Merwane Drai (me)

Somehow you landed on this page, and now you're thinking one of two things depending on who you are:

• SF/tech crowd: "This is a copypaste of nat.org and it makes me cringe because many people I know are doing it. Countersignal. Not contrarian enough. The new cool is a nonchalant, 2009-themed Jekyll page."
• Everyone else (the 99.99999%): "Whoa, this website is plain."

Here's the thing: It doesn't matter. I like this format. If you identify with the SF/tech crowd, maybe you shouldn't worry too much about this sort of stuff either. Just do what you want, and take inspiration from what you like. Don't worry, Peter Thiel isn't constantly looking over your shoulder rolling his eyes over how unexceptional you are at everything you do.

Anyway, a little bit about me:

• I live in Palo Alto, CA. It's close enough to the beautiful city of San Francisco but is quieter both literally and metaphorically. Most people my age think of it as a boring suburb with strip malls and Golden Retrievers, but the reality is different. There is something special about Palo Alto.
• I work on video understanding. It's about building systems that are capable of interpreting video footage the way we would. The recent advances in AI have made it a very interesting field to work on. There are many possibilities if we crack video understanding, but I am hoping that the culmination of my research and experiments will unlock things like end-to-end video editing.
• I change my mind frequently on a lot of things, and I don't think there's any shame in it. Quite the contrary, some convictions can be dangerous when adopted dogmatically. For example, I recently started believing that superintelligence might not require much more than what we currently have. Now I just think it'll mostly be about scaling our current systems to start seeing sparks. More compute, more modalities, more data, etc.
• I want to meet more people who share my beliefs on PvE over PvP, a larger pie instead of a bigger slice, abundance, positive sum games. The goal should be to beat nature and rewrite its rules. Reach out at merwanedr[at]gmail[dot]com or on X @merwanedr.
• My most important resolution this year is that you won't hear me sound too pessimistic. I want to spread optimism and abundance. Sophisticated cynicism is for Europeans.