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The TWIML AI Podcast · 3 min · Nov 3, 2026

AI rules should target applications, not abstract intelligence

Richard Socher · Co-founder, Recursive

Richard Socher doubts a broad slowdown is realistic, arguing that open source and China will continue.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 16:34Scientific ideas grow by combining work across different fields5 min
  2. 21:07Reward design steers AI and can invite reward hacking5 min
  3. 29:22Recursive reports beating community results on AI benchmarks4 min
  4. 5:46Organoids can bypass animal trials and AI can revive shelved drugs5 min
  5. 32:59Verification speed sets the limits for AI research agents5 min
  6. 10:13A science AI needs data, simulations and robotic experiments6 min
  7. 41:40AI rules should target applications, not abstract intelligence3 min
  8. 44:25AI's scientific benefits belong in debates about dual-use risks4 min
“you just do it when they actually do something bad and you say those things are are illegal”
Richard Socherat 44:07 · The TWIML AI Podcast
44:07

Takeaways

  1. He says monitoring all GPU use would require pervasive surveillance.
  2. He distinguishes regulating AI applications from regulating intelligence itself.
  3. He argues people should be accountable for harmful uses of AI.

About this segment

Richard Socher doubts a broad slowdown is realistic, arguing that open source and China will continue. He favors regulating applications and harmful actions rather than abstract intelligence.

Richard Socher

Richard Socher is a former chief scientist at Salesforce, founder of You.com and cofounder of Recursive.

Pioneered neural networks in NLP, invented widely used word and contextual vectors, and leads Recursive's self-improving AI.

From “Can AI Invent or Just Help Scientists Work Faster?”, Nov 3, 2026. Watch the full episode

Answers “Should AI be regulated?” See all 46 answers

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 41:43

    and it's a problem that we, I think, can solve. And where does that leave you on the whole question of slowing down versus speeding up versus, you know, kind of status quo? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to hear about the ask to slow down from the companies that have sped up the most and really pushed the whole field and the whole capability set forward. So far and so much so that they built the best hacking AI to then show how dangerous hacking AI can be.

  2. 42:19

    Well, they sped that up by at least several quarters, if not years, from everyone in China distills their capabilities. Now everyone has better hacking capabilities And that's like, thanks to Anthropic, right? And so I do think we want to be careful. And if your company does sort of accidentally compete on felony bench, then maybe that company should slow down, you know? But I don't see open source slowing down.

  3. 42:46

    I don't see China slowing down. And I don't see any of the ones that want to get to that frontier slowing down. And then, of course, I understand why the ones who are at the frontier want everyone else, including themselves, to slow down. Like if you're here and everyone else you feel like is here and everyone now moves slower, then it just takes them longer to catch up to you. Right. And so they're trying to, in some cases, stoke the fear for that reason. I think there are also some people who really truly believe in the apocalypse and so on.

  4. 43:14

    but yeah I think slow down and pacing and so on is also somewhat unrealistic like in some ways if you truly want to know what everyone is doing with their GPU to really get there you have to have a totalitarian surveillance state the likes of which you've never seen before that basically builds a thought police and tries to uh regulate intelligence and thoughts and what you might want to do with it before you've even done anything right and so i think it makes sense to regulate ai applications um it doesn't make sense to uh regulate abstract intelligence just like we don't put the smartest people in prison just because if they really applied their intelligence to something nefarious and bad they would be more like you know successful at it you just do it when they actually do something bad and you say those things are

  5. 44:14

    are illegal and and you know should be regulated and so AI for self-driving AI for medicine and drug like uh development and like all these various real applications it makes sense to