campaigner & builder | behind UK's first online junk food ad ban other major UK campaigns | politics @ Cambridge

Joined April 2017
163 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
In the @HouseofCommons, I spoke on the dire need for food system reform. This #WorldObesityDay, remember: in our most disadvantaged communities, youth are losing 10 years of life to preventable, food-related conditions.
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Dev Sharma retweeted
Alongside my @OpenAI work I care deeply about entrepreneurship in the UK. Fun to be invited to discuss it at Number 10. Cool that the government are focussing on it. Things are in motion 🚀
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At @10DowningStreet for a private meeting on how we build the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders in Britain. A privilege to sit in the State Dining Room and be the youngest person there with founders, investors and people running some of the biggest companies in the UK
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Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.
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Dev Sharma retweeted
I spent the last few weeks crowdsourcing the ultimate guide to London’s startup ecosystem. Here's why. Finding your people is a lifelong mission- the people that push you, open doors for you, celebrate your wins, advise you sincerely and say yes to your crazy ideas. It’s one of the reasons people love San Francisco. Everyone is rooting for you and believes in you. There is a sense of wild ambition. But is this something only unique to SF? What is/was London missing? I think it really came down to a few things: - Optimism - A mindset of waiting for permission - Lack of a catalyst Those in the startup world would have felt a shift over the past couple of months that has instilled a renewed sense of optimism for Britain, a mentality of not waiting for anyone’s permission and the catalyst of the AI boom empowering a new generation of builders. And surprisingly, this isn’t new for Britain. We made the jet engine, steam trains, discovered the structure of DNA, discovered gravity and so much more. There was no concept of permission. The UK that exists today has: - Anthropic, OpenAI and DeepMind all opening offices in Kings Cross - Startups raising absurd rounds building generational companies (just 2 days ago Fractile raised a $220m Series B) - Unmatched talent being pulled in from Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, Warwick, Kings and even European universities like ETH So how can someone get involved and how can we level the playing field for those outside the startup ecosystem? The guide friends and I created below is our small role in helping democratise some of the obscure information on the inner workings of London’s startup scene. Read it, add to it, check it regularly and most importantly, do something with it. I hope this guide helps people for years to come. Can’t wait to see what we do on top of all the infrastructure built by those before us. We’re truly standing on the shoulders of giants. 🔥 Link in comments.
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outstanding performance by sky news last night. kate burley is a national legend.
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Alternative proposal - use the same amount of money to give 10M kids £5 each, invested in stocks and shares via a junior ISA You would train 10M kids to see their money compound And would likely lead to more press and awareness overall
🚨 NEW: The Government has launched a £50m "Savvy Squirrel" ad campaign to encourage more Brits to invest instead of saving
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there's some formulation of this that is true, if the ultimate optimisation goal is only distance to the acquisition of capital. many VCs make this point, and they are right considering optimisation for expected fiscal returns. but this misses the forest for the trees. life is also about other things: finding a relationship that is meaningful to you, becoming well-read, being physically fit/ healthy. some of these things might be easier to do outside of university, even! but, university provides time that is just *this*, lacking a strong optimisation target, and creating societally acceptable unstructured time to purposefully fail at these things and implement systems to not continue failing at them, even if while having to perform menial knowledge work. this first year of study at cambridge has been experientially multipolar, with undulating ups and downs. it has also been a valuable playpen
i think college is mostly for people who are not bold enough and/or not curious enough. if you have both of those traits, i think you could truly shake the world. exceptions exist ofc if you have an ill-family member, don't come from the best income backgrounds. but i think we live in a pretty wild world right now if you have internet access laptop speak english
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Apr 15
Plenty of young people are given the advice to just follow their passion. What does that even mean? How do you actually know what you're passionate about? "It’s what [you] think about when [you're] not working... [you] just don’t have the courage to take the leap.”
Apr 15
My conversation with @kayvz, co-founder of Macroscope and Periscope. We talk about selling for $120M pre-launch to @dickc at Twitter, turning down @elonmusk, getting trolled by Kobe Bryant and much more. His family immigrated to the Bay Area from Iran and he grew up an aspiring filmmaker. With a push from his mom, however, he toured and eventually got admitted to Stanford. This led to a series of software startups with his best friends and eventual acquisitions from Blackboard and Twitter. He led product there and eventually (graciously) turned down Elon to co-found Macroscope. Kayvon is an incredible storyteller, family man, & product mind. And while his accomplishments are many, he's an even better person. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did! Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 1:54 Fleeing the Iranian Revolution to California 4:32 How Gaming Sparked a Career in Tech 8:28 Growing Up With 12 Kids 12:32 Pissing Off an Apple Exec with a Jailbroken iPhone 4:29 From a Cardboard Sign to Winning Emmys 19:20 Building Software While Skipping Class 20:53 Selling $100k Apps to Best Buy & HP 22:32 Getting Acquired Over a Spam Call 27:03 The Importance of Passion 34:21 The Origins of Periscope 39:20 Scott Belsky Invented "Teleportation" 43:20 Six Months of Failed Designs 47:33 Selling to Twitter Before Launching 54:07 Trolled by Kobe Bryant 57:41 Turning Down Elon Musk 01:01:54 Founding Macroscope 01:10:21 His Two Most Consequential Life Decisions
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A knight, a lord, a dame, and a commander of the British Empire walk into a bar... And build a fucking city.
