Land Your Dream AI Job - Tips from Expert Recruiter - What's AI Episode 9
### Article: Insights from AI Researcher and Recruiter Brian: A Deep Dive into Twitter, Recruitment, Podcasting, and More
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#### Introduction: The Power of Twitter in AI Research
Brian, an active voice in the AI community, shared his thoughts on how social media, particularly Twitter, has transformed the way AI research is communicated and shared with the broader public. He emphasized that while traditional channels like conferences and journals still hold value, Twitter has become the go-to platform for researchers to share their work. This democratization of information means that even researchers from smaller institutions or those working in remote locations can gain visibility by leveraging Twitter effectively.
Brian also highlighted the importance of marketing research on social media. He mentioned a hypothetical study where sharing a paper on Twitter led to increased citations, suggesting that engagement with platforms like Twitter can significantly impact the reach and recognition of AI research. However, he acknowledged the ethical concerns surrounding clickbait-style posts, which may overstate the promises of research. Despite these challenges, Brian believes that sharing research on Twitter is essential for anyone looking to make an impact in the field.
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#### Recruitment Strategies: Bridging Talent with Opportunity
Brian shared insights into his recruitment journey, particularly focusing on his role as a Matchmaker between AI talent and startups. He explained that his approach involves identifying top-tier candidates and connecting them with companies that align with their skills and interests. Unlike traditional recruitment methods, Brian’s process is highly personalized—he takes the time to understand both the candidate’s goals and the company’s needs before making any introductions.
He mentioned a recent project where he is working closely with a promising AI startup to fill key roles. This experience has been both challenging and rewarding, as it involves not only identifying talent but also navigating the complexities of scaling a team in a high-pressure environment. Brian sees this as an opportunity to learn and grow, particularly in areas like negotiation and relationship-building.
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#### Podcasting: A New Frontier in AI Communication
Brian recently ventured into podcasting, interviewing leading AI researchers about their work. He shared his experience of hosting a podcast focused on in-depth discussions about AI research papers. One of the most interesting aspects of this journey has been engaging with researchers who are not only experts in their field but also skilled communicators.
He mentioned a recent episode where he interviewed two researchers from OpenAI, which was particularly exciting given the impact of their work on the AI landscape. Brian emphasized the importance of preparation for these interviews, including reading papers and generating thoughtful questions using tools like GPT-4 to ensure a meaningful conversation.
When asked about the future of his podcast, Brian expressed interest in exploring new topics beyond research papers. He hinted at potential episodes featuring machine learning practitioners sharing their career experiences, which could provide valuable insights for aspiring professionals.
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#### Personal Interests: Balancing Work with Health and Productivity
Brian revealed that he is deeply interested in optimizing his personal productivity and health. He shared his fascination with techniques like the Uberman sleep schedule and biohacking, which aim to maximize energy levels and focus. While these methods require discipline, he finds them worth the effort for the increased clarity and efficiency they bring to his work.
He also mentioned his love for reading, particularly books on negotiation and decision-making. One book he recommended was *“Never Split the Difference”* by Chris Voss, a former CIA hostage negotiator, which he described as a valuable resource for anyone looking to improve their communication skills in both personal and professional contexts.
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#### Future Projects: Exploring New Frontiers in AI
Looking ahead, Brian expressed excitement about several projects. One of them involves collaborating more closely with a promising AI startup to help it scale its team. He sees this as an opportunity to apply his recruitment expertise while learning from the company’s innovative approach to AI research.
In terms of content creation, Brian plans to continue leveraging Twitter to share insights on AI research and recruitment trends. He also hopes to expand his podcasting efforts, exploring new angles in AI communication and education.
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#### Conclusion: A Call to Action for the AI Community
Brian’s journey through AI research, recruitment, and media highlights the importance of adaptability, curiosity, and continuous learning in today’s fast-evolving tech landscape. His insights offer valuable lessons for researchers, recruiters, and content creators alike.
For those interested in following Brian’s work, he encourages followers to engage with his Twitter account, *AI Pub*, where he shares detailed analyses of AI research papers and updates on recruitment opportunities. Additionally, his personal Twitter handle offers a glimpse into his life outside of work, including his interests in health, productivity, and reading.
In closing, Brian’s story is a testament to the power of social media in shaping the future of AI and the importance of staying curious in an ever-changing world.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign this is an interview with Brian Burns PhD candidate at the University of Washington and founder of the AI Pub Twitter account now if over 60 000 followers Brian is trying to build a talent referral business out of it Brian also hosts a podcast where he explained research papers with the authors in this interview we go over all these different facets the PHD I think a Twitter account the podcast and more I hope you enjoy it who are you and what's your background sure um my name is Brian I run this Twitter account called aipob an Associated podcast called Deep papers um what do I do um with the with the Twitter account I cover like high level technical AI topics so it's like AI research but not going like super deep in the weeds but also for people who have a technical background um and then and then the podcast is like interviewing uh AI scientists of like recent like very interesting papers also like on a technical but high level um my background is a is uh before that I'm I'm on leave from a machine learning PhD within the stats department at uh at UW I I did a year of a stats PhD uh picked up a lot of like deep learning stuff some computer vision stuff um and started this Twitter account it blew up and I'm kind of I'm kind of running with it so that's uh that's my background we'll definitely dive into the podcast and the Twitter account which is my main interest here but I also want to take a small detour into the PHD just because I'm myself doing one and I know that a lot of people listening are either doing one or considering doing one so I'd love to know why well first what was your your reason in starting one yeah I mean for me I feel like my situation is kind of weird like for me I wanted to break into machine learning uh I didn't have I had a programming background I've been programming since I was a little kid or a teenager um they had very very strong math backgrounds so like growing up I wanted to be a mathematician and like in University it was kind of on on the track to like do a math PhD um I wanted to break in machine learning like uh I thought that basically like doing a statistics PhD like in a department that had a really good machine learning program would be a good way to do that um so that's like so I ended up applying to a bunch of grad grad schools and I got into UW um so that's kind of like why I started it so to transition from mathematics into something more applied yeah I I just uh I I wanted to like learn a bunch and like grad school is like a really cool opportunity where you know you get paid enough to pay rent and buy food and you know you can use a lot of your time not all of your time but a lot of your time to to to learn um so for me it was really useful what would you say that it was maybe more useful than directly going into some industry roles like what's the what's the difference for you or or why did you choose the The Graduate Studies path instead of going straight into the industry yeah I mean honestly I think that's a good question I I think in hindsight I think in hindsight I didn't understand the breadth of opportunities that are available um I definitely think that having the credential really helps even if even if you do a fraction of a PhD like I have I'm on leave I almost certainly am not going to finish um you know having that credential or having you know master's degree or something it does help but I do think there are kind of a lot of ways to break in and I I definitely don't think that the PHD is necessary at this point especially given how quickly quickly things are moving and how quickly kind of the dominant paradigms of AI and machine learning are changing um I I don't think it's I don't think it's necessary so it definitely like in hindsight I don't think it's necessarily the optimal path and and I think for for a lot of people it's definitely not yeah and do you think regarding the optimal path do you think like of course the credential helps but do you think that the four years put into it well like minimum of four years or something like this put into it is worth the four years that you could have put into either working on your own thing or working at a startup because let's say we you won't be able to enter Google right away if you don't have studies but like do you think the time invested in the PHD is worth the certification I think it just really depends on what your end goals are um because I think I think there are a lot of reasons people will pursue a PhD um or kind of you won't want to do something in machine learning I mean if you're if your goal is just to like learn and do novel research in machine learning I think like if you can get into a PhD program or somehow fund yourself