I’m a Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. I work primarily in a few areas:

  1. Science of AI. I try to understand modern AI systems as an object of study, much as neuroscientists and cognitive scientists try to understand the brain. A lot of my work focuses on understanding in-context learning in transformers.
  2. AI to empower humans. I believe that AI can be used to augment human potential and human capital, e.g. via education and the information ecosystem, if we do it responsibly and inclusively.
  3. Future impacts of AI. I’m part of a new team at DeepMind trying to understand the potential future impacts of AI on society.

In my previous lives, I’ve done research in robotics, human memory and decision-making, and astrophysics. I’ve also done brain surgeries, built laser-optics rigs, and pitched to VCs.

(I previously led small research teams at AI-based startups in Boston, Barcelona, and Hong Kong. My PhD was in computational neuroscience at Princeton, focusing on reinforcement learning and episodic memory. At MIT, I did a BS in physics and a BS in brain and cognitive sciences.)