Stories of who I want to be
September 15, 2018
(I felt a bit down and lost recently; questioning whether my dreams are really achievable. From my current viewpoint they certainly appear hazy and far away. Here is my - current - dream life, reaffirmed, this story what gives me purpose and keeps me going in the hope that I might understand the universe and contribute to society.)
I dream of splitting my time between research, policy and business. In my mind this is a split between exploring the unknown, helping the less fortunate and building something useful.
As a computer science researcher, the question I hope to explore and answer is: “What are the physical limits on intelligence?”. This question would lead me to explore the connections between AI and physics… Is the universe really built on the notion of computation and information? Given the laws of physics, what is the best learning algorithm? What is the universe optimising?
As a economic analyst, I want to apply AI to; regulate markets and to track financial crime. Markets are an awesome tool, when regulated properly. I imagine a future with automated regulatory tools for managing thickness, congestion, bottlenecks, … I also think that more accountability is required within our financial systems. We need to hold greedy and/or corrupt actors accountable for their actions. The exploitation of; the environment (e.g. funding climate change denial, pollution of rivers, burning of rain forests…) and people (e.g. slavery/traffiking, addictive products, extremist beliefs, …).
As a businessman, I help run a neuro-tech startup. We build brain-computer-interfaces and biological computers. The ultimate goal being to upload to the cloud, but for now we satisfy ourselves with building BCIs for people with aphasia and neurodegenerative disorders.