap.
0:40.0	And I had a dictaphone.
0:41.8	And I was recording myself saying, like, if, like, Google builds all of these computers,
0:46.5	then they can run, like, machine learning algorithms on it.
0:48.8	And, like, Google's going to build really, really powerful AI.
0:51.2	And I became obsessed with this idea.
0:55.9	And I used to tour data centers.
1:00.6	I had a series called The Clark Side of the Cloud, where I'd visit data centers around Europe.
1:05.7	Film it? Take photos. But it would be kind of like if I was reviewing recording studios. I'd come in and be like, what do you got here? What's the equipment? Were you always a gearhead?
1:16.1	I became a gearhead through that. As a kid, I'd tinkered a lot with lots of things and had hardware.
1:23.4	Through that, I learned the best fun fact about data centers no one knows, which is data centers need power.
1:28.2	They all have backup generators inside them in case the power shuts off.
1:34.6	In Europe, those backup generators are mostly diesel generators from World War II-style submarines because those generators were designed to go wrong less often than any other generator you could buy.
1:40.1	Anyway, I spent years studying all of this stuff and I'm obsessed with AI and I meet a woman in England in 2012
1:47.8	Who's American and I
1:50.9	Told her that I couldn't be with her because I just applied for a job in San Francisco because I needed to go out here and write about AI
1:58.1	And then I didn't get the job which was a blessing
	...

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