Hey, Andrew, how's it going? Pretty good Siraj, how are you?
Can ask you 67 questions? Yah sure, let's take a walk. What is one thing you really like about London?
the music and culture
favorite part of the software stack
Machine learning stack you're getting your phd from Oxford describe Oxford lines in one word antenna
What was the last project you worked on?
An open source project called open mind is looking to decentralize the control of a Act
If you could spend an evening with one famous person who would it be?
Barack Obama what do you do to relax AssAi music?
Do you miss the us I do all the time?
it's a
it I don't think you realize how important it is to develop relationships in a place until
Until you leave it and then you know those people are far away, so yeah, I missed them all time
What got you into a oh?
I originally wanted to do it
mostly for fun and also
I thought the software would be really compelling a
Way to be able to travel because I like being able to work for my laptop and at the time
I was really interested in playing music, and I was playing with a band and a few other places and
Yeah, I thought it would be a cool place the cool way to travel and work my laptop on a tour bus and then discover
day I threw a course at my university and
Just totally got hooked
Last thing you made with your hands
last person you emailed
I cold emailed a researcher in tokyo
Who is doing research on decentralized AI because the community is so small and I want to get to know everyone is in it?
What advice would you give yourself 10 years ago?
keep an open mind to the different opportunities don't commit too hard to just one and
Yeah, be ready for the road that life might take you on what website. Do you waste time on Twitter?
You get an all-expenses-Paid trip to one city. Where do you go?
Toronto going next week to the decentralized AI conference would you visit Mars?
Absolutely, what is one thing you can't live without?
My wife for sure where do you envision machine learning will take us?
I
think that's more question on on how
Governance and Sort of Capitalism versus three destitution of wealth plays out
Because AI is mostly just a proxy for power, and it's often controlled by the people who control capital
So let's say it's really hard to tell but if history is any
Indicator it's Gonna be really hard to keep it from being aggregated into a few kind of small powerful players
Do you think religion has a place in Science? I?
do which is a bit of a contrarian view I view religion as a
Large body of work that is attempting to understand and record things that are unexplainable
Whereas science is a corpus of work that attempts to explain things that are explainable and are repeatable
And I think both are ultimately trying to learn
They're both trying to learn the same thing. Which is where are we and who are we and what really matters and
I think that if you're trying to figure out what the world is about yourself
You can take a book into account what text editor. Do you use I?
Usually use sublime text, but I'm using Adam moore lately pretty cool. What open source library do you really like Pipe Torch, NGo5 torch
What's one of your favorite movies?
The prestige you see my favorite
But I really like interstellar. I think it's awesome. Yeah, what's one of your hobbies outside of machine learning?
playing Khanum
What was the first program you ever made?
I was in the second grade and my dad helps me make a
Simple calculator in C++, and I put on a floppy disk and show it to my teacher at school. What's the music Genre?
you're really into
Movie soundtracks because they make me feel like whatever. I'm doing is epic
Is there a programming language that you really don't like?
Is it bad to say lua?
programming language of toys for Machine learning
python for sure
favorite professor
Dr.. Hooper first got me an AI and programming then I go like a foot
What's one area of deep learning that interests you a lot?
I'm really interested in figuring out how
this is more in the be putting industries in the deep learning algorithms itself, but I think that
And I tweeted the other day like algorithms are more commodities to the extent that everyone gives them away for free
So research into algorithm while it helps push forward what humanity can do
I think it has less of an impact on what we will do and that's more controlled by
Sort of the data acquisition side of the industry
So as far as the thing that I think is the most interesting and has the most opportunity for social impact
I don't think it's building the next great
You know layer right? I think it's probably building the next great control structure for
For the natural resource that deep learning consumes which is data
What is the Misconception that people have about deep learning?
That it's about the algorithms instead about the data like like algorithms just extract information from large Data sets
And that's probably been the greatest lesson that my supervisor has taught me so far law at Oxford name one person you really admire
I really admire the
this is really controversial, but the former ceo of Firefox because I think that
People are generally rewarded now for not acting on their beliefs and for being really passive
And whereas there's definitely a case for that, and I'm a very open and accepting individual
I also have tremendous respect for people who put it all on the line for things that
that they really believe in and I think that he did that what's the most beautiful thing in the world a
smile
What do you want to work on the most at deepmind?
I'm really interested in long-term memory so so
Neural Nets are really good at modeling short sequences and short range dependencies and
Saying you know given the beginning of a sentence finish a coherently, but they have a really hard time saying
I think I've read this before you know
2,000 pages ago and even finding exactly the same thing you know again, so what I'd really like to work on there is
Long term memory and episodic memory especially as it pertains to reinforcement learning
One of the people you've met at deep mind so far like
Generous Collaborative
Some of them are hilarious
Some of them are the kind of a group of oddballs and they know it and they don't take themselves too seriously
I'm one of the first guys. I met he was wearing
a black kilt a pink bow tie and had like just this crazy haircut, and I just remember thinking like
Wow that guy that guy's got to figure it out in that
He's happy to be whoever. He's going to be whoever he's at and and work on cool stuff
No matter what and then I think I grew up in a part of the country in the us where where?
sort of social signals like that would have discounted him from Sort of academic pursuits, and it's totally ridiculous and
I was really really glad to see that
Some people who the group that a lot of people would associate with being a member of the top right?
don't disqualify someone just because they have those kinds of social signals or
Or carry themselves in that way right? What is one thing that excites you?
