Poetiq is a new startup founded by former DeepMind researchers that recently achieved a major jump on the ARC-AGI and Humanity's Last Exam 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: – Intro – What Is Poetiq? – Recursive Self-Improvement Explained – The Fine-Tuning Trap – “Stilts” for LLMs – Recursive Self-Improvement vs. Fine-Tuning – Taking the Top Spot on ARC-AGI – Beating Claude on Humanity’s Last Exam – How the Meta-System Works – Beyond RL: A New S-Curve – Automating Prompt Engineering – From 5% to 95% Performance – Early Access & Putting Your Agent on Stilts – From YC Founder to DeepMind Researcher – Advice for Engineers in the AI EraApply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/applyWork at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
