I am an engineer and entrepreneur trying to make sure AI is developed without killing everybody. I’ve mainly worked as a CEO and software & robotics engineer, but have also had various gigs as a fast food cook, actor, STEM tutor, children’s entertainer, video editor, and drag queen.
I was born in 1996 and grew up in western Sydney, Australia. My Dad was a plasterer, and my Mum an accountant. I am atheist, vegan, disappointingly AMAB, tall and lanky, and have ‘traces of Aspergers’ according to my childhood school. Politically I lean libertarian, but no label really fits. My favourite media includes Feynman’s autobiographies, HPMOR, Legally Blonde the Musical, and synthwave music.
In 2016, I was studying Physics & Mathematics at USyd when I realised that superintelligence would become the most important thing for humanity to get right in my lifetime. I switched my major to Computer Science, and began working on generating resources and knowledge that could be useful for aligning superintelligence, on the margin. I’ve been doing that ever since.
Please feel free to contact me at hunter@hunterjay.com
My current primary project is a website for writing & generating stories using LLMs. It’s basically a GPT-wrapper, but there’s lots of clever prompting and UI tricks going on behind the scenes to try and get each user a story optimised for users particular interests. I founded and am the primary developer on the project, originally with help from a part-time team, but I the project is not public yet.
From 2019 to mid 2024, Ripe Robotics was my primary focus. We were developing machines to pick apples and stone fruit, and had the long term goal of automating orchard agriculture. I was the CEO and acted as both a software and mechanical engineer on the project, alongside my cofounder Leopold Lucas, and engineers Michael Smith, Tobin Smit, and Peter Kydd. The company's IP and assets were ultimately acquired by a firm in Europe.
In 2017 and 2018, I developed a multiplayer online battle area mobile game called FlagWars, which was featured on the Apple App Store. Now defunct, the game let you directly command a small army against another player online. It was originally intended to raise money for AI alignment under a charity structure.
Prior to 2017, I had a hobby making short films, and I also lived at and contributed to a student cooperative in Newtown called Stucco. One of my favourite films from this era was a documentary about the community, which slowly turned into a found footage horror movie. I wrote and directed the movie (under my old name - Luke Jovanovic), and many of my housemates kindly starred in it.