as an independent research researcher uh or even like work with these um these open source Labs like like stability I I think that's the best path uh like if you just want to do research like there's kind of not there's not a huge societal slot for you unless you either do a PhD or you you join one of these open source research Works um I think for many of the other things you want to do I don't think it's optimal like I think I think if you want to just like get on the ground running and learn how a lot of these modern machine learning systems work and like you know find good work in the area I think you can you can learn a lot of this stuff really quickly on your own um or even on your job um so I think for the vast majority of situations I I wouldn't recommend it but I think if you wanted if you if you're really dead set on doing research and you can get into a good PhD program um I think it's probably the optimal path um and then and then the other thing is like again like the world is changing so much like now there are these really cool open source Labs like I have a lot of friends who are like software Engineers or machine learning Engineers where they want to increase their research shops so what they do is instead of leaving for grad school they just start working with like Carper AI in their spare time um so I think even if you're trying to do research I think there are alternate paths there yeah definitely and I I don't know what will happen with universities in general but we will see and I I also think well I assume that I assume it's obvious that if you want to become a professor as well it's pretty much necessary like if if your goal is yet to teach it it definitely helps and well it's not necessary you can become like an online Professor or something but if you want to teach at at University it's definitely required and to me that well after speaking with many people I think even doing research as you said might be might not be the optimal path the PHD might not be the table path you may be even better if you if you are able to find some research position elsewhere and the yeah the main reason to do a PhD might be to become a professor and yep the second one to to do research which may not even be the the optimal path to do that yeah I mean I think if you want to do if you want to do research doing a PhD is kind of the mainline way to do it like I think there are alternate pads but like whatever 80 90 percent of people who are trying to pursue research and who can get into some kind of PhD program like I think that's probably the safest bet and the most straightforward way to do it that would be my guess yeah it's also but it's definitely worth doing if you enjoy doing it like it's it's definitely if you like to to control your own work and pace and for example if you want to take eight years to do the well I don't know what's the maximum length but if you want to do for example seven years instead of four but work 20 hours per week I most times you can well here in Canada you can so like it's definitely a good thing if you are more I don't know that's a bit weird but I I can't see a comparison between the PHD and Entrepreneurship where you pretty much decide on what you are doing and you decide on your schedule and you work on what you want to work so that's that's also pretty cool and the yeah the the flexibility that you have is amazing to work on side projects just like yours so I feel like it it may be a good like safe packet plan while trying other stuff at the same time yeah I agree with that I agree with that 100 and so you mentioned it but I assume you most certainly will not go back to the PHD and continue it yeah I would say so um I think I think I've kind of explored this weird alternate path uh of you know like social media is just so cool like I just have met all these different people in social media over the last six months or so seven months and starting the account like I you know I have this little recruiting business that's going well um I just there's so many kind of opportunities that I feel like are here um that I think at least at least for me I think like I don't I don't necessarily want to do another four years yeah that makes sense yeah but it's very very different because I I think for me like I entered the PHD to kind of break into machine learning and I think after the first like six months to a year I felt like I had learned enough to go out on my own um but but I think like I was not dead set on like doing you know world-class language modeling research or something like that and I think I think for someone else if if that's if that's your aim then then staying is really the right move yeah and it's definitely something that you are like in a PhD you are specializing yourself in something extremely specific and that's well that that brings value but it may not be for everyone yeah and it's also I mean this is one of the things that like blew my mind the most about uh machine learning kind of the history machine learning is um is almost the trend of anti-specialization with time like most Fields as they go on you know they get more and more Niche it's like if you do like a physics PhD or something you know you specialize in like theoretical Quark String Theory type B or something and you do like seven years on that whereas the really interesting thing with with ML over the last like 10 years you know post post deep learning and especially with the kind of like uh you know Transformer sequence modeling Paradigm is like this unification of architectures right where it's like yeah you know I I'm not an expert on this stuff but it's like 10 years ago like people were doing computer vision people who were doing like NLP were doing like very very different things um and now like a lot of the methods are actually becoming more and more similar um so it's it's also kind of an interesting time to like think about specialization or like really deep specialization you know yeah and I also I've read a great book well listen to a great audiobook about uh I don't remember the name exactly but it's like why generalist Triumph or something like this which was really interesting and about how generators are often the ones that that succeeds even in in some very specific fields for example I remember one of the examples he gave was Roger Federer the tennis player he they in in the book he told he he wrote about his background and said that like um compared to other tennis professional players Roger Federer where was playing like every other sports and some tennis until he was yeah I would say random numbers but until his things or something compared to others that like at six they already started only playing tennis and nothing else whereas he was playing a lot of different sports and developing different skills and so I I don't know why I'm biased towards the generalization because I just like touching a lot of stuff but I feel like there's there's definitely some value to to staying a bit more general or at least even if you are focused on one area still getting out of your way to understand the different things that are happening or developing in other Industries oh yeah I mean yeah I kind of I see this a little bit in recruiting as well like I do Talent referrals to different AI startups and I think like the candidates that I find like get the most job offers or like end up like progressing in their careers the fastest they're definitely not like total generalists like they tend to be really good at one thing right yeah um you know they tend to be like really really good at NLP and like have a long history of projects and like you know successful work history doing that kind of thing but I think it's kind of like you're they're not entirely t-shaped it's like they're really good at one thing but then for basically everything else they also are like good enough or or actually like even a little bit beyond that so it's like they're really good at NLP but then like they're also like really fun to work with and you know they have at least some social media profile showing off their work and like they Network every once in a while you know so that I I I've noticed like that that additional kind of marginal stuff kind of across the skill distribution like really helps people in their careers yeah or even for example just just for myself in my internships and things like that if you are good at something else it can also help just I I remember that I I we I wrote in my resume that I was doing some climbing and like one of the interviewers were was a big climber climbing fan and we just talked about this during the whole interview and I ended up getting the job and we just went climbing and it was perfect like I I feel like a lot of recruiting is based on and not preferences but like just fine it's just like finding a friend basically you want to match with the person you like the person can learn and as long as he's he or she is motivate motivated it's it should be fine so I so you definitely try to to find a good fit but you are the recruiter expert so what what would you say that it's most important when when matching like it I don't know matching a company with with an individual like or what what would you say that companies are looking for mostly is it strictly the skills or the personality is even more important what's the most important thing oh man that's that's so hard because I don't think there's any one specific thing and I think there's also a selection for a lot of different roles right like I think what kids you had as a research engineer is different from what gets you out as a software engineer research scientist so I do think it's I think it varies a lot across roles um but let me let me answer directly um so I think so there's there's kind of like two levels of this like I think uh you know first and foremost I think just like having impressive technical accomplishments on your resume is really useful like this is just very standard recruiting advice but it's just like you've shipped a bunch of projects with like very quantifiable impact yeah you know n dollars a year for your business for your employer or you know you sped up sped up X service by X percent or you know you improved X models performance from you know A to B um so I think that stuff matters first and foremost I hate to say it but I think second is like brand I think recruiter like people who are hiring CEOs or startups you know or careers like the the name on the resume matters a lot you know like if you're working at whatever Google Facebook or like you know a big startup uh stripe