# Hai! I'm Libor Burian, also known as Burny. I'm looking for collaborations. :-) ![[Images/dd8ede9a226ac6782d4f102f2e25224a_MD5.jpeg|200]]![[Images/35727f7355f3216747dce9cc72ebe34b_MD5.jpg|200]] # My interests ### [[Artificial Intelligence]] ##### State of the art - I am interested in how to use the current state of the art [[artificial Intelligence]] systems ([[machine learning]], [[Large language model|large language models]], [[data science]], [[statistics]],…) in practice for the benefit of others, such as for [[Artificial Intelligence#Crossovers|automating]] mundane tasks (dishes, laundry), [[Artificial intelligence x Science|science]] ([[AlphaFold]]), physics ([[FermiNet]]), [[Artificial Intelligence x Mathematics|mathematics]] ([[AlphaProof]]), [[Artificial intelligence x Healthcare|healthcare]], [[Artificial Intelligence x Engineering|technology]] development, [[Artificial intelligence x Programming|programming]] (autonomous software engineers), preventing various [[risks]], [[chatbot]] assistants grounded in reality, etc. with [[Llamaindex]], [[Langchain]], [[Autogen]], [[Vector database|Vector databases]], etc. ([Courses - DeepLearning.AI](https://www.deeplearning.ai/courses/), [Practical Deep Learning for Coders - Practical Deep Learning](https://course.fast.ai/), [Stanford CS229: Machine Learning](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNyWOpJg_Yh4NSqI4Z4vOYy)) - I love all sorts of [[AI tools]] for [[productivity]] and other usecases, I love using [Cursor](https://www.cursor.com/) with IMO the best [[AI copilot ]]out there for [[programming]], or [Replit](https://replit.com). ##### From scratch - I am interested in how to build good AI models from scratch in [[PyTorch]], or not from scratch with for example [[finetuning]]. I enjoy building large language models and other [[deep learning]] models from scratch. With [[PyTorch]], [[Keras]], [[fastai]], etc. (I really love [Neural Networks: Zero to Hero by Andrej Karpathy](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAqhIrjkxbuWI23v9cThsA9GvCAUhRvKZ) that was in [[OpenAI]] and [[Tesla]] and thaught in [[Stanford]]) ##### [[Mathematics|Mathematical]] and other fundamentals, [[steerability]] - I am interested in trying to [[Mathematical theory of artificial intelligence|mathematically]] and [[Mechanistic interpretability|empirically]] understand current and future AI systems, why and how they work, and how to make them much more [[reliable]], [[robust]], [[mechanistic interpretability|steerable]], [[Creativity|creative]], [[intelligence|intelligent]], [[Artificial intelligence safety|safe]] etc. across all levels of their development! Better steering wheel for AI systems would be great! [[Reinforcement learning from human feedback|RLHF]], [[prompt engineering]], [[agents|systems made of LLMs]], and current [[reverse engineering]] methods don't seem to be enough! [[Mechanistic interpretability]], [[neurosymbolic AI]], [[weak to strong generalization]] paradigm, and [[formal verification]] sound promising! ([A Comprehensive Mechanistic Interpretability Explainer & Glossary - Dynalist](https://dynalist.io/d/n2ZWtnoYHrU1s4vnFSAQ519J)) ##### [[Benefits, risks, impact and future of artificial intelligence|Benefits, risks, impact and future of AI and humanity]] - I am interested in the [[future]], with a focus on the [[Benefits, risks, impact and future of AI and humanity|future of AI]], but not just the state of the art of the [[technology]] itself, but what implications does it have for our system in terms of [[politics]], [[culture]], [[economy]], [[governance]], other technologies, etc. In general I think about how to make world better for everyone with increasing [[automation]]. How can it go well and have positive impact on [[Future of humanity, AI, sentience, futurology, politics|our future]]? What political changes will we have to do? What [[risks]] exist? Where can we make the most beneficial [[progress]]? I don't want to see people suffer, maybe something like [[universal basic