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https://github.com/z0u/z0u

Personal bio
https://github.com/z0u/z0u

Last synced: 5 months ago
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Personal bio

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README 

          
I'm an AI researcher and software engineer with a focus on technical alignment research. My background spans data platforms, ML systems, 3D visualization, and computational geometry.



I have always been interested in ethical tech. I have been an avid user of free software since 2000, and have made significant contributions to large open source software projects (most of which is not apparent from my GitHub history). In the 2010s I became a strong advocate of data ethics, and have been focused on AI safety since 2023 ([thanks to Rob Miles](https://www.youtube.com/@RobertMilesAI)).







## Projects



#### Prescriptive representation engineering



A novel research agenda to impose _just enough_ structure on latent embeddings to make AI more interpretable and steerable.



[Notebooks](https://z0u.github.io/ex-color-transformer) • [source](https://github.com/z0u/ex-color-transformer) • [articles](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/DNGjFBTxEJCpceyGn)







Three spherical plots, titled "Latents · repulsion". Each plot shows a vibrant collection of colored circles or balls scattered over the surface of a black sphere. The first plot has the appearance of a partial color wheel, with  vibrant colors around the rim (like a rainbow), with with a conspicuously absent space at the top where "red" should be. The other plots show different views of the same sphere, with hue varying across the equator and tone varying from top to bottom. The central region of the second and third plots show something interesting: "Red" and nearby colors have been arranged into a wide ring or disc, rather than being clustered in the center. Each ball shows the reconstructed color, with a dot in the center showing the true (input) color. The true and reconstructor colors agree fairly well, except for colors close to "red", which roughly agree in saturation but differ significantly in tone and hue.








#### OOD detection framework



Novel techniques for detecting out-of-distribution inputs in language models: a new visualization and metric.



[HuggingFace Space](https://huggingface.co/spaces/z0u/sparky) • [article](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kjo64rSWkFfc3sre5)







Annotated text visualization. The text reads 'A long time ago, in a galaxy somewhat far awawy'. Under the words is a line chart with two series: dashed blue for the words that are normal, and red for those that are unexpected. The line underneath the word 'somewhat' is very high, showing that the word is out of place.








#### mi-ni



A library and template repository to quickly spin up new AI research projects.



[Source](https://github.com/z0u/mi-ni)








#### Coil



A slick visual timer app.



[Source](https://github.com/z0u/mi-ni) • [progressive web app](z0u.github.io/coil-timer)








#### S. Cargo 🐚



A unique game featuring innovative physics for character movement and environment interaction.



[Source](https://github.com/z0u/cargo) • [trailer](https://youtu.be/ToiUdV42aZY)








#### Contributions to [Blender](https://blender.org)



- [Physically-based "classical" SPH solver](https://github.com/blender/blender/commit/f276b3a3cdfa46be051db981395e4d7cb5691b89)

- [Adaptive time-step for fluid particles](https://github.com/blender/blender/commit/558b646216feaa43abf44eb332d2449c68bf1b39)

- [Baking (rendering) to vertex colors](https://github.com/blender/blender/commit/5e0e62f0407e15c936bae92d8fec043adee6ab07)








## Areas of expertise



- AI safety: technical alignment research

- ML engineering and deployment pipelines

- Data platforms with robust governance

- 3D graphics, game development, simulation, computational geometry, visualization

- Web development (full-stack, various frameworks)

- Information retrieval and search systems

- Systems design