Airbnb or something like um that it really greases the wheels to to get you in the door um you know whether whether or not people like that the other thing to say about the brand stuff is I think um I think it's more in your control than you think um so it's like it's harder to you know change whatever company like maybe you can't work for a really prestigious company but um I think if you like if you end up going on social media and you make a profile for yourself and you like share really cool work of yours you have like a really slick website um there's a way that that actually can really like alter people's perceptions of you and like show off stuff that doesn't show in the resume so I think I think second is brand like below the technical stuff um and then I think third I think third the thing that really helps with recruiting is kind of exactly what you said it's actually a lot of this like really like non-scalable social stuff um it's really funny I think and again I'm like not an expert with recruiting I've been doing this for maybe six months or something five months um you know there's all this stuff like there's job boards you know there's the job application page and one of the things I've learned is that just like a lot of this stuff just gets totally ignored um there's just so much volume on the internet that like these job boards or these these job applications which get totally filled up and often the the CEOs of the hiring managers are so overwhelmed that they just don't even look at the uh at at the applications at all like it's it's really surprising so like the funny thing is kind of I think the thing I've learned about recruiting and like job stuff is like if you want to get good at it you have to get good at like all the old school stuff so just like networking or like finding out who the hiring manager is on LinkedIn and like sending them a really nice cold email about why you think you're great for this position so that kind of thing um so to recap One technical stuff matters the most to Brand three like non-scalable old school social stuff I think referrals to like like having a friend who's part of the company or something like that and I'd say like fourth that is outside of your CV would be your online presence as you mentioned just it's really important to to be to be visible basically it's it's not it's I mean I'm sure you've experienced this like just the kind of opportunities it opens up or the people you mean it's totally totally Bonkers totally bonkers yeah it's really like if you guys are not on either Twitter or LinkedIn just go create an account right now and at least share what you've done in the past year or something just just be online a little bit and if you are coding on GitHub you can also put it to just public and if you can put your code to public and clean it a bit before but yeah it's really a game changer to to have an online presence especially in this new field that where we see for example I've interviewed someone um the VP of of research and development at a startup called did and they he said that for a research scientist role they they received in the thousands of like um potential candidates that were qualified that's just crazy like they cannot go through all of them so definitely you need to stand out one way or the other and as you said either by reaching out and sending a personalized letter or at least use chatgpt or something to write it like more personal but like not not spam them but at least send something that seems personal is is already a good step to to to get out of the out of the lot out of the the bunch so yep so you mentioned that yeah we talked about recruiting and talent referral your what is I believe your current business so or like main business model maybe but what does this mean exactly what what are you doing and how do you do that how how can you how are you matching people and finding candidates and everything around that yeah it's um it's it's actually quite simple and I uh a lot of it I'm still experimenting with it and I think there are a lot of different things that can be done but um at least for now how it works is I just have a link on my Twitter page and people can click on the link and they'll you know submit some information about themselves their name you know what what company they're working at like what they're looking for in their next role um and then you know typically like if if they uh if they uh meet certain parameters and I'm explicit about this stuff it's like you know fortunately or unfortunately uh almost all the startups are referred to are in the US so it's like if they're in the US and they have like two years of experience um and they submit that stuff I'll reach out to them for for like a phone or a zoom call just to get a better sense of what they're looking for um and then they're just kind of like a passive Matchmaker so like uh at that point maybe you'll really understand what they're looking for and already know a company that's that's a good match um or it's happened where it's like WeChat I don't actually know anyone who's a great fit for them but then like three months later I meet startup founder who's like looking for someone who you know fit the profile um so then you just put people in touch via email um and that's um that's how it works I I've started to there's one company I've been recruiting for that won't say much about them um but they're like really cool I'm like a huge fan of them uh you probably guessed who they are if you like follow me on social media um I've started to work with them a little bit more closely So like um started to like do more Outreach like like actually doing outbound and you know either reaching out to a couple people who I follow on Twitter saying like hey I think you'd be a really good fit here um or even like on LinkedIn um but that's actually this is the first time I've ever done like any kind of outbound Outreach um so that's that's currently how how my thing works and you mentioned that this was mainly thanks to your Twitter account so I think we we should definitely dive into the the Twitter which is called AI Pub and for the people that are not familiar with with it if you're in the field I I think we can assume that you are familiar with it just because of all the reads that you've got in the recent uh I don't know six seven month or is it that much around there I think it started in like September again I think that you you've got something like 8 million reads or even more now oh I I actually haven't checked the numbers in a long time I know I have 60 000 followers uh yeah something like that yeah definitely I I would assume the fastest growing Twitter account especially in in artificial intelligence and you already explained a bit what we you were doing but could you go a bit more in detail of what is your goal with the satorical as well as who is it for who should follow you and and go check it out yeah I think um again like all this is kind of an experiment like here it's kind of there's nothing really set in stone um so I'm kind of playing with a lot of different things um I'll start by saying like who is my target audience I think target audience is like technical people who are in the industry or like very adjacent to the industry um so like people are professional software Engineers people with professional machine learning Engineers um who either like read machine learning papers themselves or like kind of want to be kept abreast of it all um you know uh so that my target audience is like generally technical people um and then what I'm kind of trying to do is cover technical AI topics at like a high level so like research summaries but like not going super deep in the weeds so that people can understand a lot of the high level Concepts um without spending hours and hours going into the nitty-gritty uh details so there's just a lot of stuff that interests me um I think I think over the last couple months it's mostly been um just like summaries of research papers um for a while I did this thing that I feel really bad about I've just been so slammed with the recruiting I haven't kept up with it but like for a while I did I did like a weekly Twitter thread that like summarized all all the things that happened this week on AI Twitter that must be crazy right now if you were to do it no yeah I actually again I feel terrible about this because I haven't done this in a couple weeks because the recruiting stuff um but yeah like I don't even know how I would do that now because it's like the Twitter thread like you know you should probably do that Twitter thread every two days or something like that at this point are you familiar with Alpha signal the yeah so like he he posted I think it was Tuesday like people said that summary of what happened Tuesday and it was like more more new things that what you were sharing in a weekly thread yeah no it's it's it is it's it's it's it's kind of I I my emotions are rare mix it's like very exciting very overwhelming a little bit terrifying depending on how you think about the future um so I think I think all that stuff is interesting I think one thing like I kind of want to explore in the future with the account is not just like like research progress but also talking about kind of like how AI or is affecting Society or is affecting the economy or is affecting the startup scene um there's there's a podcast that's run by a friend that I really really like that kind of covers all this stuff super well it's called the cognitive Revolution um and I think like my plate is kind of full right now but I think if I get more bandwidth I think I want to do more stuff like that because it's just a personal interest of mine like aside from just keeping up with the research papers like I think this stuff is just going to be so transformative for society and like even just like walking around or driving or doing errands like I'm just thinking about like what's the economy going to be look like in three years or like how you know how are gonna people going to have to adapt you know what what should be people be doing to like ride that wave um so I think like that's also a direction I kind of want to take the account of you once I get more bandwidth and I think my Powers would be really interesting because I think I think there's a thing that's on like everyone's mind right now anyone who's following gpt4 or any of this stuff like they're thinking about this kind of thing yeah exactly and as you just said it but I think that would be extremely relevant to technical people that usually don't think about this stuff but