income]] or [[services|Universal basic services]] will be needed to catch up with [[lob loss]] with increasing [[automation]], so that [[technology]] generates [[abundance]] for the benefit of all, not just for select few? How to minimize [[power concentration]] in the hands of the few? I'm trying to find solutions! I really care about the [[future]] filled with a ton of free fulfilled [[experience|sentient]] beings [[flourishing]], instead of [[dystopia|dystopias]] and [[catastrophe|catastrophes]]! I post a lot about it on my [Twitter](https://x.com/burny_tech) to around 20 000 followers. ([[Future of humanity, AI, sentience, futurology, politics]]) ### [[Science]], [[Technology]], [[Engineering]], [[Mathematics]], [[Physics]], [[Biology]], [[Philosophy]] - I want to understand how [[reality]], [[science]], [[technology]], [[engineering]], [[mathematics]] work motivated by a ton of [[curiosity]]! I love [[everything|mapping]] [[knowledge]] and following state of the art! I browse a lot of courses and papers in various fields! (checkout my [[Exocortex]] and [Twitter](https://x.com/burny_tech)) (I love [[physics]] lectures by [[Leonard Susskind]] from [[Stanford]] [Course Catalogue | The Theoretical Minimum](https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses)) I am interested in understanding [[artificial Intelligence]], [[computer science]], [[science]], [[technology]], [[engineering]], [[mathematics]] and [[philosophy]] as much as possible in general! I'm curious around [[cognitive science]], [[physics]], (not only [[Computational Neuroscience|computational]]) [[neuroscience]], (not only [[Mathematical biology|mathematical]]) [[biology]], [[intelligence]], [[longevity]], [[programming]], [[Programming language theory|programming languages]], [[software engineering]], [[hardware engineering,]] [[electronics]], [[ethics]], [[metaphysics]], [[logic]], [[systems theory]], [[information theory]], [[political science]], [[neurophenomenology]], structure of [[experience]], [[consciousness]], [[wellbeing]], [[metamodernism]], [[secular spirituality]], [[meditation]],… ### [[Transhumanism]] - I'm curious about reverse engineer and [[Human intelligence amplification|amplify human intelligence]], [[agency]], [[wellbeing]] and [[longevity]]. catch up to exponentially increasing [[artificial intelligence|machine intelligence]] using [[neurotechnology]], [[biotechnology]], and other methods? Catching up human [[intelligence]] with increasing [[artificial intelligence|machine intelligence]] might be very important! ### [[Future of humanity, AI, sentience, futurology, politics|Big picture]] - I want [[Future of humanity, AI, sentience, futurology, politics|humanity to survive, flourish and explore the universe]] and spread in it! I'm strong [[transhumanism|transhumanist]] and [[longtermism|longtermist]]. I want [[technology]] to bring [[abundance]] to all and mitigate existential [[risks]]. Reduce [[suffering]] in the [[universe]]! Increase [[prosperity]] in the universe! Increase [[understanding]] in the universe! The best way to do that is with [[Artificial Intelligence|AI]] and other [[technology|technologies]] from the [[forth industrial revolution]]! [[Superflourishing]]! [[superintelligence]]! [[flourishing|Superflourishing]]! [[knowledge|Superunderstanding]]! [[Superintelligence]]! [[wellbeing|Superwellbeing]]! [[longevity|Superlongevity]]! [[Curiosity|Supercuriousity]]! ### [[Movements|Communities]] - I enjoy and am part of futurist technooptimist movements such as [[transhumanism]], [[rationalism]], [[Effective Altruism]], [[longtermism]], [[Hedonistic Imperative]], [[Qualia Research Institute]], [[Effective Accelerationism]], [[Extropianism]], [[Singularitarianism]], [[Cosmism]], some geeky communities, etc. with the focus on building [[technology]] and our system [[for the benefit of all sentient beings]]! I want to support [[effective charities]]. I love to bring people [[together]], [[connect]] people together (both [[Politics|politically]] and in terms of