Who am I? Tough question …
In the homepage, you saw the different roles that are important to me: the craft of AI, teaching, and living wisely.
On another note, my interests in AI, art, cognitive science, and philosophy have an aspect of science, craft, worldview, and deep participation, engagement. Moreover, they are deeply interconnected and I would even say, synoptically integrated.
It is important to me that these conceptual frames fit into a coherent whole and contribute in a practical way towards a good life. When I started the blog in 2017, my work was at the center (metaphorically and literally), but now the golden thread is philosophy as a way of life.
I can’t emphasise enough the importance of different levels of “knowing”: propositional, procedural, perspectival, and participatory – as it is not enough to know the facts (or have beliefs), but to know how to do something, to have a perspective of the “world” and a sense of participation in whatever you’re engaged in. I mean that we’re agents in different arenas of life, and the sense of meaning comes from an attunement to those arenas. We participate in a course of something, which has impact on the environment, which changes us and how we view and relate to the world, self and others.
Long Story Short
- Graduate of Cybernetics (2017) and Quantitative Economics (2019)
- Did some research in Complex Systems, Agent-Based Modeling, Systems’ Dynamics, and Heterodox Economics, which was lots of fun
- My serious work was at the intersection of Bayesian Statistics and Machine Learning (thesis, dissertation)
- Teaching Data Science (by which I mean Decision Science) at university and private courses. You can check out the key ideas in the course homepage.
- VP of Decision Science at Adore Me Tech (with the firm since 2016)
- Lingerie e-commerce in the U.S., with a PAYG, subscription, try-at-home, marketplace business models. Acquired by Victoria’s Secret in 2022
- 70 tech people in Bucharest, over 300 employees
- My work involves AI Strategy, Product Management, ML Systems Design 1
- Some typical applications of AI in an e-commerce I contributed to:
- Demand Planning and Inventory Optimization systems to prevent lost sales and excess inventory across multiple distribution channels
- Recommender Systems to help users find relevant, personalized items and bundles, the most challenging use-case being in home-try-on
- Marketing optimizations in Acquisition, Advertisement, Engagement, CRM, Merchandising, Pricing and Promotion
- Hobbies and miscellanea:
- Reading about “Philosophy as a Way of Life” and Cognitive Science
- Painting and drawing places I love, learning art history
- Hiking and long walks; going to Jazz, Classical, Metal concerts
- Played chess professionally, but as most, gave it up as an adult
Unsurprisingly, there will be lots of painting metaphors when it comes to simplicity, and cognitive science references when talking about ways in which we’re biased and foolish. Chess, of course, inspires analogies of competition, strategy, and tactics to its service.