they are developing those models and working with them and Etc but they they are for sure interested in what will happen and how it affects Society but they don't have really the time to investigate or think about it so it will definitely be a great transition for you I think well just just because you are you already are building the to my mind the perfect audience that should be um sensibilized with that so that that would be definitely great to see I'd love to see that yeah if I I'll just say one thing I I think they're like all these different like media niches even like within machine learning like there's kind of like machine learning for like people who don't have a technical background that just want to be crap you know kept abreast of the news you know I'm trying to do like you know a more technical audience but even within a more technical audience there's so many different like niches like I think one thing that would be really cool that I haven't seen too much of um maybe to some degree is like a media Outlet like specifically for AI tools just like for developers like like just like and you keep it really simple but just keeping keeping software developers and machine learning Engineers like abreast with just like you know the best tools that they could be using in their in their work like even something like that would just be so extraordinarily valuable um so I'm not doing that but I think it would be really cool if someone did yeah it's crazy how I don't know if it like it wasn't like this I feel like in with the internet in the beginning but it's crazy now how any very Niche topic can blow up and work really well sure no I think we're both on Twitter like one of my favorite accounts is this guy called strip mall guy I think he's like kind of famous on Twitter and he's just like he's this guy and he's he only tweets about like buying and flipping strip malls and like renovating strip balls and he has like a hundred thousand followers or something like that um so there's there's people like this all over um that's so cool you can like any passion that you have or just something that you do you can share about it and some other person will certainly be interested do you uh do you have like a favorite like weirder Niche Twitter account I don't mean it if you know I don't mean to put you on the spot but I'm curious uh you you kind of are because I'm I'm a really bad twitter user so I I actually wanted to like this was part of my questions that I actually skipped but I I will ask them so since whatever um for myself personally but also anyone else that is that is listening because I just give a small background to my question it's basically all my friends and the people I know like because I I assume it may be because we are from a small City and here it's French not in English or something but nobody is using Twitter like back in back in the days it was Facebook and now it's messenger nobody is using Twitter or even have an account how would you convince them that Twitter is useful or like why is Twitter useful and why should should they be on there yeah I would say I would say two things on a high level and it just depends so some people don't have these interests but I think the two things that are most useful that are kind of separate Are One Professional and then uh two are just keeping abreast of news um you know professional like just the networking that you can do not like a weird sleazy way but just like meeting people who are in your Niche um is is just wild and it's just so much better than LinkedIn like LinkedIn is the site where you're supposed to be doing this but like I don't know like people don't really like hang out and have genuine conversations on LinkedIn or like people like I don't know it's it's not it's much more it's it's much more like genuine on Twitter um so I think if you're interested in doing that like uh you know you should try it out uh and they're and they're just crazy stories of like people people who have made crazy professional progress by just going on Twitter um you know so I think there's professional and then the other is just like I think it's the best place to get news uh across a variety of niches you know um you can just find all of these random people who are like domain experts again it's like you know I follow like Jan Le and like Sam Altman but like I also follow like strip mall guy or like yeah olaji and it's like this really cool like it's kind of like you craft your own newspaper that you get every morning from like all of these different like Niche experts on exactly what you want to learn about um so I and and also just like empirically like the the quality of information you get um is frankly higher and faster than what you'd get out of traditional media um you know I think with like a lot of political issues uh things like kovid um you know thing things like inflation at least in the US like Twitter at least I found was way ahead of the curve um on like finding up-to-date info about this stuff um so I think just even keeping abreast of what's going on like Twitter's great now once you you spend the time to craft your your list or like the people that you are following this seems like a really good tool to to stay in the farm in as you said I'll Niche I'll most important subject for you so definitely and coming back to just before we I forget coming back to your AI Pub the the Twitter account that's this specific tutorial how how would you say that like higher how are you balancing the need to share super Cutting Edge research like in your weekly reviews well also need to communicate the need to communicate them simply and make it accessible like how is it for you is it difficult to share the most advanced algorithm while making it accessible and all this and Twitter it's like basically really short threads so it what are the challenges and how are you doing that yeah it's definitely hard I mean the biggest challenge is just volume um and I don't just don't even pretend to be a source of like all of The Cutting Edge stuff it's more I feel like I'll pick out a gem every once in a while and maybe it helps people understand it but it's like there's just even if I was doing my job like 10x better like I just being able to cover just all of the things that are coming out is just like really really hard um so for me like the biggest challenge is just volume um and also Pace like just you know a paper will come out you know you know Day end like if you can figure out what's going on in it and summarize it on Day N plus one like that's that's great but sometimes it's just hard to do um I actually like in some ways I don't I don't actually find there's a ton of tension between um you know there's this question like kind of explaining the research versus you know crafting a Twitter thread like like in some ways like you're kind of compressing information and how much information is lost when you do that yeah um for me I don't I don't find there's like a huge trade-off there because at least what I'm expressly trying to do is is kind of trying to do some of that lossy compression uh you know so for me like what I'm trying to do is trying to kind of distill as much as I can in the paper into something that could be a Twitter thread or could be explained yeah you know a page or two of writing um I think for other people who are going much deeper into the technical weeds or like are you know trying to explain things for people who have much more of a background I think there's more of a trade-off but uh for me for me not as much and that's kind of why I like Twitter like I like that there's at least to some degree in the UI like the 240 character limit because it really actually imposes a constraint of being of being succinct and pithy yeah and like just really summarizing like the key ideas um so I don't actually find a huge tension there personally it's really funny actually because I feel like oh sorry I I feel like I feel like for people who don't use Twitter they're historically has been this reputation of Twitter as like this kind of like I feel like low IQ yeah like platform it's like oh yeah it's just 140 characters like what kind of intellectual content are you gonna get there and it's like surprise actually no it's like one of the best places to learn um so so it seems like there's a trade off there but but at least I haven't found it personally um yeah indeed and making stuff simple is also a super useful skill for just Professionals in general so would you have any tips based on how you personally do that to for anyone to improve on explaining their research or their own work more simply well that's hard um well the first thing that's kind of obvious advice is get on Twitter um it's really funny it's like a lot of the research that ends up getting the most attention or like most follow-up work is just the research that gets shared on Twitter because everyone's using Twitter as their source of info so I really the first and most obvious source of advice is like just go on Twitter and like every time you publish research like dedicate a good deal of time to making like a really good Twitter thread with you know photos and media and stuff uh that explains what you did at a high level um was in terms of summarizing I don't I don't feel like I have like super interesting thoughts there it's like you can write short sentences kind of space it out like you know yeah well I think those are already great insights just basically I think it's it's interesting to force yourself to cut some words like make it more concise by intention this will just allow you to practice your brain to to even verbalize things more simply in their General Life just because you you are doing that you are forcing yourself one more thought here which is um trying to condense something to like three major ideas or like trying to understand why something is obvious it's I when I was an undergrad I was like really interested in doing math and I was I was mentored by this like really awesome mathematician um and like one of the pieces of advice he had like even for like extremely technical work these are like math papers which are like way harder to read than than machine learning papers this is totally esoteric like very awfully put together often um his advice was often like there are three major ideas and like your goal reading this like really hard esoteric thing is to just figure out what those like three major ideas are so like kind of deliberately approaching your explanations or your uh reading from the perspective of like what are what are the three bullet points