arun rao
i co-lead a large team of product managers and research engineers working on ML recommenders and ranking models at Meta Core ML; we serve 3.6 billion people. i’m also a university lecturer at UCLA, teaching a class on advanced product design.
i spend my time thinking about real-world uses of ML, crypto, internet protocols, APIs, incentive mechanisms, contemporary art, and design.
i write the Substack letter Hash Collision, where i report on developments in AI/ML, science, tech, culture, economics, and ethics. i co-wrote “A History of Silicon Valley, 2nd Ed.“
in the past, i led an applications and platform machine learning team at Amazon Music in San Francisco. prior to that, i was a co-founder of Starbutter AI (Skydeck F17) and a quant debt and derivatives trader at PIMCO. i’m still a licensed attorney in the Wyoming State Bar (the Equality state, where women first got the right to vote, and LLCs and DAOs to exist) and was formerly a CFA charterholder.
i’m a grad of UCLA, Penn/Wharton, the University of Arizona College of Law, and the Indiana Academy.
i like books, running, yoga, math, grammar and style, dead ancient languages, modern computer languages, black hole physics, bears, cacti, and pad see-ew.
writing
📌 Primer on AI and Machine Learning (Part 1, Non-Technical)
📌 What the heck is Web3? A primer.
Best Books of 2022 – Lives and Machines
Startups 101: A Reading List for Founders
Leviathan: State, Corporation, Network (and Network State)
Focus and Distraction with Technology
In Defense of Personalized Ads (and the Free Internet)
Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) – A Gentle Introduction
Best Books of 2021 (Berkelians)
Why Crypto Matters (It’s a Lot More than Bitcoin)
Capitalism, Socialism, and Inequality
Why the new AI/ML language model GPT-3 is a big deal
A List of the World’s Best Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institutes and Think Tanks