Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht: Generally Intelligent

Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht: Generally Intelligent

Author: Daniel Bashir November 17, 2022 Duration: 47:21

In episode 49 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht.

Kanjun and Josh are CEO and CTO of Generally Intelligent, an AI startup aiming to develop general-purpose agents with human-like intelligence that can be safely deployed in the real world. Kanjun and Josh have played these roles together in the past as CEO and CTO of AI recruiting startup Sourceress. Kanjun is also involved with building the SF Neighborhood, and together with Josh invests in early-stage founders at Outset Capital.

Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast: Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on Twitter

Outline:

* (00:00) Intro

* (02:00) Kanjun’s and Josh’s intros to AI

* (06:45) How Kanjun and Josh met and started working together

* (08:40) Sourceress and AI in hiring, looking for unusual candidates

* (11:30) Generally Intelligent: origins and motivations

* (14:55) How Kanjun and Josh think about understanding the fundamentals of intelligence

* (17:20) AGI companies and long-term goals

* (19:20) How Kanjun and Josh think about intelligence + Generally Intelligent’s approach-agnosticism

* (22:30) Skill-acquisition efficiency

* (25:18) The Avalon Environment/Benchmark

* (27:40) Tasks with shared substrate

* (29:00) Blending of different approaches, baseline tuning

* (31:15) Approach to safety

* (33:33) Issues with interpretability + ML academic practices, ablations

* (36:30) Lessons about working with people, company culture

* (40:00) Human focus and diversity in companies, tech environment

* (44:10) Advice for potential (AI) founders

* (47:05) Outro

Links:

* Generally Intelligent

* Avalon: A Benchmark for RL Generalization

* Kanjun’s homepage

* Josh’s homepage



Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe

Hosted by Daniel Bashir, The Gradient: Perspectives on AI moves beyond surface-level headlines to explore the intricate machinery and human ideas shaping artificial intelligence. Each episode is built on a foundation of deep research, leading to conversations that are both technically substantive and broadly accessible. You'll hear from researchers, engineers, and philosophers who are actively building and critiquing our technological future, discussing not just how AI systems work, but the larger implications of their integration into society. This isn't about speculative hype; it's a grounded examination of real progress, persistent challenges, and ethical considerations from those on the front lines. The discussions peel back layers on topics like model architecture, policy, and the fundamental science behind the algorithms becoming part of our daily lives. For anyone curious about the substance behind the buzz-whether you have a technical background or are simply keen to understand a defining technology of our age-this podcast offers a crucial and thoughtful resource. Tune in for a consistently detailed and nuanced take that treats artificial intelligence with the complexity it deserves.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The Gradient: Perspectives on AI
Podcast Episodes
Stevan Harnad: AI's Symbol Grounding Problem [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:58:21
In episode 88 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Stevan Harnad.Stevan Harnad is professor of psychology and cognitive science at Université du Québec à Montréal, adjunct professor of cognitive sci…
Terry Winograd: AI, HCI, Language, and Cognition [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:33:21
In episode 87 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Terry Winograd. Professor Winograd is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University. His research focuses on human-computer interac…
Gil Strang: Linear Algebra and Deep Learning [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:36
In episode 86 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Gil Strang. Professor Strang is one of the world’s foremost mathematics educators and a mathematician with contributions to finite element theory,…
Anant Agarwal: AI for Education [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:40
In episode 85 of The Gradient Podcast, Andrey Kurenkov speaks to Anant AgarwalAnant Agarwal is the chief platform officer of 2U, and founder of edX. Anant taught the first edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT,…
Peli Grietzer: A Mathematized Philosophy of Literature [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:33:33
In episode 83 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Peli Grietzer. Peli is a scholar whose work borrows mathematical ideas from machine learning theory to think through “ambient” and ineffable phenomena like m…
Ryan Drapeau: Battling Fraud with ML at Stripe [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:31
In episode 82 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ryan Drapeau.Ryan is a Staff Software Engineer at Stripe and technical lead for Stripe’s Payment Fraud organization, which uses machine learning to help prev…
Shiv Rao: Enabling Better Patient Care with AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:51
In episode 81 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Shiv Rao.Shiv Rao, MD is the co-founder and CEO of Abridge, a healthcare conversation company that uses cutting-edge NLP and generative AI to bring context a…
Hugo Larochelle: Deep Learning as Science [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:48:28
In episode 80 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Hugo Larochelle. Professor Larochelle leads the Montreal Google DeepMind team and is adjunct professor at Université de Montréal and a Canada CIFAR…
Jeremie Harris: Realistic Alignment and AI Policy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:30:35
In episode 79 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Jeremie Harris.Jeremie is co-founder of Gladstone AI, author of the book Quantum Physics Made Me Do It, and co-host of the Last Week in AI Podcast. Jeremy pr…