Draft:Guillaume Verdon

  • Comment: This is an example of a classic Wikipedia feature. While Effective_accelerationism might be notable (it has a page), that does not mean that the originator is. There has to be significant coverage of him, and what he has done as against just being outed by Forbes. Note that none of the rest of his career would satisfy any of the notability criteria. Ldm1954 (talk) 04:48, 8 February 2024 (UTC)


Guillaume Verdon
Born
Guillaume Verdon-Akzam [1]

Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Other namesBasedBeffJezos
EducationMcGill University (BS)[2]
University of Waterloo (MMath)[2][3]
Known for

Guillaume Verdon is an entrepreneur, theoretical physicist, quantum computing researcher, and philosophical writer.

Education

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Verdon attended McGill University as an undergraduate and graduated with honors with a double major in Mathematics & Physics.[2] He attended University of Waterloo for graduate studies where he completed Master's work in 2017[3][4] at the Institute for Quantum Computing and continued with Achim Kempf as his PhD supervisor.[1] He presented papers as a Guest Speaker at NASA's 2018 Adiabatic Quantum Computing conference.[2][5]

Career

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Verdon was the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Everettian Technologies,[6] an early Canadian start-up focused on Quantum machine learning solutions. He also had a side venture into NFTs related to quantum physics/information which provided capital for his later startup Extropic AI.[7][8] Verdon has worked at Alphabet & Google and had primary responsibility for theoretical work on the team that introduced the TensorFlow Quantum library for quantum machine learning.[9][10][11] During his time at Google X Verdon pioneered and worked on Quantum Graph Neural Networks,[12] quantum Magnetoencephalography,[13] and Quantum Hamiltonian-Based Models.[14] He has several patents[15] with Google X covering quantum computing, quantum machine learning, and signal processing.

Verdon is now working at a startup he founded in 2022, Extropic AI.[16][17] The company recently announced the completion of a $14.1 million seed round.[18][7] Extropic AI was initially operating in stealth-mode and is focused on building chips specifically intended for running LLMs according to Verdon a "type of physics-based computer that is not quantum".[7][19]

Effective accelerationism

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Verdon writing under the pseudonym BasedBeffJezos was one of the co-founders of the effective acceleration (e/acc) movement. The origin of the movement can be traced back to a May 2022 newsletter published by him and 3 other authors.[20][21][22] In its coverage of the movement Forbes outed Verdon as the author behind his pseudonymous account.[7][17] Since his naming he has spoken on podcasts & debated publicly those with conflicting views on AI safety and other issues of technological progress.[23]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Guillaume Verdon-Akzam PhD Student". Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d "2018 Adiabatic Quantum Computing Conference - Speakers". Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science - Universities Space Research Association. August 21, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2024.
  3. ^ a b "Physics of Information Lab: Former group members". 15 October 2014. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  4. ^ Verdon-Akzam, Guillaume (January 10, 2017). "Probing Quantum Fields: Measurements and Quantum Energy Teleportation". University of Waterloo. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  5. ^ "Quantum Approximate Boltzmann Machines - Guillaume Verdon". Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science - Universities Space Research Association. August 21, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2024.
  6. ^ "Everettian-Technologies - Overview, Competitors, and Employees". Apollo.io. Retrieved 2024-01-17.
  7. ^ a b c d "Who Is @BasedBeffJezos, The Leader Of The Tech Elite's 'E/Acc' Movement?". Forbes. December 1, 2023. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  8. ^ "OpenSea, gverdon".
  9. ^ "TensorFlow Quantum: A software platform for hybrid quantum-classical ML (TF Dev Summit '20)". TensorFlow. March 11, 2020. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
  10. ^ Broughton, Michael; Verdon, Guillaume; McCourt, Trevor; Martinez, Antonio J.; Jae Hyeon Yoo; Isakov, Sergei V.; Massey, Philip; Halavati, Ramin; Murphy Yuezhen Niu; Zlokapa, Alexander; Peters, Evan; Lockwood, Owen; Skolik, Andrea; Jerbi, Sofiene; Dunjko, Vedran; Leib, Martin; Streif, Michael; David Von Dollen; Chen, Hongxiang; Cao, Shuxiang; Wiersema, Roeland; Huang, Hsin-Yuan; McClean, Jarrod R.; Babbush, Ryan; Boixo, Sergio; Bacon, Dave; Ho, Alan K.; Neven, Hartmut; Mohseni, Masoud (August 26, 2021). "TensorFlow Quantum: A Software Framework for Quantum Machine Learning". arXiv:2003.02989 [quant-ph].
  11. ^ Black, Doug (March 9, 2020). "TensorFlow Quantum software combines quantum and classical machine learning". insideHPC. Retrieved April 19, 2024.
  12. ^ Verdon, Guillaume; McCourt, Trevor; Luzhnica, Enxhell; Singh, Vikash; Leichenauer, Stefan; Hidary, Jack (2019-09-26). "Quantum Graph Neural Networks". arXiv:1909.12264 [quant-ph].
  13. ^ US20210196177A1, Verdon-Akzam, Guillaume; Lv, Xudong & Leichenauer, Stefan, "Magnetoencephalography", issued 2021-07-01 
  14. ^ Verdon, Guillaume; Marks, Jacob; Nanda, Sasha; Leichenauer, Stefan; Hidary, Jack (2019-10-04). "Quantum Hamiltonian-Based Models and the Variational Quantum Thermalizer Algorithm". arXiv:1910.02071 [quant-ph].
  15. ^ "Google Patents". patents.google.com. Retrieved 2024-01-17.
  16. ^ "The crypto bros are coming for AI". Business Insider. December 23, 2023. Retrieved January 18, 2023.
  17. ^ a b "The techno-optimists and doomsdayers inside Silicon Valley's most dangerous AI debate". CNBC. December 17, 2023. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  18. ^ "Extropic Secures $14.1 Million in Seed Funding to Propel Novel Physics-Based Computing Paradigm". December 12, 2023. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  19. ^ "Eight startups challenging Nvidia in AI chips". The Information. August 24, 2023. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
  20. ^ "Get the lowdown on 'e/acc' — Silicon Valley's favorite obscure theory about progress at all costs, which has been embraced by Marc Andreessen". Business Insider. July 28, 2023. Retrieved January 18, 2023.
  21. ^ "Effective Accelerationism — e/acc". 31 October 2022. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  22. ^ Walker, Stephen (July 4, 2023). "Effective Accelerationism (e/acc)". Klu. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
  23. ^ Lavoipierre, Ange (February 17, 2024). "The AI insiders who want the controversial technology to be developed faster". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved July 12, 2024.
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