Google researcher's refugee childhood story pushback on the teen drop-out-to-SF founder narrative
satnam6502 · x · 2026-09-23
Google DeepMind researcher Milan Far quote-replied to a young founder bragging about turning down an Ivy program at 17 to live in a WeWork and hack on AI models alongside Karpathy. Far shared his own path: escaping a repressive regime alone at 15 in the back of a truck that took bullets, seeking asylum at 16 in a country whose language he didn't speak, arriving in the US at 17 as a refugee, living on food stamps for six months, and working his way through public schools and college on fellowships. He says he isn't impressed by self-imposed hardship funded by VC money — most talented people with real difficulties have no choice, and heroes should be looked for there.
More from AGI Musings
- 'Humanities PhDs will get more valuable' takes heat: critics call it disciplinary self-flattery, not analysis — _onionesque · 2026-09-23
- RAND lays out a U.S. superintelligence strategy: keep every option open until evidence forces a choice — 141_1337 · 2026-09-23
- Viral take: if AI takes math, Terence Tao outshines you at any white-collar job — ctjlewis · 2026-09-23
- Debate: do entrepreneurial opportunities live in human situations or AI-only problems? — louisvarge · 2026-09-23
- Musk on AI-era education: broad knowledge, and robots eager for your prompts — XFreeze · 2026-09-23
- A new Fermi twist: no AI-filled universe, yet AI smarter than its builders exists — sqcai · 2026-09-23