that explain this whole thing or the other the other kind of like useful intuition is like why is this obvious like because the funny thing is like all this intellectual work like some really interesting paper comes out sometimes it seems like this incredible technical feat or like this leap of Genius of the mind um but but the person who discovered it it was obvious right like to the person who discovered it was actually very intuitive so then sometimes I feel like the goal of either coming to understand the stuff well or explain it well is trying to like figure out like trying to reverse engineer the headspace to the point where the work becomes obvious so you're kind of asking yourself the question like why is this really intuitive even if it seems hard like what's the intuition behind it um these are two ideas I learned from math that yeah they are good tips and also what you mentioned with using external media like images or videos or even just real world example just like something that anyone can understand but you can compare that's extremely good to just make things sound simpler and more understandable I I think well most professors do that they start to most good professors do that they start with a real world example or real life like they talk about tennis or whatever and then they talk about math whether you like it or not a lot of this stuff is marketing you know like you know you you do the research that's making the product but then in order to get people to pay attention to it it's marketing so you know learning the basics of copywriting and all these network marketing things that a lot of people are reverse to it's useful exactly and just just like selling yourself in an interview or anything it's it's all about marketing yep so you you mentioned that you were mainly staying up to date with Twitter and yeah Twitter and so is there since you are yourself a Twitter account trying to share news in Ai and what my knee and AI are there any other tools that you are using to help stay up to date or newsletters or I don't know YouTube accounts or anything else than Twitter accounts or if if there are other useful Twitter accounts that you can share yes um okay so you don't want to like play favorites here but I'll and I I'm I'm a little bit sleep deprived today so I'm sure like some great accounts are gonna skip my memory um nonetheless uh a couple that come to mind um Dar AI or I don't know how you pronounce it but their AI is like they're really really good um they I feel like there are just actually a lot of Twitter accounts that are now just doing a better job at what I'm trying to do than I am um so I think I think like Dairy eye is really really good uh they're doing weekly paper summaries which is like super cool so if you're trying to keep up to date with research like I think it's every Sunday they publish a thread where it's like hey here like the top 10 like papers that came out this week and here's like one or two sentences about like what they contain um so dare AI is really good um Alpha signal you know uh Weekly Newsletter with kind of like some of the top AI papers that's really cool um uh I really like uh Dr Jim fan um he's he's on Twitter he like he makes like really cool explainer threads of various AI research stuff um and then and then another uh kind of Follow that that I really like that's a little bit different from the research stuff um is is this podcast called the cognitive Revolution that I mentioned um is run by uh this guy Nathan lebens uh who's just a great guy and uh it it covers some AI research stuff but also just like how AI is affecting society and they like interview some of the top like startup Founders or like VCS in the space and also researchers so it's like more of a kind of like broad uh like podcast uh that that I think is good and they also they also have like a sub stack or a newsletter not exactly sure on that or they they do have one I I mostly just listen to the podcast I I will also add just it's basically this the only with yours and I follow Alpha signal AI Pub and one other Twitter page account um for this is mainly interesting for people enter in into research AI research and even more towards like researchers applying those research but it's obviously AK oh yeah yes you already know but this this was a game changer to me like a few I think years ago now well and it's definitely cool he posts he basically shares every new relevant papers and even non-relevant but like any new papers with a short one-liner that is usually taken from the abstract but still a short useful one-liner to know what's the paper about with a picture and it's it's just really cool to to be easily to have easy updates on on the new papers the new like thousands of daily papers so that's that's a really good one I feel like yep I totally agree totally forgot uh another person who's in a similar vein is Iran Iran kamat suzaki um he's he's at he's doing a machine learning PhD at Georgia Tech I think he's finishing up uh and he he does similar stuff like he posts a lot of papers and kind of summaries and papers uh awesome oh I'm I'm sure you do uh he's he's very active on on AI yeah I must have seen it but I my mirror is extremely bad anyway so I probably know know him but yeah to continue on on Twitter since uh this is the pretty much the main topic of the past 30 minutes or so I I have still follow-up questions on this and it's also for people like me that maybe do not understand Twitter enough and it's more about growth so a very short question that may be extremely hard to answer is how to do a viral Twitter post oh that's um that's what I'll put I I don't mean to toot my own horn too much uh but I do actually think I've Gotten Good at this um especially yeah yeah now I've been actually kind of like slammed with some of this recruiting stuff and other things I'm doing so I actually haven't been focused on growing my Twitter account but yeah like first first couple months it was like very deliberate very focused on it and I think it did a very good job um yeah I think so there are a lot of thoughts um how do you write yeah so there I mean and maybe this is too vague or too broad but I think you gotta get like three things right I think one getting the audience right like kind of it's kind of like finding product Market fit it's like finding like info audience fit like like like being really deliberate like think like a think like a business like ask who are your customers and ask like what do they actually want like what would help them like what do they actually care about rather than like what's exactly interesting to you is because often like those very subtle differences in that um so like kind of like finding like a niche audience or once you have an audience like figuring out exactly who that is and like really being deliberate like what did what would actually be very useful to them um you know and um you know thinking about that um you know um I think so so that the second is is content like finding content that's interesting and relevant um I think one thing that I definitely found is posting posting like long form content um that's like really thought out and valuable like occasionally does much better than um really frequently posting content that's not necessarily like stuff that you have added or like reposting stuff for just like sharing a random things I think like there's a huge return like one of the reasons I actually don't post too much on Twitter is because like often it takes me like several hours to write a single thread because it's like I'll read the paper like come up with some of the major ideas and all that like it takes a long time um so I think like you know figuring out what your audience wants then like doing really like long-form valuable stuff in that domain uh that's like detailed and helpful um and then the third thing you kind of have to get all these right too uh because I feel like if you get one of them wrong like you you it really you don't grow as much or you don't get get as much um views um the last is just like kind of straightforward like marketing copywriting stuff um so it's like you know just the way you structure your sentences or like the way you structure your tweets like each you know have each tweet like not have a ton of text in it like have each tweet ideally just contain one idea um you know structure your sentences so that they're like short easy to follow structure your sentences so that they're kind of interesting so it's like you have one idea and then the next idea is like a plot twist or like you know uh you just you don't want it to be too monotonic right um you know and then also including media like including like images for each each uh each tweet like these these kind of subtle things actually end up mattering a lot so I think maybe that's not super explanatory but that's kind of my like high level view it's like you get infinite you know audience info fit think about what your audience actually wants like think about them like a customer how can you serve them uh you know long form detailed stuff and then like doing the copywriting and the and the images and stuff and how much time did it take when you were trying to really grow on Twitter like per day or per week approximately it really depends like I wouldn't say actually a ton of time honestly um I think like I think when I was starting maybe like 10 hours a week or something like that um because I was doing well actually maybe more than that because I think like when I was starting out even when I was starting out and I was growing really fast like I wasn't actually posting that much stuff I was posting like twice a week basically like I would post roughly every week like one long form explainer thread on like some cool paper or some cool machine learning topic um and then I would do like a weekly like uh summary of the stuff that happened in AI or AI research uh and each of those okay maybe it's actually a little bit over 10 like the the summary thing I think even to put the thread together would take like a couple hours uh but then throughout the course of the week I would just save all of the links that I found on Twitter to like filter through that so maybe it's like 15 hours something like that and then and then you know uh writing a thread on a paper like maybe it's like seven hours or something like that like you find the paper you print it yeah I'm boring I you actually read it on paper and Mark it up um you know that can take a couple hours to really understand and then um you know writing the thread and doing all the like the