๐ Now
- Building AGI with phenomenal teammates. Specializing in AI Safety.
- Writing about the journey: sharing what I read and learn.
- Angel investing in startups I believe in.
๐ค AGI Pilled
joining the technical trenches of the intelligence revolution
- Curious about how GPT-3 works under the hood, self-studied the fundamentals of reinforcement learning and transformers. Used that knowledge to build a tool that lets people learn langauges while watching Netflix. Got 600+ people to use it
- Joined Coda's AI team where five of us sprinted to build zero-to-one GenAI features to make the process of building a doc easier. Immersed myself in AI hackathons and research papers to keep up with the whirlwind of innovation.
- Highlight: part of Coda's tiger team tasked with building an AI-first entrypoint into Coda. Our small team flew to NYC on 24 hours' notice and spent an intense month iterating. It started as a hacky v1, evolved into a successful investor demo, and eventually became a company-wide initiative.
- Itched to work on the models themselves -โ the catalyst and limiting factor of progress in AI products -โ so joined the company leading the charge.
๐ป Learning to adult at Silicon Valley Startups
searching for my ikigai by reading, writing, and coding
- Moved to the west coast, where for the first time I was surrounded by people deeply passionate about tech. Only a handful of college friends came to SF, so I built a new community โโ mostly overzealous, eager beavers like 21-year-old me.
- Worked at a hypergrowth startup reinventing documents. Matured as an engineer, worked with colleagues that embodied excellence, and got exposed to the business side of building a company.
- Outside the traditional education system for the first time, discovered the joy of learning for its own sake. Spent many weekends reading at coffee shops, hacking on projects, and started writing about the things I was learning.
๐ฒ Left home for college in the middle-of-nowhere New Hampshire
fell in love with computer science, wrote papers about the singularity, and made life long friends
- Dad's sole condition for college: take a drawing and a philosophy class. Drawing was a disaster. Philosophy became a new home for the debater in me, my favorite class being AI Ethics where I read Superintelligence.
- Took my first ever computer science class, credit to my sister. Was hooked by how it empowered me to breath life into my ideas.
- DALI Lab became my second home โโย a cozy basement room in the CS building where friends and I pulled countless all-nighters building products for local companies. It's one of my favorite spots on campus.
- Launched a student petition that convinced our administration to support CPT visa processing, saving international students 50% of our 1-year work authorization (More here and here)
- Interned at big tech for two summers. It opened doors. But I longed for a faster paced environment where I could have a larger impact. So I took a pay cut and joined a startup after graduating.
๐ธ๐ฌ Moved to an intense high school in Singapore
building back stronger by finding my voice as a debater
- First year crushed my confidence; rebuilt it over the next three years. In doing so, internalized Kintsugi for life.
- Spent most weekends at debate tournaments. Highlights were Silver at Singapore's National tournament, and Gold amongst international schools in South East Asia โโ championship finals here.
- When I wasn't debating or studying, was geeking out at Robotics competitions or MUN conferences.
๐ฎ๐ณ๐จ๐ณ Indian kid growing up in Shanghai
cross-cultural childhood anchored by family
- Hindu kid in a small Christian international school. International school meant friends came and went. Family became my anchor.
- Studied Chinese til HSK5. ๆ่ฝ่ฏดใ่ฏปใๅๅไธญๆ๏ผไฝๆฏๆๆไธ็นๅฟ็็.
- Mom connected us to our Indian roots with Karan Johar movies and Shreya Ghoshal songs - aur usi chakkar mein main Hindi seekh gayi