AI researcher, former data scientist, theoretical neuroscientist, consciousness theorizer, and social tech entrepreneur.
I currently work at Apple on Siri, focussing
on "agentic" analytical reasoning, cognitive architecture,
and automated simulation-driven AI self-improvement.
On the website Quora, I
write about neuroscience,
AI, and Consciousness (1000+ articles, 60k followers)
inspired by my time at the
UC Berkeley Redwood Center
for Theoretical Neuroscience. I am a one-time software entrepreneur
with interests at the intersection of psychology, society, AI,
neuroscience, and technology strategy.
My current focus
is research into "agentic" analytical reasoning systems, applying
a cognitive architecture approach to
automated simulation-driven AI self-improvement.
My thesis
is that the state of the art in assistant-oriented AI can most quickly
advance via an agent-executed workflow layer shaped by multi-level guidance
and feedback loops. These loops automatically detect both product and evaluation
infrastructure issues and fix them. Higher-order feedback loops support
this process with methodology generalization and upleveling from solved cases
to generalized capabilities. Additional support comes from agentic
self-learning improvement via reflection, meta-analysis loops,
and ongoing cognitive process modeling refactoring, synthesis, and refinement loops.
Prior to that, I was
leading data science teams
as a Data Science Manager at
Apple (AIML Siri),
Uber,
Quora, and
Facebook,
with projects spanning user engagement optimization, machine learning,
and conversational modeling.
While at the UC Berkeley Theoretical Neuroscience Center
as a visiting scholar I worked on
computational models
of spiking neural networks in vision.
Earlier in my career I founded two software companies,
one of which was an early social networking company started at
the same time as LinkedIn and Facebook. I started out as a
software engineer at
NeXT
(a Steve Jobs company) and Oracle
after studying computer science at Harvard.
Clubhouse/Podcast: In 2021-2022, I hosted the Neuro+AI+Consciousness conversation series on the Clubhouse mobile app, some of which are recorded. For a list of past conversation events and transcripts, click here.