copywriting like I think a lot of people just don't like doing this because it's actually kind of boring like just getting getting the images right and getting the sentences right like that actually takes a good deal of time yeah I think for me it was like 10 to 15 hours a week something like that and right now how long does it take you I think I'm actually spending maybe a similar amount of time because I'm also doing a podcast now um maybe actually maybe a little bit less than ten something like 10 I would say something like that yeah that is uh it's not really that many hours to get that much views and and just so many opportunities oh yeah yeah less than we think total life hack like like even you know someone who's just you have a full-time job you know you do a couple hours a week like and it just it totally changed your life indeed and you mentioned cool research papers but how do you decide if they are cool or worth sharing you you said that you have to see as if you you were basically sharing with customers but it's still you in the end you still have to decide if you are explaining a paper or not so how how do you take these decisions yeah I think in terms of finding the papers and maybe you're just a little bit more selfish I think I'm actually thinking less from the audience perspective and I but it's it's more like I'm just using my own taste or my own judgment it's kind of like with even with math like people just have different tastes you know some people like analysis other people like number Theory or something you know um and with machine learning papers like it's just kind of like what I what I find most interesting and typically what I find most interesting is like I would say less like really cool demos or something or like a really impressive state of the art result or something but I think what I find very interesting is like papers that open up new paradigms or papers that um kind of have something to say about the long-term direction of uh AI research I also like to some degree I'm in kind of an AGI believer like maybe even short timelines type person so like I also find papers that kind of like play into that thing interesting you know so it's like uh some of the papers that I've covered recently on the podcast that that I found really interesting or like tool former so it's like okay that's like just directly Society societally relevant um or like you know recently did one on um Hungry Hungry Hippos which is like a new language modeling architecture that like has much better scaling with um context uh the context length so like stuff like that like where it's like oh if you get that right then the language models are gonna get way better um so it's mostly it's mostly my taste I think I'm mostly interested in language models um or like or or like Foundation models that incorporate language so I think there's also a lot more bias towards that than like vision yeah you you definitely have a bias Just Like Me on YouTube I I share what I find interesting and what I like it's and but I think that's a good thing it's also it also gives personality to your Twitter account and if people enjoy what you seem to be sharing well they won't be disappointed since you will keep sharing similar stuff yeah yeah there's always I think this is kind of kind of interesting Trend in like media there's always this like interesting tension that I've seen between um kind of doing like writing for yourself or producing media for yourself that's like unique to your character and like sort of serving your audience as if you were a business or a servant or you know kind of like a more of a giving mentality um because you kind of have to do both like if you're just so obsessed with like what you think is cool like actually often people don't care like it's just not interesting to other people but then on the other side like there's definitely a phenomenon among like influencers of like audience capture where it's like they start doing something that's really interesting and unique but then they find that Their audience actually wants more clickbait and then like over time they end up just becoming like a clickbait Channel or they end up just being completely transformed and captured by Their audience so it's it's definitely something that you have to like think about yeah and speaking of audience how how are you engaging with your Twitter audience or just building some kind of real engaged Community rather than just being a anonymized Twitter account that doesn't talk to them do you do anything more specific than sharing your your weekly posts or all your posts well I'm doing much a much worse job than you are because you actually run a community I I'm I I feel like I could actually improve a lot in this respect I think insofar as I'm doing anything community oriented I think it's actually much less like scalable um or it's very like I think I'm actually doing more like in-person stuff so like yeah occasionally all host events you know I feel bad because it's like they're NSF like if you're not NSF but like you know a whole host events are all sponsor events that are like open to anyone who wants to show up um and then some of the some of the recruiting stuff uh is also like useful so like a lot of the stuff that I've been doing community wise is like in person where it's like there are just people who I've been chatting with in the DMS for like a couple months and they're like looking for a job in this area and like I'll help them out um or just like connecting people but it's very it's very like non-scalable like relative to I don't know do you have any plan in in creating something that is more oriented towards some kind of community and where people can help each other or you can help them more easily than in person because of course in person is like the best thing but it as you said it's definitely not scalable to be honest not really like right right now uh I feel like I'm still like figuring out all this recruiting stuff like a little bit slammed uh just with all the things that are going on so I don't I think one thing that I've tried to do with the account is like if I'm doing anything I want to do like really good jobs so I I don't feel like I do a very good job with the community thing right now um so there's nothing on my docket yeah that makes sense you you are just prioritizing and focusing on other stuff that is more important to you and that's that's just perfectly fine and well speaking of managing the the Twitter account is there any challenges or difficult things that we people that are not really good with Twitter or are not managing such a popular Twitter account uh yeah sorry I will just before it are there any challenges that we do not expect to see from managing oh something that maybe you didn't expect at the beginning yourself that is that takes you more time than expected or yeah I mean it I think well I would say two things um one is it depends on what kind of account you're running like if you're running a newsletter for example I know people are running like daily AI newsletters you just I used to you know yeah you have to keep up you have to every day put that out like there are people who are depending on you yeah I feel fortunate enough that like kind of what I'm doing can be at my own pace so it's like if I'm really slammed like you know I'll just you know I will post something about a research paper that week yeah um so I I don't have as much of that pressure but I think um you know other people would experience that um I I think the the main thing for me that's also true of like some of the recruiting stuff is just like inbound and just like DMs I feel so bad I'm like I and it's it's also a skill so it's like it becomes hard but then you get better at it um I still like not good at it but it's just like you get a lot of like inbound and a lot of people are like oh can you share this and I'm kind of like yeah I don't really know like just lots of people who want to share things to you or like do you want to sponsor this event or like with recruiting too the funny thing is like recruiting is like it's a pretty it's pretty unsexy business but there aren't actually like that many people it's so funny it's like there's so many AI startups so many AI VCS really not that many ad recruiters like I kind of don't know of any um so then if you start to get a reputation as like the guy who does AI recruiting like a lot of people will just come to you and they're like can you send us candidates or you know uh so just kind of keeping up with that uh I'm trying I'm trying to do a better job that's really cool so you are a Pioneer in this in this subfield a little bit yeah it's just some degree and that's also the main way you manage to monetize your Twitter account right were there any other ways that you you succeeded in in making money through that like that's such a big amount of views that that you get um that's the only way I've done it so far I for a while I started I started a job board I had like a job board yeah what I found is that I don't know like because again I kind of was talking about like how recruiting is pretty non-scalable and like I would recruit I will recruit for startup CEOs and they'll tell me that they just don't even look at their job submissions anymore so then I was kind of like man like even if you could make money doing this like are you really helping um you know so I had this job board for a little bit but I kind of just wasn't clear if I was actually getting anyone a job from it um so that was the main way of kind of approach monetization um I don't know if it's the best way um recruiting especially in AI is is very high ticket you know if you charge a 20 placement fee um and someone gets paid a salary of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars is thirty thousand dollars uh so it's it's the the ticket size is very high um the the one thing is is very non-scalable so it's like I just spend a lot of time like sending people emails or like pinging Founders or like hopping on calls with people whereas I think like a lot of the ways that people tend to monetize media uh via sponsorships or like ads or things like that are like much more scalable right it's like if you have a newsletter or someone just like clicks something to post on your job board or like post it yeah you know something it's just it's it doesn't take an additional time um on your end I think if your audience is interested or like I have thought about this stuff like I do think about this like a business and do I do actually think about making money um one thing that I think