---
title: "« the era of (auto) research »"
category: "talks"
date: "2026-06-30"
time: "12:05pm-12:25pm"
track: "Autoresearch"
room: "Main Stage"
speakers: ["Elie Bakouch"]
sourceLabels: ["Official conference schedule", "Public YouTube metadata"]
scheduleTrack: "Autoresearch"
scheduleRoom: "Main Stage"
scheduleLabels: ["Autoresearch", "Main Stage", "session", "confirmed"]
---
# « the era of (auto) research »

## Conference Context
- Date/time: 2026-06-30 · 12:05pm-12:25pm
- Track/room: Autoresearch · Main Stage
- Speaker(s): Elie Bakouch
- Session type/status: session · confirmed

- Track: Autoresearch
- Room: Main Stage
- Session type: session
- Status: confirmed

## Session Description
the nanogpt speedrun is a great setup to test autonomous research: fixed model, one number to beat, and a human record that keeps moving. we pointed coding agents at it on idle compute and let them iterate for days, thousands of runs with minimal human intervention, until they beat the human baseline. in this talk we go through how they did it, how codex and claude code behave very differently as researchers, and why speedrun are one of the best environments we've found for studying autonomous research agents

## Media Evidence
No related AI Engineer channel video found yet.

## Evidence Graph
This evidence graph is generated from currently linked source material: official schedule text, related video pages, cached transcripts, visible slide text, dense/reconstructed slide pages, and AI slide-classification audits.

### Media Signals
No linked video, transcript, or slide source has been attached yet.

### Agent Reading Notes
Use these signals to refine the synopsis, topic links, people/company context, and method notes. If a source is a related external video rather than an exact official recording, keep it framed as supporting evidence.

## Transcript Status
No official session recording transcript was found by exact title match on the AI Engineer YouTube channel during this run.

## People
- [[elie-bakouch]]

## Notes
- Pending transcript synthesis when an official recording or confirmed matching video is available.

## Synthesis
### Synthesized Breakdown
# « the era of (auto) research » ## Conference Context - Date/time: 2026-06-30 · 12:05pm-12:25pm - Track/room: Autoresearch · Main Stage - Speaker(s): Elie Bakouch - Session type/status: session · confirmed - Track: Autoresearch - Room: Main Stage - Session type: session - Status: confirmed ## Session Description the nanogpt speedrun is a great setup to test autonomous research: fixed model, one number to beat, and a human record that keeps moving. we pointed coding agents at it on idle compute and let them iterate for days, thousands of runs with minimal human intervention, until they beat the human baseline. in this talk we go through how they did it, how codex and claude code behave very differently as researchers, and why speedrun are one of the best environments we've found for studying autonomous research agents ## Media Evidence No related AI Engineer channel video found yet. ## Evidence Graph This evidence graph is generated from currently linked source material: official schedule text, related video pages, cached transcripts, visible slide text, dense/reconstructed slide pages, and AI slide-classification audits.

### Speaker And Company Context
- [[elie-bakouch|Elie Bakouch]] — Research Engineer at [[prime-intellect|Prime Intellect]].

### Topics Covered
- [[agentic-search]]
- [[coding-agents]]

### Derived Links And Source Material

### Novel Concepts / Clever Methods
- No highlighted novel concept has been detected yet.

### Evidence Boundary
This synthesis is based on the official schedule and linked source pages. It should be revisited when exact session recordings or transcript-backed secondary sources are available.