crops, statistics, plant breeding, poker, stocks, predicshun! #UCDavis PhD. Building a kind of digital breeder’s eye 🌽👁️ @ EWS. Opinions are entirely mine.
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Joined January 2013
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Gitanshu Munjal retweeted
Lazy work used to mean too little output.
Now, with AI, it often means too much and more work for everyone else.
@tobi call it "slop grenades."
A "Slop Grenade" is when you let AI produce the work and pass it on without adding any value (including checking it).
Someone else has to wade through it, catch the mistakes, and clean up the mess.
You save time and look productive but someone else pays for it.
My third conversation with Shopify co-founder and CEO @tobi.
0:00 How Shopify Uses AI
7:18 River: Shopify's Internal AI
8:55 How to Encourage Osmosis Learning
10:52 AI Dreaming and Self-Reflection
11:53 How to Use AI for Strategic Decision Making
14:11 The One Thing AI Cannot Do
16:04 What AI is Making Worse at Shopify
19:46 Predictions: Where AI is Headed Next
21:55 The Future of AI-Powered Software
24:40 Will CEOs Be Replaced with AI?
27:54 Can Superintelligence Be Controlled?
31:13 Critical Skills in AI Age
34:22 Why Complex Solutions are Usually Wrong
36:33 Conditions Needed for True Intuition
38:02 The Best Path Doesn't Have Instant Feedback
44:51 How Affirmations Can Shift Your Behavior
50:44 The Inobvious Thing Hurting Companies
52:37 Relationship Between Beauty and Creation
56:23 How SpaceX Moves Forward By Subtraction
1:00:24 Why Companies Need Refounding Events
1:01:50 Books as Cheat Codes
1:02:39 Three Books to Change Your Thinking
Enjoy!
(Includes paid promotions.)
Gitanshu Munjal retweeted
After co-inventing ChatGPT, I kept asking myself: why have superhuman chat models not led to AGI?
I’ve spent the last 2 years in stealth building a new way to train models (RLCD), and a new type of frontier AI model that we are releasing today: Jev
• 20-200x faster
• 40-400x cheaper (w/ output tokens free)
• Frontier composable intelligence optimized for decisions
AFAICT the shortest path to AI-based economic revolution
Gitanshu Munjal retweeted
I can’t stress enough how little an idea matters compared to the agency of the people executing the idea.
I have had the privilege of knowing and sometimes even working with some of the most successful people (by various metrics).
The difference between mediocre and excellent work and outcomes is predominantly one of agency.
In practice this means: they dont wait for things to happen to them they go out and make things happen for them.
They don’t wait for someone else to do something, for someone to teach them, for someone to give them the path, etc. They just go out and find a way to do it.
I think the single biggest superpower these people have is the realization/belief that the world around them is completely mutable. Most everything that happens is because a person made it happen.
I used to tell people to look around the room you’re sitting in. Look at everything. Every noun. It almost all exists because a person willed it into existence. Nothing is stopping you from doing the same.
I see people online all the time dismissing someone else’s success because “I had that idea first” or whatever. I mean… yeah? If so then the difference is… you. So a bit of a self own whenever I hear that.
Number one tip: act with agency.
Gitanshu Munjal retweeted
If you’re not reading the code, whether explicitly or through agentic inquiry, one or more of these is true:
○ You’re a beginner
○ Software is throwaway
○ You’re prototyping
○ You have no users / revenue
○ You’re taking on debt & risk
○ Your problems are basic
And btw. All of this is fine. But the reality is that models are still not at the “full autonomy” stage yet.
They make rookie mistakes, they go down bad architectural paths. I just had the best model in the world add a nonsensical 700ms delay to “settle” something and it told me “you’re right, I was cargo-culting” 🤨
I am on the camp that this need will diminish more and more. Most code is indeed going to be assembly-like. But we also have the global internet and software infrastructure riding on these models and narrative, and we have to respect that.
Gitanshu Munjal retweeted
I WAS PREPARING FOR THE UPSC, BUT NOW I'VE LOST THE MOTIVATION.
I DON'T THINK I CAN LIVE OR WORK AMONG PEOPLE LIKE THIS.
Dharmendra Pradhan Must Resign
Gitanshu Munjal retweeted
An Open Letter to the Jantar Mantar protestors:
My dear young friends,
I address you today not as a politician or an MP, but as someone deeply troubled by what is happening to your generation of young Indians.
