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”…

