I’m a PhD student in the theory of computing group at UC Berkeley.
I spend a lot of my time thinking about algorithms and intelligence, with particular interest in statistical learning theory. See my research page for what I’ve been up to recently. It’s taken a bit of a winding road to get to these topics, but I’m happy with where I’ve ended up.
I spend a lot of my time thinking about philanthropy, and trying to understand how to best spend money to make the world a better place. I maintain a blog where I write down some of my thoughts on this and related issues. Recently I’ve spent some time volunteering with GiveWell doing research on similar topics, and in the past I have spent time volunteering with other organizations in this space.
In addition to doing AI research, I spend some of my time thinking about the social impacts of AI, and trying to understand what implications the long-term consequences have for what we should do now. I think this is an important subject; I sympathize with the sentiment that it’s too difficult to say anything worthwhile, but I think so far we have seen so little intellectually serious discussion and inquiry that it’s hard to say we’ve given it a fair chance.
I think that training more thoughtful scientists has a huge possible upside, and so I played a large role in starting and now play a large role in running the Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition. The goal is to find high school students with exceptional technical talent and to help them think more clearly about the world and be more reflective about their own paths. I think it is a credit to the students that they are willing to approach this project seriously and enthusiastically, and I’ve been really happy with how the first two years of have gone.
Other miscellanea: I’m keen on self-improvement, which at the moment mostly means squeezing as many productive hours as I can out of each day. I used to be quite involved with competitive math, and I still enjoy puzzles and interesting games. I’ve spent some time thinking about unusual philosophical issues (why), though I’ll be the first to admit that I am no philosopher.
