Overall, this was a pretty uneventful quarter. I wasn’t super intentional and felt like I was mostly on autopilot. Maybe I should do something different next quarter.

Work

Recently I started thinking about pretraining data as a lever for improving models. The biggest things that I learned to think about while doing this work is: What is being exercised by the data? Would doing well at that task improve performance at other tasks? What is the “information importance” of that data? For instance, a paper describing the learnings from a series of raw experiments may be more important than the experiments itself, because even though the model is technically learning facts about the world from those experiments, it may not be the important facts about the world to learn. How can we use AI to accelerate scientific innovation? What parts of innovation are actually bottlenecked by intelligence, and what parts are actually bottlenecked by knowledge, data, or real-life experiments?

Cow Hollow Condo

I purchased a 3B condo in Cow Hollow, which is a big milestone. Although it’s not the best financial investment, Jerry lives with me and my mom comes to visit more often and stays in our third bedroom, so that makes it worth it. Jerry and my mom both seem to like San Francisco more because our condo is a decent neighborhood that is close to Union Street, Polk Street, Japantown, and Chinatown. Family is the thing that I wish I could have more of and exchanging money for that is a good idea.

Getting a place also allowed me to appreciate the city more, especially once I’ve been to neighborhoods like Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights, and Presidio Heights. I started posting photos that I take when I’m walking around or on a run on a new instagram account. Kevin gave me some coaching on photography and I have been enjoying the process.

Left, my mom, Jerry, and I at Boiling Beijing; Middle, my Mom making dumplings for me; right, Jerry pouring me a generous drink at Cow Hollow.

Health

This quarter I tried to start an experiment where I did whatever Hatch told me to do to improve my health. I did it for about three or four weeks pretty well, but I got pretty quickly discouraged that I couldn’t decrease my cholesterol with diet and exercise. So I started taking a statin and hopefully this will help. There are no side effects of the statin so far. A fun thing is that I ran a mile and I was much faster than I anticipated. My time was 6:22 on June 7 and then on Jun 28 I ran again, and got 6:07! My goal is to break six minutes.

Adventures

I enjoyed going to several places in the bay in this quarter: Devil’s slide is a peaceful and beautiful walk. Going to Trojan Point while on psilocybin was one of the top 3 most sublime experiences in my life. It felt like stepping into a magical world. Mono Lake near Yosemite is picturesque, and I took some great photos there at sunset.

Left, sunset at Devil’s slide; middle, Trojan point; right, sunset at Land’s End.

Half dome. Half dome was the most challenging hike I have done in my life. The hike started butt early in the morning at 5:45am and lasted until almost 8pm in the evening, totalling 44 thousand steps. I learned that I could push my body pretty far with the right nutrition and preparation, and that knee issues that I suffered from before were largely gone. The hike up was fun and rewarding. Many people find the cables to be the most challenging part, however I felt that they were relatively safe given that you could use your hands to prevent falls. I actually felt that the part going up to the dome that was not as steep but did not have cables was far more dangerous. The hike down was far worse than the hike up as the sun came out and every step was harsh on the knees. Overall I probably would not do it again and I don’t think it was worth the high risk of injury, but I am glad to have had the experience.

In general I was also happy to deepen relationships with other friends like Niklas and Kritika, and go on other miscellaneous adventures.

Left, hiking with Zou Kai at Bedwell Bayfront Park; middle, hiking with Niklas and Kritika; right, hosting an ultimate frisbee and capture the flag with Leo.

Left, Barry’s with Michelle and Andrew; middle, a stay at Skywalker Ranch; right, soccer at James P Lang field.

Left, Hanging out with Yi Tay; left middle, running with friends at Kezar stadium; right middle, eating at Single Thread; right, Yosemite Half Dome.