Hi! Thanks for being here.

What is all this?

Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s.

It’s also a blog — a blog where I do my darndest to post truth about AI, tech, and the world the two are making. You don’t have to know anything about AI or tech to read Post Truth. I write as someone in the field for people not in the field.

Why?

Because AI and tech are changing the world. And while not everyone gets to peek behind that curtain into the labs and companies reshaping our lives, the changes sparked there affect us all. My aim is to make the technical accessible to everyone, so you can make informed decisions about what’s bullshit and what’s not, what excites you and worries you, and what you can use to make your own life brighter.

Hopefully, this newsletter will remind you in your most pessimistic of hours that amidst the hurricane of fearmongering, cash-grabbing, fundraising, marketing, mudslinging, doomsday-ing, and hype-building, there lies a kernel of real, incredible innovation, sitting in the eye of the storm. I don't claim to have all the answers. But I know that it serves us all to get more informed, so we can nurture that little kernel and steer it in the right direction.

Who are you?

Whether you’re deeply excited, deeply concerned, or don’t know anything about AI and tech, I’m here to help you contend with the hopes, worries, and ambiguities created by their rise and the culture they’re shaping.

Who am I?

My name is Maxime and I’m an AI researcher. I studied at the intersection of AI and robotics for both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of California, Berkeley. I’m currently a research scientist at J.P. Morgan AI Research, the world’s leading financial AI research lab, and I was formerly at Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research, one of the world’s foremost AI research groups. I’ve authored 5 publications in the field.

I’ve worked on robots like this:

and simulated robots like this:

and ways of making simulated robots like that become real robots like this:

I’ve worked on automated skin cancer detection, neural-network-based image compression, and behavioral modeling to detect financial crimes. And I’ve read a lot of papers.

None of which makes me any more qualified than the next person to answer the subjective, ethical questions about this new age we’re entering. But all of which informs my commentary, and will hopefully enrich you through osmosis.

Thanks so much for being here.

- Maxime