you just make tons of money from that I haven't experimented from but I've seen other people do is like events um there's just so much demand for events in the space like hackathons or things like that uh real world events right because I've I've seen like a drastic drop in online events attendance just well just for myself I'm not really that interested in online events anymore I think we we've just all did a uh I forgot the word but we we had way too much online events during covid and everything so yeah I I think a lot of people are super into real world events now even even more than before Colvin maybe and I I assume that's what you meant by events and hackathon like mainly in person yeah I would I would say in person and like I'm not an expert here and like I'm so busy that I'm like not not doing this personally but it's like the economics are really interesting you know because it's like you you can like even a hackathon you don't charge anyone any thing to show up like often you can get the event space for free from a sponsor and then you have like 50 people who will do 50 different companies that sponsor the event for like two thousand dollars or something it's like surprise you've made a hundred thousand dollars in a day you know um then I so I've just seen this like events space and I've started to talk to some people who like do this professionally and it's like really interesting yeah also I went to I don't know if you know about ai4 oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's an in-person event with lots of professionals and these events the tickets are like extremely expensive it's for companies to basically learn about other companies and connect and like find Opportunities and it's I'm pretty sure it is it it makes a lot of money I I don't know personally but it seems it seems quite quite beneficial yeah and okay so my last questions about Twitter then I will just conclude with some other questions about your other projects and and you but um so Twitter we all know about like Elon Musk and Trump and everything going on with Twitter so yeah do you have to handle some controversies or like polarizing topics or and if you do how how do you handle those or can you just completely like not respond and not not do anything about that I think at least for me the the niche that I'm in I don't have to engage with any of that stuff which I'm I feel very fortunate about um and I actually try to avoid it because it's like I you know I think a lot of people are following me for like AI research so it's like if I started to post about political stuff or start liking political things like I just think people wouldn't like it so I'm I'm very fortunate I think like people are following me they want AI research they don't you know they follow other people for you know Trump or Elon awesome and that definitely makes sense as well I I don't have any issues either but I'm also much smarter on Twitter I'm just basically sharing my videos so it's not really a good way of using Twitter but anyways I completely understand that and my I wanted to talk a bit about your podcast but you already mentioned what you are doing on there and I I have I've also listened to the recent one with uh the two the two people I don't remember the name but the two people from openai which was really cool yeah yeah and uh yeah I was just okay I wanted to talk just a little bit about the podcast because I'm now hosting one as well and just maybe that that could be interesting to some people because um we know that podcasts are becoming incredibly popular like a lot of even myself everyone is listening to podcasts I assume you are too well you mentioned that you were listening to One so we all are listening to to podcasts and so some of our audience may want to even create one themselves if they are interested into that that's also a good way to to be online to have an online presence and so what's to you the most challenging thing about hosting a podcast oh I don't have a good answer here because I feel like um I have a very fortunate setup so the the podcast was actually proposed to me by uh the CEO of this model modern monitoring company a rising a guy so this is this guy he's he's crazy he runs this huge AI company huge AI startup he's you know working around the clock he somehow he also his name is Jason lopateki he also manages to find time to like just read AI papers like like I don't I don't know how he does it but he reads AI research like on a day-to-day basis so he he actually reached out to me and he's like hey let's do this podcast um so for me it's actually been very easy um because he has a marketing team where basically we do the recording but then um you know his marketing team is absolutely excellent and they'll handle something like the editing and things like that I think for me the hard the hard part or the the typically the hard part with doing podcast and media is is just a lot of the editing stuff and the the marketing things like that fortunately I do not have to handle that um foreign on my end like and the funny thing is even the the format of the podcast is not that hard because it's I don't even have to talk too much because I'm just I'm interviewing you know AI researchers so just ask them about the paper so the really the only hard part for me is just is is reading is actually reading the papers uh but that's that's pretty fun for me uh so so typically I'll read you know read the paper in advance and come up with you know some high-level questions um I've actually I was like really hesitant to take on the podcast because I I didn't I wanted to do a really good job with it and I thought it would be really hard but it hasn't been super hard I think I think I think I want to increase the volume again you know we're doing something like once every three weeks or something I think a lot of really good podcasts are doing like once a week so I think if we could up the volume that would be cool yeah that's what we call I'd love that as well myself and what you mentioned that you you like doing that and there are no like there aren't big challenges for you just reading the papers that takes time obviously and and coming coming up with the questions which I for a tip for anyone that hosts an interview I think that like of course you need to draft some questions and think about the the person and and do some research but also I've done that in the past it doesn't it is the vast major minority of my questions but I have also asked some AI is like charge GPT to generate more questions given the background of someone and some question examples it's a really good idea yeah it's for for real it works pretty good like it's it's quite repetitive but if you ask if you ask it you will definitely go it will definitely come up with at least one interesting question that you haven't thought of so definitely was gpt4 in the long context length like yeah I see I feel terrible I actually I I haven't used these tools like a ton in my day-to-day work but it's just the value-add is so obvious like yeah especially with a long context length of gpt4 like you just copy paste like a whole paper in it or even just take a screenshot of the paper and just say like hey what are some cool high level questions that you have about this yeah yeah I just started using it well I I'm using it more and more now it's it's funny because it's my PhD Professor that is pushing his students well us to to use GPT more so it's it's really it's crazy I I wouldn't think that a professor would actually recommend using an AI to to write and code but he's doing that and it's it's extremely powerful of course you need to double check and like be sure that it's fine but it's really helpful especially for me that and other people that are not native English speaker it's so good to just like for example I write an article and just and then I just copy paste it and ask to keep the information the same but rephrase it and it transforms it into like a very professional article written by like a perfect thing with a perfect English this perfect grammar everything so it's that's pretty cool this is like truly truly magical technology that's that's so wild yeah and yeah what what do you enjoy most about hosting a podcast I think it's either I just like talking to people I think I think it's really cool to like talk to the people who are actually figuring this stuff out or actually building these systems um you know I just I feel very fortunate that you know I can kind of uh at least make a living uh understanding and following a lot of high-level trends that really matter to me so just like just feel very fortunate to like be able to at least spend a good chunk of my time like reading papers and thinking about it um yeah I think I think the coolest thing is just being able to follow these Trends um and also like talk talk to the people because they have like really really insightful things to say yeah and they're often really good communicators I I feel like especially like the last episode um the last episode on tool former just put it out like this week like especially Teemo like Teemo just like gave a really really good explanation like he was just really good and kind of lively Communicator so I think this is also just fun are you planning on interviewing other kind of background and researchers with their research papers yes I don't actually know who I'm gonna do next I don't know who's next I I want to maybe do something that's not just language models because I I I'm I'm really into this stuff but I feel like maybe I cover it too much um I it's like obviously the the next obvious candidate would be gpt4 but if you read the paper they don't really want to talk about what they did yeah yeah so I don't I don't know if they're the right people to to interview but all right I also want to say I don't mean that I I don't uh I don't want I don't mean to say that to like knock open Ai No no of course of course it's incredible but no it's it's really incredible what they did and yeah obviously and I just I mainly wanted to ask if you were planning to to change a bit your interview is like not only cover research papers but maybe maybe get people from startups or anything different in the AI world or will this just stick you will stick with research papers for this particular but yes for this particular podcast probably just stick with research papers again there's just this whole thing where I I think the kind of the AI media space is pretty underserved um there's just there's so much that I would like to do that like I don't exactly have bandwidth to