Scaling "Thinking": Gemini 2.5 Tech Lead Jack Rae on Reasoning, Long Context, & the Path to AGI

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

In this illuminating episode of The Cognitive Revolution, host Nathan Labenz speaks with Jack Rae, principal research scientist at Google DeepMind and technical lead on Google's thinking and inference time scaling work. They explore the technical breakthroughs behind Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro model, discussing why reasoning techniques are suddenly working so effectively across the industry and whether these advances represent true breakthroughs or incremental progress. The conversation delves into critical questions about the relationship between reasoning and agency, the role of human data in shaping model behavior, and the roadmap from current capabilities to AGI, providing listeners with an insider's perspective on the trajectory of AI development.

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CHAPTERS:

(00:00) About the Episode

(05:09) Introduction and Welcome

(07:28) RL for Reasoning

(10:46) Research Time Management

(13:41) Convergence in Model Development

(18:31) RL on Smaller Models (Part 1)

(20:01) Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) | Shopify

(22:35) RL on Smaller Models (Part 2)

(23:30) Sculpting Cognitive Behaviors

(25:05) Language Switching Behavior

(28:02) Sharing Chain of Thought

(32:03) RL on Chain of Thought (Part 1)

(33:46) Sponsors: NetSuite

(35:19) RL on Chain of Thought (Part 2)

(35:26) Eliciting Human Reasoning

(39:27) Reasoning vs. Agency

(40:17) Understanding Model Reasoning

(44:29) Reasoning in Latent Space

(47:54) Interpretability Challenges

(51:36) Platonic Model Hypothesis

(56:05) Roadmap to AGI

(01:00:57) Multimodal Integration

(01:04:38) System Card Questions

(01:07:51) Long Context Capabilities

(01:13:49) Outro