--- schema: 1 type: video title: >- What Do LLMs Tell Us About the Nature of Language—And Ourselves? - Ep. 23 with Robin Sloan description: >- An interview with best-selling sci-fi novelist Robin Sloan One of my favorite fiction writers, NYT bestselling author Robin Sloan, just wrote the first novel I’ve seen that’s inspired by LLMs. It’s called Moonbound, and he originally started trying to write in 2016 with language models. But he found that the models he was using couldn’t quite generate the ambitious creative output he was after. He did, however, find himself utterly taken by LLMs and their inner workings. He thinks language models are language itself given its first dose of autonomy. He has a deep fascination for and understanding of technology, language, and storytelling—and he weaves all of these together in his book in a way that helps us understand LLMs as part of a broader human story. I sat down with Robin for a wide-ranging discussion about technology, philosophy, ethics, and biology—and I came away more excited than ever about the possibilities that the future holds. We dive into: - Robin’s experiments with AI, dating back to 2016 - The central question humans and LLMs grapple with—what happens next? - How LLMs breath life into language - Robin’s pet theory about the interplay between LLMs, dreams, and books This is a must-watch for science-fiction enthusiasts, and anyone interested in the deep philosophical questions raised by LLMs and the way they function. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: - Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe - Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Teaser 00:00:53 - Introduction 00:02:47 - A primer on Robin's new book Moonbound 00:04:05 - Robin's experiments with AI, dating back to 2016 00:08:39 - What Robin finds fascinating about LLMs and their mechanics 00:14:09 - Can LLMs write truly great fiction? 00:27:19 - The stories built into modern LLMs 00:30:50 - What Robin believes to be the central question of the human race 00:36:38 - Are LLMs "beings" of some kind? 00:42:26 - What Robin finds interesting about the concept of “I” 00:49:40 - Robin's pet theory about the interplay between LLMs, dreams, and books Links to resources mentioned in the episode: - Robin Sloan: https://www.robinsloan.com/ - Robin’s books: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Sourdough, Moonbound - Dan’s first interview with Robin four years ago: https://every.to/superorganizers/tasting-notes-with-robin-sloan-25629085 - Anthropic AI’s paper about how concepts are represented inside LLMs: https://www.anthropic.com/news/mapping-mind-language-model - Dan’s interview with Notion engineer Linus Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeKEXnNP2yA - Big Biology, the podcast that Robin enjoys listening to: https://www.bigbiology.org/ canonical: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/video/what-do-llms-tell-us-about-the-nature-of-language-a-bff9931bdd8b markdown: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/video/what-do-llms-tell-us-about-the-nature-of-language-a-bff9931bdd8b.md llms: null parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc.md' channel: everyinc updated: '2026-10-24T01:12:41.344Z' language: null children: [] videoId: 3ChNkbULAH8 durationSeconds: 3229 publishedAt: '2024-06-12T14:27:57.000Z' searchChunks: - ordinal: 0 text: null startSeconds: 0 endSeconds: 11 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/3ChNkbULAH8?t=0' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 1 text: null startSeconds: 11 endSeconds: 66 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/3ChNkbULAH8?t=11' heldReason: rights - 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Ep. 23 with Robin Sloan An interview with best-selling sci-fi novelist Robin Sloan One of my favorite fiction writers, NYT bestselling author Robin Sloan, just wrote the first novel I’ve seen that’s inspired by LLMs. It’s called Moonbound, and he originally started trying to write in 2016 with language models. But he found that the models he was using couldn’t quite generate the ambitious creative output he was after. He did, however, find himself utterly taken by LLMs and their inner workings. He thinks language models are language itself given its first dose of autonomy. He has a deep fascination for and understanding of technology, language, and storytelling—and he weaves all of these together in his book in a way that helps us understand LLMs as part of a broader human story. I sat down with Robin for a wide-ranging discussion about technology, philosophy, ethics, and biology—and I came away more excited than ever about the possibilities that the future holds. We dive into: - Robin’s experiments with AI, dating back to 2016 - The central question humans and LLMs grapple with—what happens next? - How LLMs breath life into language - Robin’s pet theory about the interplay between LLMs, dreams, and books This is a must-watch for science-fiction enthusiasts, and anyone interested in the deep philosophical questions raised by LLMs and the way they function. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: - Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe - Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Teaser 00:00:53 - Introduction 00:02:47 - A primer on Robin's new book Moonbound 00:04:05 - Robin's experiments with AI, dating back to 2016 00:08:39 - What Robin finds fascinating about LLMs and their mechanics 00:14:09 - Can LLMs write truly great fiction? 00:27:19 - The stories built into modern LLMs 00:30:50 - What Robin believes to be the central question of the human race 00:36:38 - Are LLMs "beings" of some kind? 00:42:26 - What Robin finds interesting about the concept of “I” 00:49:40 - Robin's pet theory about the interplay between LLMs, dreams, and books Links to resources mentioned in the episode: - Robin Sloan: https://www.robinsloan.com/ - Robin’s books: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Sourdough, Moonbound - Dan’s first interview with Robin four years ago: https://every.to/superorganizers/tasting-notes-with-robin-sloan-25629085 - Anthropic AI’s paper about how concepts are represented inside LLMs: https://www.anthropic.com/news/mapping-mind-language-model - Dan’s interview with Notion engineer Linus Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeKEXnNP2yA - Big Biology, the podcast that Robin enjoys listening to: https://www.bigbiology.org/ Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/video/what-do-llms-tell-us-about-the-nature-of-language-a-bff9931bdd8b · Channel: [Every](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc.md) > Search chunk text is held until public-source provenance is verified. ## Document chunks > Missing: no stored document chunks are available.