No one steps into the same River Cam twice, for the river is not the same and nor is the person.
I was last at King's College, Cambridge twenty years ago, beginning my studies in physics. The place wasn't quite right for me back then, but I said on leaving it that it would be when I was older.
How prescient of 19-year-old me.
I'm now back here with ERA Cambridge where I'm spending two months looking into the internals of AI models as a Technical AI Safety Researcher, working with Lucia Quirke and Stella Biderman at EleutherAI, Kyle O'Brien at ERA, and an amazing group of super smart, thoughtful, and friendly colleagues.
The libraries, lawns, and multi-hundred-year-old buildings haven't changed much. But Cambridge feels more diverse than I remember—more accents, languages, and skin tones in its halls.
And I've changed. This time, I'm spending much of my time at King's Library or Cambridge University Library, where they allow me to handle rare books when I want a break from GPUs. These include a 13th century Latin translation of Al-Khwarizmi's adaptation of Brahmagupta's work, the chain of transmission that gave us the numerals and algorithms ( الخوارزميّ->Al-Khwarizmi->Algorizmi->algorithm) we use today. (I'll write a separate blogpost about this soon.)
What a wonderful period for me.
Thank you everyone who has allowed it to happen.
