How To Train An LLM with Anthropic's Head of Pretraining

In this interview, Nick Joseph, Head of Pre-training at Anthropic, discusses the basics of pre-training AI models, Anthropic's strategies concerning data, alignment, and infrastructure, and how advances in AI directly result from progress in pre-training. Nick shares his background, including his time at Vicarious and OpenAI, and how his early interest in AI safety led him to Anthropic. The conversation covers the evolution of pre-training, the dominance of next word prediction, and the importance of compute in AI development. Nick also discusses the challenges of scaling AI models, the balance between specialization and generalization within his team, and the complexities of working with large-scale infrastructure, including the need to understand hardware layouts and troubleshoot GPU issues. The discussion further explores the balance between pre-training and post-training, the availability and quality of data, and the importance of alignment in AI development. Finally, Nick provides advice for students entering the AI field, emphasizing the importance of engineering skills and considering the broader societal impacts of AGI.