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Stanford released part 1 of CS329A (self‑improving AI agents) taught by people…

2026-08-05 · 19:21 UTC ·@phosphenq ·1 min read

Brief

Phosphen (@phosphenq) warns not to pay for bigger models before exploiting capabilities already inside smaller ones. Citing Stanford CS329A (part 1), he reports Llama 3 8B was queried 10,000 times and outperformed GPT‑4o on math/code without fine‑tuning, and he demonstrates Claude Code spawning 105 agents (5,044,822 tokens, 36 minutes).

Why it matters

Stanford released part 1 of CS329A (self‑improving AI agents) taught by people who built Claude and Gemini; lecture highlights include timestamps 19:51 (infinite monkey theorem run), 23:13 (cost-of-subscription sentence), 29:35 (model writes its own training data), and 45:36 (four agent patterns behind Claude Code).

Key details

  • The instructors repeatedly queried Llama 3 8B on the same problem 10,000 times and claim it beat GPT‑4o on math and coding tasks with no fine‑tuning, no new data, and no parameter changes.
  • Phosphen ran Claude Code to spawn 105 agents on a single question; the run consumed 5,044,822 tokens and took 36 minutes. He emphasizes that most Claude Code users never run such agent swarms and notes the lecture is a ~1 hour free watch while Stanford students paid $187,000 for the associated degree.
Cleaned source text

DON'T PAY FOR A BIGGER MODEL UNTIL YOU HAVE FINISHED USING THE ONE YOU ALREADY OWN!🚨

stanford just dropped part 1 of cs329a, self-improving ai agents, taught by the people who built claude and gemini.

they asked llama 3 8b the same problem 10,000 times, and it beat gpt-4o on math and code.

no fine-tuning. no new data. not one parameter touched.

halfway through i realized i have been paying for something that was already sitting inside the model.

→ 19:51 - the infinite monkey theorem, run on a language model on purpose

→ 23:13 - the sentence that makes every subscription you pay for look stupid

→ 29:35 - the loop where a model writes its own training data while you sleep

→ 45:36 - the four agent patterns claude code is secretly built on

stanford students paid $187,000 for the degree this lecture belongs to.

you get it free, 1 hour & it will not stay public forever.

watch it, then read how i made claude code spawn 105 agents on one question below.

Video

Phosphen (@phosphenq)

Article

How to Graph Engineering: The Complete Guide

Claude Code ships a feature that spawns 105 agents on a single question. I ran it this week. It cost 5,044,822 tokens and took 36 minutes.

Most people who use Claude Code every day have never run one.

— https://nitter.net/phosphenq/status/2083991226827567419#m