What Iโm Interested In
๐งญ Exploring
Iโm currently exploring ideas in the AI/ML space, especially around data, data tools and data business models. Some things Iโm looking at:
๐ Proprietary, latent, golden and small data assets; and how to build, connect and capture value from those assets.
๐ Data infrastructure, especially tools that help generative models become first-class consumers as well as producers of data.
๐ค Trust hierarchies and the confidence chain: signatures, provenance, identity, curation, quality.
๐ค The compute explosion, software-in-the-loop, ubiquitous agents, matching versus ranking, productivity versus distribution.
๐ New areas of abundance and scarcity, especially energy, hardware, and โatoms not bitsโ.
If youโre working on any of these, Iโd love to hear from you.
๐ป Professional
My professional interests lie at the intersection of data, markets, and technology.
๐ Data: As a species, we are defined by our ability to manipulate information: language, writing, software. Itโs not a coincidence that the word we associate most strongly with human evolutionary advantage โ intelligence โ means both raw data, and the capacity to act on it.
๐ช Markets: Markets are the most effective and resilient mechanism we have found to solve a hard problem: how should society allocate resources in the face of incomplete information and uncertain outcomes?
๐ก Technology: Writing, agriculture, government, cities, money, industry: these and other technologies have impacted humanity in profound (and still evolving) ways. Weโre living through another technological revolution right now: software. And weโve barely scratched the surface of what it can achieve.
If youโre also interested in these themes, I strongly recommend subscribing to my newsletter, Pivotal.
โ๏ธ Ethical
While I believe in the ability of markets, data and technology to make the world a better place, Iโm also keenly aware of their limitations.
๐ Data can be noisy, messy or incomplete; more dangerously, it can be misleading, biased or falsified. Not all questions can be answered with data. High-quality decision-making under uncertainty with imperfect information is hard, and therefore valuable.
๐ดโโ ๏ธ Markets can be imperfect, incomplete, non-competitive, regulated, corrupt, captured, rigged or otherwise flawed. Flawed markets lead to information errors, poor incentives and inequitable outcomes.
๐ฃ Technology is vulnerable to incompetence, malice, misuse, indifference, bias and unforeseen consequences.
The optimist (and ex trader) in me says that every inefficiency is an opportunity; the humanist in me cares for the individuals affected by these inefficiencies. Using data-markets-technology to make the world a truly better place is not easy. But what better way to spend oneโs life?
โค๏ธ Personal
I have a number of hobbies and interests that keep me pleasantly busy:
๐ Iโm endlessly curious and an unapologetic bibliophile
๐ท I like to take photographs
โ๏ธ I like to travel, both physically and in spirit
๐ฒ I like to play Euro-style board games
๐จ I haunt galleries and museums whenever I can
๐ฑ I like to cook, and also to eat well
๐ถ I like to discover new music of almost every genre
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I over-analyze sports, using data of course
๐พ I play semi-competitive tennis (NTRP 4-5)
๐ I used to play tournament Scrabble, but havenโt for a while
๐ธ I used to curate a rather popular poetry newsletter
๐๐พ I work out, sleep well, and practise happiness
๐ Iโm a prolific list-maker, curator and reviewer
โ๏ธ I like to write, as this website makes abundantly clear ๐