Ep 3: NEAR CEO Illia Polosukhin on the Origins of the Transformer Paper and The Overlap Between AI and Crypto

Jacob and Jason sit down with NEAR CEO and Transformer paper author Illia Polosukhin. They discuss Illia’s fascinating journey from Ukraine to Google and AI to crypto, the origin story behind the “Attention Is All You Need” paper and the overlap between AI and crypto. Illia also shared his thoughts on AGI and the problems that excite him most in AI right now. You can find Illia on Twitter (@ilblackdrago) and learn more about NEAR (@nearprotocol)

(00:39) - Welcoming Illia; how he became interested in AI, transitioning into Crypto and explaining NEAR 

(02:40)  - Walking through Illia's story more in depth

(07:46) - How the Transformer Paper came to be

(11:24) - Understanding the Transformer Papers' impact

(18:28) - The overlap of Crypto and AI and how Illia sees the future of how they develop together

(26:47) - Illia's views on AGI

(30:46) - Optimism vs pessimism of the future of machine learning as a tool

(41:32) - What problems Illia sees in AI right now

(45:03) - Rapid fire questions

(47:36) - Where to learn more about NEAR and Illia

With your co-hosts:

@jasoncwarner

- Former CTO GitHub, VP Eng Heroku & Canonical

@ericabrescia

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare)

@patrickachase

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn

@jacobeffron

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health