I care about effectively employing my efforts in ways that will improve the world.
I research coordination within dynamic systems. I use a lot of ideas from the areas of reinforcement learning and complex systems.
I am seeking opportunities to work with organizations that are uplifting to the world.
I've worked as a software engineer for several years now, most of my work was within open-source organizations, and I'm mostly active in the open science ecosystem. I have contributed to projects such as Farama's Petting Zoo (previously OpenAI gym ecosystem), PyScript, Jupyter, PySide, Mozilla Webcompat, Qt, Firefox, whynot, conda-forge, and many others.
I am a member of the DISC NumFOCUS steering committee and a collaborator of the Open Knowledge Foundation as an Expert.
In the past, I served as a member of the Jupyter committee and as a subject matter expert for NASA, developing a course aimed at providing guidance for scientists on practicing open science. I've also taught open science and software classes to graduate students at Harvard through the LSSTC-DSFP program and at several other conferences, meetups, and groups. I'm also grateful for the Jupyter community having recognized me as a distinguished contributor.
You can have an overview of my software work by looking at my GitHub profile. A more concise list of my previous work experience can be found on my LinkedIn.
I think communicating ideas is very important, so I try to write about software in my personal blog "Do Cyborgs Dream of Bionic Sheep?" and on my Medium page.
You can access my talks, workshops, classes, and podcasts at this link and check out my hack projects that I tackle alone or with friends here.
If you're a tech recruiter, please respond to these two quick questions, and I will get back to you!
I'm a Cooperative AI researcher. I'm interested in improving our understanding of dynamic systems and agents within these environments that are able to develop cooperative interactions. These systems are frequently found at the intersection of complex systems and multi-agent reinforcement learning.
The reason why I care about furthering this area of research is because I believe it can directly improve people's lives, be it in increasing cooperation between political and economic agents or in improving coordination among machines and humans.
In BarfussLab, I'm modeling agents in repeated general-sum game scenarios using reinforcement learning dynamics. You can have a detailed overview of the research progress by checking this document. Or if you prefer a shorter version you can read the long abstract: Navigating the Complexity of AI Cooperation: From Learning Dynamics to Language Models.
I have a research blog where I write about my experiments and I also write about my research in the form of more-or-less structured notes here.
poverty alleviation:I'm currently enrolled in MIT's MicroMasters Program in Data, Economics, and Development Policy because I hope to gain a better understanding on how to be more effective about supporting and developing poverty alleviation policies. I'm interested in ways of decreasing the inequality gap, paying special attention to people living in extreme poverty. I think about running tech internship projects in the global south while having a fitting pedagogical ethos, teaching farmers about permaculture and supporting them with an NGO and increasing internet access in the world.
open knowledge:I'm driven by meaning and I find a lot of significance and love in the open/libre internet. Liberating knowledge and fostering cultural and scientific development deeply resonates with many of my personal principles and working towards making the digital world more accessible and comfortable for all is a very fulfilling mission to me.
My main form of action on this front has been the advocacy of both the ethos and the practice of open source and open science.
governance:Increasing interoperability and people's agency in a world of machines and humans. I keep some notes here.
I found out the way I learn the best is by having the support of a community. Do you want to learn something together? Send me a message! If you want, you can also send me anonymous feedback here.
I support several causes: ethical open source, animal liberation, the decrease in animal-based products consumption, investing in carbon offsets to decrease my CO2 footprint, leveraging democracy through open democratic practices, post meritocracy in my engineering work context, combating disinformation on the Web, AI alignment, open access to knowledge, empowering people to overcome poverty using a) non-traditional methods of pedagogy, b) land redistribution coupled with permaculture and community building in rural contexts c) offering OSS opportunities through internships and mentoring d) respecting people's agency over their own economical future through donating money directly to them.
These are some of the projects I support:
I believe women have the right to have full control over their own bodies:
Doctors in Germany are not allowed to post factual information on abortions on their websites. Other websites are allowed to post this information, though. Frag Den Staat is currently providing resources on the subject in German, English, and Turkish.
*AI art:
I believe it's hard to throttle technological development, which is not always good for our culture, institutions, and people. However, I also believe it's quite possible to harness these technologies in an ethical and uplifting way.