do like I totally I think there's so much more to do in the space I don't mean to like show this one podcast too much but I just do really like them I do think the cognitive Revolution is doing a really good job there um but yeah I like I think there would be a ton of cool stuff just to like interview people about like machine learning careers like just like interview people who's like uh machine learning Tech lead or like a machine learning manager and talk about like how did they get there like what's what actually matters like in terms of learning on the job or getting a good job um there's there's there's one guy who's on uh machine learning Twitter I I hope I get his name right or like I I'm not sure if I exactly remember his name but I think his name is Alexa gordick uh he's he's a deep mind I think he recently is taking a break from deepmind but like his story is really cool where he kind of took a an alternate path to get into being a research engineer at D mind and like doing an interview with him would be like super cool just like how did he do that how do you pull that off and they did yeah you're I I will actually have it have him on the on the podcast and he he's taking a break in Japan I believe for a few months and then in I believe in may we will have a podcast together so oh cool yeah he has a great background um okay speaking of uh GPT generated questions I think this is the question that GPT gave me and I I really liked it I had to rephrase it but it it had a really good ID and so I will read it just to keep it keep the credit to GPT um since you are really active on there how has social media impacted the way AI research is communicated and shared with the broader public and I can like maybe spend um specialized to Twitter like how how would you see Twitter how are you seeing Twitter um modifying the way resources shared compared to the Past yeah I mean I think that's an interesting question I think you can comment Less on how the research gets shared to the public because I just kind of don't know um I don't know if I have anything to say that's not kind of obvious I mean one one thing that is just totally true is there's kind of this formal reality of how AI research gets disseminated and then there's the actual reality like there's there's all these conferences you know um all these journals and stuff but then you talk to any of these researchers and they're kind of like none of this stuff matters anymore it's like it does matter especially if you're trying to further your academic career or you put you know or iclr on your resume or something but um insofar as like what are people actually using to keep up to date like the top researchers in the space it's just Twitter um it's really like it's the place that people are using to uh to learn about what's going on um so I feel like that's kind of my only observation is like it's actually even even if it's not formally the mechanism that people are using to aggregate a lot of the most interesting work it's I think factually what people use um and then as a result like I do think you just get you can totally change the impact of your work by just focusing on marketing on on Twitter and there's there's there's kind of a hard effort there's a weird ethical line to tread here where it's like maybe you will increase the breadth of your kind of the the extent of the replication of your research by you know making lots of like click-baity threads about your research or like making lots of threads that kind of overstate the the promises the results of your research I think that's true um but nonetheless I think it's like a lot of the research that really gets um gets followed up on is is the stuff that does what does does well on Twitter so if you're an academic I I think it actually is quite imperative if you want to you know yeah if you actually think your work is worth following up on to to like you know make Twitter threads about it I think yeah there I I don't have the reference but there has been a study as well where like they shared the researchers shared on Twitter the half of the papers and didn't share the other half and it clearly had an impact the Twitter paper clearly had an impact in the reads obviously but it even had an impact in the number of citations the paper had so that's I don't know if it's a good thing but it's definitely worthwhile to share it on Twitter if you have published a paper but yeah speaking of a good thing or not would you say that Twitter has a positive impact on the research and their research industry like the that's really hard to say I don't think I'm an expert like I did a year of a machine learning PhD I definitely can read and understand these things at a high level but like I'm not you know I'm not you know a 10-year Professor I'm not no someone who's done really world-class research at deepmind or something um so I don't actually feel like I'm qualified to comment um I think the one like meta comment I would have is generally in life I don't think of things as being like single valued but I think of them as being kind of like multi-dimensional or vector valued so insofar as I wouldn't know if it's like good or bad but I think on various Dimensions it would be good or bad so it's like one dimension would be like yeah probably the more clickbaity stuff like gets shared more and people believe in it like maybe that's bad um but then also like um it's very uh it's in many ways very democratized like like truly if you're like on the other side of globe and you do cool research and like you write a cool Twitter Thread about it like people will see it um and like that's that's really cool so like that would be one area where I think it's really good it definitely lowers the barrier to entry like a lot of these kind of old boys clubs uh you know uh don't matter as much anymore of course sir for sure and so my my last question is you you already talked a lot about this so I assume we already know the answer but still I I want to to ask it it's basically well it's it's twofold very simple it's just what is your next project or like current Obsession that you are working on and also what would you like the people to know or follow from you um next project what I'm working on I I feel kind of weird it's not super related to Twitter but it's kind of an outgrowth of the recruiting stuff is um there's this one company I'm really excited about they're doing really well they're trying to hire like top one percent Talent um trying to be careful about what I say about them so I I won't mention who they are um but you know if things work out I think uh I'm gonna not like work for them as an employee but like uh partner more closely and just like try to fill a ton of their roles um so that for me is like a kind of interesting experience where it's uh it's more high pressure and it's just definitely like it's different from what I've been doing in the past because in the past I've just been this like passive Matchmaker like people show up and I'll be like oh I think you'd enjoy this job whereas now it's like okay here's the org chart like here's all the roles we want to fill in the next like you know four months or something like let's do it you know um so I think I think that's one of the biggest projects that I'm approaching right now that I think will be really fun and and really hard and really new to me um and what what to follow me on Twitter or uh or what it is yeah would you like to mainly share your Twitter account or maybe well this is undisclosed so you cannot really talk about it that much but that much but like I assume AI Pub is the best place best place to to learn more about you and just follow your work but is there would you like to share your recruiting platform or oh sure just oh yeah sure yeah I mean you it's all kind of via Twitter like I don't have a newsletter I don't have a website or anything so if you just go to my Twitter page you'll find everything uh you know that is it's all very simple like you just click on the link and it'll take you to the little form just to submit uh you know your preferences for for talent referrals um I have a personal Twitter account but I don't really actually put much effort into it like I'm actually really deliberate like on my personal account I just feel like I can post whatever and I don't have a high bar and a lot of it's just like totally random personal stuff it's like experimenting with sleep or Fitness or things like that or oh I don't you know I don't do this as much anymore but I'll like post about books I'm reading uh I was reading some like interesting math textbooks in the summer so it's like posting about that I'm like reading an interesting book on negotiation right now so is it the the one from the CIA agent or no I will maybe I maybe this is the same guy it's it's actually a really good book it's called Uh the the title sounds very Machiavellian the title is um bargaining for Advantage and then oh I think yeah yeah this the subtitle is um negotiation strategies for reasonable people the book is much closer to this subtitle where it's actually it's very like civil yeah about being a good person and maintaining relationships and like that but it's really good I I'm enjoying it okay then I I forgot the name obviously but there's one called negotiate something and it's by an xcia agent and it's like I think it's the best book on negotiation and it's just applied to the real world getting a job your your personal life anything it's incredibly good it's a really it's a really good book so it's I'm just opening a tab I'm just curious this is yeah yeah negotiate and CIA agent you you should you should find it cool I think just pulled it up never split the difference yeah exactly that's that's the one yeah a really good one I certainly recommend but awesome so I I might follow your your private account just because I'm really into better sleeping habits and and Sports in general and just eating and everything like for well uberman and everything related to that I'm I'm super into into this and I'm also reading lots of book and you seem to be reading similar format as as I enjoy so well anyways I'll definitely check that out as well and I I really invite anyone interested in AI a little bit I assume you are if you are still listening to follow AI Pub on Twitter it's a really amazing account and I personally love it and thank you very much Brian for your time it was amazing to learn from you and chat with you and yeah a huge thanks for for taking the time to to be there no thank you this is like super fun really really enjoyed this so thank you\n"