This is personal for me. I was born to a middle-class family: my father was a salaried newspaper employee, my mother a homemaker, with three children to educate on one income. For a family like ours, merit was not a slogan. Scholarships, fair examinations, honest results — these were the only way one salary could carry three children's dreams.
I went to school in Mumbai and Kolkata, to college here in Delhi, topped the University and earned admission into IIM — and chose instead to follow my passion for international affairs, in America, on a scholarship. Nothing was inherited; everything was earned by hard work and yes, Exams.
So I know that a fair, merit-based system is the only ladder for young people from lower and middle-income families to climb up. When that ladder is broken — papers leaked, examinations cancelled, trust destroyed — the children of the rich and powerful do not suffer. They have other ladders. It is your dreams, and your families' sacrifices (and tragically, in some homes, young lives themselves) that are betrayed.
To the young people gathered at Jantar Mantar, and those raising your voices peacefully across India: this country hears you. Your anger is not indiscipline — it is the anguish of a generation that did everything right and was still betrayed . You are not alone.
And to the millions of young Indians watching quietly: your generation is not a problem to be managed. You are the answer to India's future. Do not lose hope. This ladder will be rebuilt — by you, and by every Indian who stands with you.
To Shri Sonam Wangchuk-ji, my heartfelt appeal: please end your fast. You have awakened the conscience of the nation; that is what a fast is meant to do. India needs your voice for the long road ahead.
With Parliament in session again from Monday, we will have an opportunity to raise the students’ issues in the highest forum of our democracy. That’s where the problem should be addressed, not by fasting unto death. Please heed my plea.
And finally, to the Government: I respectfully urge you to reach out and engage in the dialogue our democracy owes its young citizens. That is not weakness; that is statesmanship.
Gitanshu Munjal retweeted
The latest issue written by @jainhiya_ delves into the history of Indian Statistics.
The story of Mahalanobis is peppered with tales of creative ingenuity, scrappy technological jugaad (like India’s first analog computer), & the coming together of a newly independent nation’s smartest scientists.
In 1953, an engineer at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta wandered through the local Chandni Chowk’s scrap markets, collecting discarded vacuum tubes and military electronics left behind after World War II.
He brought the parts back to his lab and built something that would change Indian technological history.
Who is he and what did he build?
Fun to ask it plant breeding questions
New work with @AlecRad and @DavidDuvenaud:
Have you ever dreamed of talking to someone from the past? Introducing talkie, a 13B model trained only on pre-1931 text.
Vintage models should help us to understand how LMs generalize (e.g., can we teach talkie to code?). Thread:
Gitanshu Munjal retweeted
New @Nature paper today : Sony's Ace robot beats 3 of 5 elite table tennis players. Loses to professionals.
Human players win points with faster-than-average shots (p<0.001 between won vs returned). Ace wins with ordinary shots. Same speed and spin profile whether it wins or loses the rally (p=0.88).
It's playing a completely different sport than the humans are.
Trained entirely in simulation. Zero sim-to-real tricks beyond good physics modeling and asymmetric actor-critic (critic sees ground truth, actor sees noisy sensors).
Best part — after watching a point, 1992 Olympian Kinjiro Nakamura said:
"I didn't think it was possible. But the fact that it was possible... means that there is a possibility that a human could do it too."
Code: github.com/SonyResearch/ace_…
Paper: nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Gitanshu Munjal retweeted
the craft of kanchipuram, the intelligence of diffusion models, the creativity of @AltCarbonIndia's design team, the magic of @AlterMagIndia's latest piece
a feast for the mind, a carnival for the eyes
teapaw.org/AlterMagIndia/status/2…
A Kanchipuram Sari is not mere fabric.
It is a language with grammar, a financial instrument you can wear, a biological object dyed with chemistry, & a cultural archive woven by history & hand.
For over a millennium, it functioned as liquid wealth. In desperate times, the silk could be burned away, leaving behind real silver & gold.
A garment that protected its wearer, even in fire.
Today, that loom meets AI, microbes, & cryptography — systems trying to relearn lost grammar, grow colour without poisoning land, & turn trust from promise into proof.
What happens when a thousand-year-old loom meets 21st century’s thinking machines?
Issue 3: Kanchipuram Saris & Thinking Machines, written by Nivedita, designed & built by @AltCarbonIndia
altermag.com/articles/kanchi…