what interests them and their [[knowledge]]), [[coordinate]], instead of [[polarizing]], which I'm vocal about on [Twitter](https://x.com/burny_tech) . - I am interested and active in various AI communities, both irl and online, on [[Discord]], [[Reddit]], [[Slack]], [[Twitter]], [[Facebook]], etc. ### Summary - To summarize, I'm interested in everything around [[Artificial Intelligence|AI]]! [[Research]] and [[engineering]], both [[fundamental]] and not, applications in [[industry]], [[altruism|altruistic]] applications, applications in [[science]] and [[mathematics]], applications in other [[technology]], [[Mechanistic interpretability|reverse engineering]] it, [[Artificial Intelligence|AI]] [[Politics]] and [[geopolitics]]! # Experience and education ### School - After IT high school, I studied [[computer science]] at CTU FIT (Czech technical university, Faculty of [[information technology]]) college with the focus on [[artificial intelligence]]. I attended lectures in UK MFF ([[mathematics]] and [[physics]]), CTU FEL ([[electrical engineering]]), CTU FJFI ([[physical engineering]]), VSE+VSEM ([[economics]]), and I continue to study from other universities that Czech, American etc., and other sources! ### [[Artificial Intelligence|AI]] and other courses such as [[mathematics]] - I consider myself a fast adaptable learner! When I'm committed to something, I get very obsessed with it and it becomes my reality and I give it full effort! - Some of my favorite courses are [Neural Networks: Zero to Hero by Andrej Karpathy](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAqhIrjkxbuWI23v9cThsA9GvCAUhRvKZ), [Practical Deep Learning for Coders - Practical Deep Learning](https://course.fast.ai/), [Stanford CS229: Machine Learning](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNyWOpJg_Yh4NSqI4Z4vOYy), [Stanford CS25 - Transformers United](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNiJRchCzutFw5ItR_Z27CM), [Practical Deep Learning for Coders - Practical Deep Learning](https://course.fast.ai/), [Neural networks by 3Blue1Brown](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi) ###### AI [[from scratch]] - I played with building various [[machine learning]] architectures from scratch, such as [[Transformer]] ([[GPT]]) [[Large language model|LLM]], [[LSTM]], [[Diffusion]], [[U-Net]], [[Multi-Layer Perceptron|MLP]], [[Bigram]], [[Linear Regression]], [[Polynomial Regression]], etc., using [[PyTorch]], [[Scikit-learn]], [[Torchvision]], [[NumPy]], [[Matplotlib]], [[Einops]], [[Transformers]], [[Plotly]], etc. ), see some of it in my [BurnyCoder · GitHub](https://github.com/BurnyCoder) ###### AI in the real world - I played with solving various real [[world]] machine learning problems, such as grounded [[chatbots]], [[movie recommendation]], [[image classification]], [[noise removal]], [[image segmentation]], [[sentiment analysis]] etc., with [[Transformers]], [[ResNet]], [[AWD-LSTM]], [[Autoencoder]], [[U-Net]], etc. in [[PyTorch]], [[TensorFlow]], [[Keras]], [[fastai]], [[NumPy]], [[Matplotlib]], [[Langchain]], [[Llamaindex]], [[AutoGen]], [[CrewAI]], [[Pinecone]], [[PostgreSQL]], [[FAISS]], [[Streamlit]], etc. see some of it in my [BurnyCoder · GitHub](https://github.com/BurnyCoder) ###### Reverse engineering of AI - I played with various papers trying to [[reverse engineer]] [[Artificial neural networks|neural networks]] in [[mechanistic interpretability]], such as [Progress measures for grokking via mechanistic interpretability, reverse-engineering transformers learned on modular addition with learned emergent generalizing trigonometic functions circuit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob4vuiqG2Go&t=1s). I loved [[Neel Nanda]]'s workshop where I was [[steering]] [[Gemma]] with [[sparse autoencder|SAEs]]. I played with training SAEs on top of LLMs to interpret them with [[SAELens]]. ([ARENA](https://www.arena.education/)) ### AI research and engineering in industry - I have experience in [[research]] and [[engineering]] in [[Large