Trending In Ed with Mike Palmer Revolutionizing Research with AI | A Conversation with Subconscious AI Founder Avi Yashchin
Apr 3, 2025
In a compelling discussion, Avi Yashchin, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Subconscious AI, shares his journey from high-frequency trading to groundbreaking AI research. He highlights the use of language models to simulate social-science experiments, exploring both their potential benefits and ethical complexities. Key topics include the critical role of human oversight in AI education, the challenges of proving social media harms, and the need for transparent AI practices. Yashchin also emphasizes the importance of directing AI towards pro-social initiatives like climate mobilization.
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From Wall Street To Education Entrepreneur
- Avi started his career on Wall Street, experienced the 2008 crisis at Lehman Brothers, and questioned why trading algorithms acted without clear 'why.'
- He left trading, started companies including a green jobs school, and sold it to Kaplan before joining IBM.
IBM, Two Sigma, And The Path To Subconscious AI
- At IBM Watson Education Avi worked with early language models like BERT and built tutoring systems such as Jill Watson.
- He later joined Two Sigma to price catastrophe bonds before founding Subconscious AI.
LLMs As Digital Twins For Research
- Subconscious AI uses LLMs to simulate human subjects and run randomized controlled experiments at scale.
- They found LLM responses were near indistinguishable from human responses in many psychology and economics studies.
