Dwarkesh Patel quote, Jun 19, 2026

Host, Dwarkesh Podcast · Jun 19, 2026 · Essay, The data black hole at the center of AI

I think the reason it is relatively easy for open source and previous laggards to catch up to within months of the frontier is that data is the real driver of progress.

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Words found on the source page on Sep 25, 2026.

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Date	Quote	Context	Source
Sep 21, 2026	Since about April 2025, Chinese AI companies have been the clear leader in open-weight models.Nathan LambertSep 21, 2026· Post	PostThe current balance of power in open models	Source
Sep 21, 2026	The simple metric showing this is Hugging Face Downloads, where China took the lead in July of 2025 primarily through the success of Alibaba’s Qwen models.Nathan LambertSep 21, 2026· Post	PostThe current balance of power in open models	Source
Sep 11, 2026	Basically anything that can be learned through RL can be distilled very easily, because it’s a small number of bits.John SchulmanSep 11, 2026· Interview	InterviewDwarkesh Podcast: AI researchers debate how close we are to recursive self-improvement	Source
Sep 7, 2026	As LLMs continue to scale up, the value of any particular source continues to diminish.Kevin KellySep 7, 2026· Post	PostArguments in Favor of AI Fair Use	Source
Sep 7, 2026	Much, if not most, of the value of LLMs derives from their ability to generate new benefits beyond what the source material alone can yield.Kevin KellySep 7, 2026· Post	PostArguments in Favor of AI Fair Use	Source
Sep 3, 2026	Cost-saving efforts reveal that moving simpler workloads to open AI models is the easiest way to save ~50% on AI bills.Gergely OroszSep 3, 2026· Post	PostThe Pulse: tech companies move to open AI models	Source

About this quote

Said by: Dwarkesh Patel, Host, Dwarkesh Podcast
Where: The data black hole at the center of AI
Topics: Data, Open-source
Source: dwarkesh.com/p/the-sample-efficiency-black-hole

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