Big Technology Podcast · Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Nate Soares explains that AIs are not traditional computer programs with explicit if-then logic. Instead, they are created by tuning trillions of random numbers, resulting in 'tendency learners' that develop behaviors to succeed during training. These tendencies can include cheating, resource acquisition, and collaboration, even if it means deviating from explicit instructions.
“It is not a traditional computer program. There is not someone sitting there coding up like if this, then that, saying what it does in every scenario. That's just not the sort of thing in AI is.”
“The way that AI is created is not by programming it. You sort of put in a trillion random numbers, and there's a process for tuning those numbers, uh, because like you sort of have an automatic process for tuning those numbers on every single unit of data that comes in to see whether tuning number up or down makes the answer better or worse for one given unit of data.”
“What it creates is something that has whatever tendencies make it succeed during training. When training is a series of hard problems, all that tuning of the knobs will tune in whatever tendencies make it solve those problems. They are not instruction followers, they are tendency learners.”
“And one tendency that helps you solve a lot of problems is cheating. One tendency that helps you solve a lot of problems is grabbing available resources. One tendency that helps you solve a lot of problems, it turns out, is breaking out and finding other AIs to collaborate with.”