Chris Olah on working at top AI labs without an undergrad degree

Incrementally improving an explanation of a technical idea might take a single author weeks to do, but could go on to save a day for thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of students, if it becomes the best option available.

We also cover some of Chris’ personal passions over the years, including his attempts to reduce what he calls ‘research debt’ by starting a new academic journal called Distill, focused just on explaining existing results unusually clearly.

Despite that, academics have little incentive to produce outstanding explanations of complex ideas that can speed up the education of everyone coming up in their field. And some even see the process of deciphering bad explanations as a desirable right of passage all should pass through, just as they did.

- Thinking about research as a market.

- The concept of ‘micromarriages’ and ‘microbestfriendships’.

- Strategies for growing as a researcher.

- How Chris thinks about writing outstanding explanations.

And much more.

Chris Olah has had a fascinating and unconventional career path.

- Why highly thoughtful cold emails can be surprisingly effective, but average cold emails do little.