Poetiq is a new startup founded by former DeepMind researchers that recently achieved a major jump on the ARC-AGI benchmark by layering a recursive self-improvement system on top of existing models. In this episode of Lightcone, Poetiq’s Founder & CEO Ian Fischer joined us to discuss how small teams can build “reasoning harnesses” that outperform base models, what that means for startups and why automating prompt engineering may be one of the most powerful levers in AI today.
Chapters:
00:00 – Intro
00:40 – What Is Poetiq?
01:07 – Recursive Self-Improvement Explained
02:07 – The Fine-Tuning Trap
02:59 – “Stilts” for LLMs
03:14 – Recursive Self-Improvement vs. Fine-Tuning
05:05 – Taking the Top Spot on ARC-AGI
06:37 – Beating Claude on Humanity’s Last Exam
08:40 – How the Meta-System Works
10:26 – Beyond RL: A New S-Curve
11:32 – Automating Prompt Engineering
13:37 – From 5% to 95% Performance
14:50 – Early Access & Putting Your Agent on Stilts
16:17 – From YC Founder to DeepMind Researcher
18:29 – Advice for Engineers in the AI Era
Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
