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MTS · Yesterday · 23 min

How RL Creates General Problem Solving | Reflection AI

Reflection AI CTO Ioannis Antonoglou discusses Beam, their new 501B parameter open-weight model trained on 10,500 GPUs with zero distillation. He breaks down their massive RL scaling run, agentic generalizability, and how Western labs can compete with China's frontier model velocity. Check out our sponsor Lovable: https://lovable.dev. Turn ideas into software people love. -- https://x.com/real_ioannis MTS is a live news and interview show covering technology, business, politics, and culture as it happens. Follow MTS: X | ⁠https://twitter.com/MTSlive⁠ YouTube | ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@mtsituation⁠ Spotify | ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/4HUNNmV1pjV7CW6Lphm1rM⁠ Apple | ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mts/id1891088763⁠ Substack | ⁠https://mtslive.substack.com/⁠ Interested in sponsoring the show? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sponsors@mts.now⁠⁠ -- Brought to you by: Mongo DB - Anyone can prototype an agent. Learn how to get them into production on September 30th in New York - register at https://www.mongodb.com/events/mongodb-local/nyc Lovable - Turn ideas into software people love with Lovable. Start today at https://lovable.dev/ Larridin - Finally prove what your AI investment is worth. Head to https://larridin.com/ today to start measuring your AI’s bottom line. Neon (by Databricks) - Get up to $100K in credits for your startup at ⁠https://neon.com/mts⁠ ElevenLabs - AI that communicates at human level across every channel and modality. https://elevenlabs.io/mts Arena - Measuring AI performance in the real world. ⁠https://arena.ai/⁠ Kong - The AI connectivity platform. Connect APIs, LLMs, agents, and systems with serious security and governance. https://konghq.com Today’s stream is sponsored by VCX, the public ticker for private tech. Head over to http://getvcx.com to learn more Blitzy - Autonomous software development for enterprise codebases. Ship 5x faster. https://blitzy.com AdQuick - Make your brand a billboard. Out-of-home advertising as easy to scale as digital. https://adquick.com Chargebee - Billing and monetization infrastructure for the AI era. https://www.chargebee.com/ -- Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (00:53) Why Reflection AI Built Beam (03:24) Competing With Chinese Open Model Labs (07:15) Lessons From Scaling Reinforcement Learning (09:25) How General Capabilities Transfer Across Tasks (12:17) Squeezing Capabilities From Smaller Model Sizes (15:35) Lessons From Pioneers Of Deep RL (20:13) Predictions For Autonomous AI Agents -- Note: This podcast is not investment, legal, or tax advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the companies and securities discussed; do your own research before acting on anything you hear.

0:00-23:10

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show notes

Reflection AI CTO Ioannis Antonoglou discusses Beam, their new 501B parameter open-weight model trained on 10,500 GPUs with zero distillation. He breaks down their massive RL scaling run, agentic generalizability, and how Western labs can compete with China's frontier model velocity. Check out our sponsor Lovable: https://lovable.dev. Turn ideas into software people love.

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https://x.com/real_ioannis


MTS is a live news and interview show covering technology, business, politics, and culture as it happens.

Follow MTS: 

X | ⁠https://twitter.com/MTSlive⁠

YouTube | ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@mtsituation⁠

Spotify | ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/4HUNNmV1pjV7CW6Lphm1rM⁠ 

Apple | ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mts/id1891088763⁠ 

Substack | ⁠https://mtslive.substack.com/⁠

Interested in sponsoring the show? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sponsors@mts.now⁠⁠

--

Brought to you by:

Mongo DB - Anyone can prototype an agent. Learn how to get them into production on September 30th in New York - register at https://www.mongodb.com/events/mongodb-local/nyc

Lovable - Turn ideas into software people love with Lovable. Start today at https://lovable.dev/

Larridin - Finally prove what your AI investment is worth. Head to https://larridin.com/ today to start measuring your AI’s bottom line.

Neon (by Databricks) - Get up to $100K in credits for your startup at ⁠https://neon.com/mts⁠

ElevenLabs -  AI that communicates at human level across every channel and modality. https://elevenlabs.io/mts

Arena - Measuring AI performance in the real world. ⁠https://arena.ai/⁠

Kong - The AI connectivity platform. Connect APIs, LLMs, agents, and systems with serious security and governance. https://konghq.com

Today’s stream is sponsored by VCX, the public ticker for private tech. Head over to http://getvcx.com  to learn more

Blitzy - Autonomous software development for enterprise codebases. Ship 5x faster. https://blitzy.com

AdQuick - Make your brand a billboard. Out-of-home advertising as easy to scale as digital. https://adquick.com

Chargebee - Billing and monetization infrastructure for the AI era. https://www.chargebee.com/

--

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:53) Why Reflection AI Built Beam

(03:24) Competing With Chinese Open Model Labs

(07:15) Lessons From Scaling Reinforcement Learning

(09:25) How General Capabilities Transfer Across Tasks

(12:17) Squeezing Capabilities From Smaller Model Sizes

(15:35) Lessons From Pioneers Of Deep RL

(20:13) Predictions For Autonomous AI Agents

--

Note: This podcast is not investment, legal, or tax advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the companies and securities discussed; do your own research before acting on anything you hear.

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