language model|LLM]] industry for a year - Doing research around [[GraphRAG]], [[Multiagent system|multiagent]] LLM systems like [[AutoGen]] and [[CrewAI]], LLMs in general etc., - [[Designing]] and [[engineering]] [[agent|agentic]] systems for clients, like creating a research agent [[chatbot]] project with LLM with [[LlamaIndex]] with other technologies, and specialized [[Retrieval augmented generation|RAG]] pipeline with [[Pinecone]] and [[PostgreSQL]] as [[vector database]]s, with a lot of different types of implementations, with satisfying outcome. I also worked on call center simulation using LLMs and [[Whisper]], automating invoice processing, etc. - I'm familiar with technologies such as [[GIT]], [[Azure]]. I use [[Python]] a lot for daily automation tasks and AI. ### [[Computer science]] from college - [[Computer science]] at college taught me some of [[Linux]] ([[Bash]]), [[C#]], [[C]], [[C++]] ([[A*]] in a maze project), [[SQL]], [[Python]], [[HTML]], [[CSS]], [[JS]], [[PHP]], [[Arduino]], [[electronics]], etc. I use [[Python]] often for most of my projects. I played a bit [[game development|gamedev]] in [[Unity]] in [[C#]], and with [[procedural generation]]. I also played a bit with [[quantum computing]] code. I also did a bit of [[website development|webdev]], I played with making an Amazon clone using [[MERN]] stack with [[React]], [[Redux]], [[Firebase]], [[Stripe]]. and [[Axios]], and I played with [[NodeJS]]. ### Keeping up with [[AI news]] - I'm trying to follow as much of [[state of the art]] in AI [[research]], [[engineering]], [[Politics]] etc. as possible from [AI News • Buttondown](https://buttondown.com/ainews/archive/), various subreddits ([LocalLlama](https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/), [Machine Learning](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/), [Singularity](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/)), [X](https://x.com/burny_tech), or from for example [AI explained](https://www.youtube.com/@aiexplained-official) , [bycloud](https://www.youtube.com/@bycloudAI), [ML street talk](https://www.youtube.com/c/machinelearningstreettalk), [Yannic Kilcher](https://www.youtube.com/@YannicKilcher), [Dwarkesh Patel](https://www.youtube.com/@DwarkeshPatel), [Astral Codex Ten | Scott Alexander | Substack](https://www.astralcodexten.com/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/), [AI Alignment Forum](https://www.alignmentforum.org/), [LessWrong](https://www.lesswrong.com/), 80K hours, Theo Jaffee, Inside View, Future of Life Institute, Lex Fridman, Cognitive Revolution "How AI Changes Everything", Wes Roth, latent.space, etc. ### Cognitive science research - I helped [[cognitive science]] of [[digital sentience]] and [[wellbeing]] in [Qualia Research Institute](https://qri.org/) with various things, helping with a [[book]], helping them do a [[synthesis]] of [[cognitive science]] research and connecting their research with more research, for example: [Grounding QRI in First Principles (Part I): Bridging Computation and Philosophy - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4DPnGxOmh4) - I helped [Active Inference Institute](https://www.activeinference.org/)with a paper on [The Active Inference Institute and Active Inference Ecosystem](https://zenodo.org/records/8266281)from [[cognitive science]], and now I am helping with another Active Inference paper. I played a bit with Active Inference for [[machine learning]] in code. - I cowork with the Czech cognitive science association where I had lecture on the cognitive science of wellbeing in the local czech [[Effective Altruism]] center. I also interacted with [[Archdisciplinary Research Center.]] ##### Other - I managed and created a bunch of online communities as a [[community]] manager, such as for [[Qualia Research Institute]]. ### Rest of this website - [[Exocortex]] - [[Blog]] - [[Videos]] - [[OmniCortex/Unsorted/Projects|Projects]] - [[How can I/you help]] - [[Contact]] ![[Images/1d357eced045dc3df024ff3c2df5aaad_MD5.jpeg]]