Somehow I didn’t get to writing up a blog post for the past three quarters, so this blog post will be about the whole year.

Work

Obviously, joining OpenAI was the defining action for me this year. Foremost I’m a believer that the environment that I’m part of matters a great deal, and OpenAI surely has some of the most hard-working people that I’d like to continue working with for a long time, among which include Barret, Liam, John, and Wojciech. The other important thing is that OpenAI is a totally new environment, which has been a forcing function for me to grow and not overfit to (small degree of) success that I had achieved at Google. While it’s been temporarily challenging to find my role at OpenAI, I am confident that the change will be good for me in the long run.

The other thing that I’ve grown a lot from is spending time pair programming with Hyung Won. I am less scared of looking at new codebases now than before, and even enjoy taking more time to understand the tools that I am using now. One interesting thing now at OpenAI (and probably other places, too) is how fast-paced it has become. It’s hard to feel comfortable and there is a constant thirst for launching the next thing.

Health

In terms of weightlifting, I haven’t been disciplined and regressed quite a bit—my bench is less than one plate now. I got into practicing soccer recently, and there were few weeks where I was good about practicing. I hope to practice more in 2024 as a fun way to get in my cardio, and also hope to learn about deliberate practice. I started a new thing where in addition to my work hours, Jerry also checks whether I hit my exercise goals for the week. Having Jerry check my work hours has been key for discipline.

Travels

ICML. I went to ICML in Honolulu, Hawaii, which was a good opportunity both to meet people I hadn’t seen in a while and for leisure. It was fun to catch up with people like Jack Rae, Denny, Rishi Bommasani, Shayne Longpre, Albert Webson, and Tengyu Ma. There were a lot of memorable moments:

• The OpenAI party, which was at a nice Hawaiian venue, and a lot of people attended.
• Went surfing for the first time at Waikiki beach, and with some coaching from Andrew Kondrich, I managed to catch the first wave I tried.
• Hike at Diamond Head park with a lot of people.
• Swimming on Sunset Beach with Karina and Thomas. The beach was really nice because it wasn’t crowded at all and the water was so clear.
• Sunset cruise where we hung out with Michael and Helen.

Seoul. I went to Seoul to give a talk at the Samsung AI Forum conference. Seoul is a really amazing city. I have been long been a fan of Korean food and I enjoyed the meals that we went to. The food was pretty good but not necessarily what my taste buds craved, but the experiences (raw fish meals, korean bbq intestines, cold noodles) were really great. I even liked Seoul more than Singapore, as the culture was new felt a bit deeper, though Singapore is much easier to navigate as an English or Chinese speaker. I wish I spoke korean though, since most people would try to speak Korean with me.

It was really fun to hang out with my high school friend Jae, who gave me a taste of what it is like to live in Korea. We started the day by going to Gyeongbukgung Palace, which was a nice walk even though it was cold. We then went to the Jimjilbang, which really felt like an authentic korean experience, from body scrubs we got from an old Korean gentleman to the shared soap bars, small towels, and drinks. After that, we met Jae’s friend Tae and went for a traditional korean BBQ with beef intestines and then watched soccer at a bar with some of Jae’s friends from Brown.

I really enjoyed staying three nights in Signiel Seoul, which is the nicest hotel room I’ve stayed in (sorry MBS). The room’s design was incredible and the view from the 92nd floor was amazing. The service is really world class, starting from the people who open the door for you, the check-in being automatic, and the room service. At Signiel I enjoyed time alone working out at the gym and at their bathhouse with a great view. The experience inspires me to work hard.

The other splurge I got on this trip was flying first class back to London. The nice parts of that were that I basically had my own private check-in, where a Korean Air employee escorted me across the border control that is usually for diplomats. The first-class lounge was also almost private. The food on the flight was also pretty good, though it was way too much food.

Left, Signiel Seoul; middle, lunch with Hyung Won’s family; right, with Jae at Gyeongbukgung Palace.

Korea again, and Singapore. I went back to Korea again for a small workshop with around 30 attendees, which was held in Pyeongchang. The hotel was quite old and in a bit of the middle of nowhere like the Shining, I enjoyed it nonetheless. Singapore was fun because I got to hang out with Zou Kai, who I hadn’t seen for a while, and Jerry. We hung out at Marina Bay Sands, played ping pong at Google Singapore, ate Durian in China town, attended the EMNLP party, visited the Google office, and in the end we even got COVID (it was OK in the end).

Left, Pyeongchang hotel where we had the small conference; left-middle, me and Jerry at the Marina Bay Sands pool; right-middle, me with Jerry and Yi at the mall in Singapore; right, lunch at Google Singapore with Jerry and Kai.

Other than the three big trips, Karina and I also took a few weekend trips.

• April 29 ish: Karina and I went to Yosemite National Park with Yifei and Anna. The hike was challenging physically, but there was a nice contrast between the hot sun and the melting snow on the top of the mountain. The second day, Karina and I went on a shorter hike and enjoyed some views around x road.
• May 27: We went with Andrew and Lauren to redwoods forest.
• Jun 11: Karina’s friend Kamille got married in Yosetime, so we went again. We spent the first day working at a starbucks because we both had some work, and the second day we went on a nice hike.
• June 18: Karina and I went to a CHAI alignment workshop, which was in the middle of the woods. I was on an AGI panel with Stuart Russell and Max Tegmark. Max asked me some pointed questions, but it was fun anyways.
• June 30: We visited my mom for a few days Texas.
• Aug 18-23: Karina and I went to New York to help move her stuff to Sf. Karina got us tickets to the strokes concert, which was a lot of fun. We also went to the restaurant Due, which was recommended Jordan Schlansky. Their mussels were really good.
• Dec 21 - Jan 2: Karina and I stayed at my Mom’s place in Texas. We had a lot of fun playing soccer together, getting drunk and exchanging christmas presents, watching the new years light show, and using the hot tub.

Meeting people

It was an honor to meet people who I really admire, and they inspire me to aim for greatness.

• Coffee with Bret Taylor at Sightglass
• Drinks with Wang Xing at Grand Hyatt SFO
• Meeting with Sam Altman (together with Hyung Won)
• Coffee with Qi Lu at sightglass
• Meeting Sergey Brin and Jeff Dean at the Google Mountain View office.

Left, hanging out with Albert and Shayne at ICML; middle-left, meeting up with Wang Xing; middle, with Karina at the Strokes concert in New York; middle-right, with Qi Lu; right, Karina.