World Model · podcast knowledge graph

Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent

2026-08-08 · 117 min · 27 entities

episode page audio

Asserted relationships

  • 0.77
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
  • → hosted by Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz person
    0.55
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed author/publisher: Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz
  • → discusses Society & Culture concept
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Society & Culture
  • → discusses Technology concept
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Technology
  • → discusses Business concept
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Business
  • → discusses Entrepreneurship concept
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Entrepreneurship
  • → hosted by Turpentine company
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed author/publisher: Turpentine
  • → references aipodcast.ing website
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://aipodcast.ing/
  • → references @CognitiveRevolutionPodcast website
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
  • → references cognitiverevolution.ai website
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://cognitiverevolution.ai/
  • → references Silico website
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://goodfire.com/silico
  • → references Predictive Data Debugging person
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://goodfire.com/research/predictive-data-debugging
  • → references The World Inside Neural Networks person
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://goodfire.com/research/the-world-inside-neural-networks

Entities found in this episode

concepts 9

  • mentioned Society & Culture concept
    0.50
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Society & Culture
  • mentioned Technology concept
    0.50
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Technology
  • mentioned Business concept
    0.50
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Business
  • mentioned Entrepreneurship concept
    0.50
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Entrepreneurship
  • discusses Society & Culture concept
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Society & Culture
  • discusses Technology concept
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Technology
  • discusses Business concept
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Business
  • discusses Entrepreneurship concept
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed category: Entrepreneurship
  • mentioned CTO concept
    0.35
    evidence rules-v4
    CTO

websites 8

  • mentioned aipodcast.ing website
    0.45
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://aipodcast.ing/
  • mentioned @CognitiveRevolutionPodcast website
    0.45
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
  • mentioned cognitiverevolution.ai website
    0.45
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://cognitiverevolution.ai/
  • mentioned Silico website
    0.45
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://goodfire.com/silico
  • references aipodcast.ing website
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://aipodcast.ing/
  • references @CognitiveRevolutionPodcast website
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
  • references cognitiverevolution.ai website
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://cognitiverevolution.ai/
  • references Silico website
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://goodfire.com/silico

persons 6

  • 0.70
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed author/publisher: Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz
  • 0.55
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed author/publisher: Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz
  • mentioned Predictive Data Debugging person
    0.45
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://goodfire.com/research/predictive-data-debugging
  • 0.45
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://goodfire.com/research/the-world-inside-neural-networks
  • references Predictive Data Debugging person
    0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://goodfire.com/research/predictive-data-debugging
  • 0.38
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://goodfire.com/research/the-world-inside-neural-networks

podcasts 2

  • 0.90
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
  • 0.77
    evidence rules-v4
    Link in episode "Thinking in Silico: Goodfire CTO Dan Balsam on Concept Manifolds & a $1000/Month ML Research Agent": https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431

companys 2

  • mentioned Turpentine company
    0.70
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed author/publisher: Turpentine
  • hosted by Turpentine company
    0.40
    evidence rules-v4
    Feed author/publisher: Turpentine
Episode description as stored
Goodfire co-founder and CTO Dan Balsam returns to discuss where interpretability research now stands and to introduce Silico, the $1,000-per-month research platform Goodfire built for itself. He and Nathan explore Predictive Data Debugging, including the idea that fine-tuning and RL often amplify behaviors already latent in pre-training, and that interpretability can identify the data and features driving unwanted updates. The conversation centers on concept manifolds: Dan argues that models do not store concepts as simple one-hot features, but as sparse mixtures of meaningful subspaces whose geometry determines what kinds of steering and control work. The stakes are practical as well as conceptual, from debugging training data and RL to understanding why steering can fail off-manifold and why modern interpretability may be moving beyond its reputation as a toy-model science. Silico: https://www.goodfire.com/silico Predictive data debugging: https://www.goodfire.com/research/predictive-data-debugging# Neural Geometry: https://www.goodfire.com/research/the-world-inside-neural-networks# For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/thinking-in-silico-goodfire-cto-dan-balsam-on-concept-manifolds-a-1000-month-ml-research-agent/ Sponsor: Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:22) Predictive data debugging (12:36) Concept manifold geometry (21:22) Finding concept manifolds (Part 1) (21:28) Sponsor: Claude (22:57) Finding concept manifolds (Part 2) (33:24) Factoring model internals (49:32) Introducing Silico platform (57:10) Research taste and credits (01:06:19) Silico research use cases (01:16:37) Skills and open models (01:24:57) Guardrails and bio risk (01:32:09) Training interventions and monitoring (01:42:04) Grants and AI consciousness (01:50:41) Episode Outro (01:55:47) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk