Children of Time
Adrian Tchaikovsky
It’s hard sci-fi about how a non-human intelligence evolves, and it’s pure enjoyment that still makes you think.
Live interests
What I’m into right now, kept current: what I do for fun, what I’m curious about and what I’m reading.
Updated
Now
- Researching how RL post-training goes wrong when rewards can’t be checked (the project).
- Thinking about long-horizon multi-agent RL.
- Reading Children of Time.
- Skiing in Chamonix in January.
Events I’m attending
- Rahat Fateh Ali Khan Oakland Arena, Oakland
- Hans Zimmer Chase Center, San Francisco
Hobbies
Building worlds
Fictional worlds, with maps, histories and characters.
Apps for fun
Side apps and games, like a Go engine that taught itself.
Writing and storytelling
Writing things down, and telling the stories out loud.
Reading, film and games
Especially the ones with a strong story.
Cooking and cuisines
Cooking at home, and seeking out food wherever I am.
Planning trips
Researching the next place and meeting the people there, ever since biking from Seattle to DC.
Skiing
Chasing good snow.
Mountains
Climbing high mountains, trekking the Salkantay trail to Machu Picchu, and leading trips to Half Dome and the Channel Islands.
Astrophotography
Exploring the cosmos.
Ice climbing
Climbing frozen waterfalls and ice.
Endurance
Ironman-distance triathlons, the Lake Tahoe Marathon, the San Francisco Ultra, the Death Ride (five Sierra passes, about 15,000 feet of climbing in a day) and Seattle to DC by bike.
Soccer
Playing in tournaments, and watching Messi.
Dance
Learning to move freely, without overthinking it.
Teaching and mentoring
Mentoring undergraduate researchers at Berkeley, and teaching anyone getting started in RL.
Books
Reading now
Read
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
A neurosurgeon facing his own death asks what makes a life worth living.
Want to read
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering
Richard Hamming
Choosing problems that matter, and building judgment over a career. First on my list.
The Inner Game of Tennis
W. Timothy Gallwey
For performing freely instead of supervising myself: in dance, piano, boxing and chess.
The Brain from Inside Out
György Buzsáki
Buzsáki’s case against the outside-in view of perception.
Surfing Uncertainty
Andy Clark
Prediction, action and embodiment, close to the questions I work on.
A Mind at Play
Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman
Shannon did serious work and played seriously too, which is how I’d like to work.
The Rider
Tim Krabbé
A short novel set entirely inside one road race.
Stoner
John Williams
A quiet novel about a life lived on its own terms.
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Free will, faith, fathers and sons.
High Output Management
Andy Grove
How to run a team, for when I do.
Range
David Epstein
Why breadth and a fast learning rate can beat an early head start.
Curious about
How the brain learns
A long-standing interest, from neuroimaging research at UCSF to the Sensorimotor AI journal club at Berkeley’s Redwood Center.
Robots that learn from experience
Agents trained in simulation that still hold up in the real world.
Many agents, long horizons
How groups of agents learn to work together over long horizons.
Tools for everyone
Tools that let anyone do anything they want, including people shut out by cost.
VLAs and physical AI
Where vision-language-action models meet robot skill.
Films I love
Ratatouille
A film about cooking that’s really about craft and doing what you love.
The Lord of the Rings
A story about a fellowship: lead from the front, leave no one behind.
Little joys
-
A rainy day