"I often don't want to do things. I'm like, 'This seems risky. This could go wrong,'"
"One of the most important lessons I've learned is that you can just do things,"
"To me, this is both an example of the importance of having luck surface area - being in a situation where opportunities like that can arise - but also that you should just say yes to things, even if they seem kin"
Neel Nanda, 26, leads the mechanistic interpretability team at Google DeepMind. Perfectionist tendencies often caused hesitation before starting projects due to fear they might fail. A deliberate challenge to write one blog post daily for a month broke that streak, increased visibility in the AI community, produced influential mechanistic interpretability work, and led to personal connections. Nanda embraced saying yes more often to maximize his "luck surface area," including posting unconventional material such as a three-hour unedited YouTube reading that attracted over 30,000 views. An unexpected leadership opportunity arose in 2023 when the prior team leader stepped down and Nanda accepted the role despite uncertainty about readiness.
Read at Business Insider
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