Hanging out with my wife best advice. You've ever received
Whenever you do something. You should always know what your goal is
Because otherwise you'll never know if you got there. What's the bravest thing you've ever done. That's a very friendly question
I guess get married who's your favorite computer scientist favorite computer scientist?
There's a lot of great ones with card to discriminate I
Guess that one turns is pretty easy internet. Do you think you need a phd to do machine learning?
No, absolutely not and actually with the advent of online education
There's a lot of the very strong case you made that people can learn faster
just the things they need to know by doing self-study and
I think it's a really good thing
But it's also going to upset the establishment and in America where education is highly over capitalized and override
There's the big correction coming. So you know watch out
Will the singularity happen?
I think we will definitely get to a place where we can't tell the difference between whether it's a human or it's not
Because humans are really good
really interested in mimicking ourselves, so if you believe that singularities and absolutely
now weather will actually be able to create something that's a all-powerful being that provides for us and answers all our questions and
you know is
kind of this all-Powerful entity
I think that's a little bit ridiculous mostly because they I that I've seen learns from Data
And I don't know if there's enough data out there at the moment
What is one area of machine learning that doesn't get enough laws?
Same as before Data Data set
data that kind of power structures, which is the natural resource that goes into AI
What's the most surprising result you've ever gotten from your research?
Figure is better. What is consciousness?
I don't know. What was the last thing that frustrated you?
Getting python to package dependencies that weren't part of the code
What's your spirit in my spirit animal, ooh?
Lion if you had a time machine when would you visit?
either
either the time
Either zero bt or zero ad or the 1960's because it seems like everything was invented in 60
Tell me a secret about yourselves. Just one one secret
I try not to have any secrets where would you like to see yourself in the next five years?
I am currently trying to figure out given the set of skills that I'm trying to acquire and I have the opportunity to acquire
what use of that actually matters and can actually have a real impact other than making a company a bunch of money or
automating a process like it seems like there's a lot of near misses in the a industry right now for applying new skills, so
That's kind of the question of the hour that I don't have the answer to yet, but I'm working on it
Who is one person you would love to collaborate with?
Mark Zuckerberg Favorite Linux Distro the Bluetooth, what's the point of life?
controversial question
love God and love people and
Yes, have you built an app with machine learning that you've used in your day-To-day life
No, I actually got into programming to do app development
But I've spent more time on the backend lately which is something. I'd like to change what's something you've learned in the past month
in the past month
I've learned a lot of new things about homework encryptions
That's kind of been a pursuit of study over the last six months to a year
and
I've also learned that
There's an incredible amount of knowledge to be
You find a lot of new uses if you can find different
Fields in the scientific study where people have done a ton of work?
But they haven't done a lot of kind of cross work and like homework encryption deep learning and even some extent federated learning
And blockchain are like these sort of these things or people have worked really really hard independent kind of silos of research
But there's so much interesting low-hanging fruit if you if you look at the cross between them
And I think it's easy to look at that pursued just go uh
buzzwords or something but but these are legitimately interesting technologies and
There's not I think if we're only now starting to try to figure out ok how can we take kind of the power the power?
Dynamics that we love about blockchain the the privacy dynamics that we love about encryption
as well as as
The intelligence of deep learning in AI and and build the world you want to live in
What is one really cool use case for machine learning that you haven't yet seen done
Predict what outcomes are going to happen in my life as a result of the decisions that I make
Do you think we'll solve intelligence in your lifetime?
I hope so if you're in the world, what's one law you didn't act?
Due into other than we have them do unto you. What's the problem that you would love to see solved?
closed-Mindedness
What were you like as a kid in Grade School?
I asked way too many questions, and totally drove my parents and my teachers crazy
What resource do you use the most to learn about the latest breakthroughs twitter? Yeah for sure?
What's something that excites you about the future?
I'm very hopeful that technology will give us the ability decentralized
Interest
And and sort of what we pursue for the first time ever okay. It seems like we've had to make this trade-off where
We have to aggregate power into these certain structures
to sort of push us forward because when everything is all apart was this logistical issue with innovating but
it might be possible with the internet with blockchain and the like
for us to actually innovate in a way where the interest and the return and the
Sort of goals that we're trying to achieve is actually built for the masses and not just for the people who have capital
If you were to start from scratch today, what is a learning resource that you'd use to learn machine learning
Look through your questions
Hopefully the things that I've written has a fire at them
but
Other than that I think the udacity Nano degree is really strong
And then I would look for 12 years 12 year olds on YouTube who who always have some of the best your health?
Whoa all right sure thanks for answering those questions, eman all right. Have a good one you think