We've just launched it! Our 295 page report detailing how it is possible to build Britain's first city in over 50 years. People doubt Britain can do anything big. But this work shows the UK can be incredibly ambitious and solve real, and urgent problems. We just need to think a little more creatively. Here's what it finds: 1. Forest City would generate £53bn in output each year. That's a huge value add to the bottom line of the economy and more than the combined output of Oxford, Cambridge and Leeds. 2. It would create the largest single nature reserve on English soil. An amazing legacy for future generations and the environment. 3. 400,000 fully affordable homes to buy and rent that people under 40 who are desperately struggling to afford any sort of life, can ACTUALLY afford. 4. Major solutions to the East of England's road, rail and water infrastructure issues, paid for by the building of the City itself. Right now, @mhclg is studying the findings. We want to thank the 40 experts who helped put this together over the last five months. They are true radicals and pioneers all. Below is my reading of the introductory chapter so do have a listen.
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✨ We've joined forces with @jamieoliver @ChefsinSchools @BiteBack2030 and @sfmtweet to help transform school food! The School Food Project aims to ensure delicious meals are served to students up and down the country. Learn more & sign up: schoolfoodproject.org.uk #schoolfoodproject
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This is such a win for children’s health! Finally, we will have freshly-cooked warm food in our canteens that actually nourishes us instead of being boring and beige
Deep-fried food will be banned and high-sugar items restricted in schools in England under new plans to "overhaul" school dinners. Education minister Olivia Bailey spoke to #BBCBreakfast about the change bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c624…
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Deep-fried food will be banned and high-sugar items restricted in schools in England under new plans to "overhaul" school dinners. Education minister Olivia Bailey spoke to #BBCBreakfast about the change bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c624…
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Britmaxxing 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🚀🚀🚀
Apr 10
The best part of attending @aiDotEngineer for me had a lot to do with London itself. I loved the inspiration of being in a beautiful city and sense of safety. You could walk around anywhere and there's beautiful parks, well dressed people and smiling faces. You don't see that in SF in most places because SF doesn't prioritize beauty, sense of aesthetics and love of life. There's a lot of FOMO, fear and angst baked into SF that reflects everywhere from how people size each other up to the transactional nature of many friendships. On the way to work in downtown SF you can't avoid seeing a homeless person yelling at the sky amd you have to do the mental calculus of what places to avoid after 8PM. Sometimes I wonder that if the cradle of the AI race was in a city with beauty and well adjusted happy people like London maybe the trajectory of AI itself would be quite different. Maybe we could make AI a lot more soulful and aligned. As I leave back to SF, I have to keep the spirit of what I saw alive. Thanks to the @aiDotEngineer team for the incredible experience.
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I know Cambridge is much more fortunate than other universities in receiving vast endowments like this, but even at Cambridge the money never seems to find its way to the traditional Humanities and is always focussed on STEM, Business, and in this case Government and Politics 😒
British billionaire to donate £190m to Cambridge University bbc.in/3OfesX3
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Them: "What radicalised you..." Me:
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Pleased to be rejoining the civil service as Investment and AI adviser in DSIT. As an exited founder and angel investor in over a hundred startups I’m hopeful I can help make Britain the place for tech and AI. It’s a part time role as I will still be carrying on my work at Oxford University and on the board of the ALB of the DfE Oak National Academy. This government has made great strides on AI and tech. Excited to get going and help!
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this is actually insane > be tech guy in australia > adopt cancer riddled rescue dog, months to live > not_going_to_give_you_up.mp4 > pay $3,000 to sequence her tumor DNA > feed it to ChatGPT and AlphaFold > zero background in biology > identify mutated proteins, match them to drug targets > design a custom mRNA cancer vaccine from scratch > genomics professor is “gobsmacked” that some puppy lover did this on his own > need ethics approval to administer it > red tape takes longer than designing the vaccine > 3 months, finally approved > drive 10 hours to get rosie her first injection > tumor halves > coat gets glossy again > dog is alive and happy > professor: “if we can do this for a dog, why aren’t we rolling this out to humans?” one man with a chatbot, and $3,000 just outperformed the entire pharmaceutical discovery pipeline. we are going to cure so many diseases. I dont think people realize how good things are going to get
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the future of the UK is being actively formed in the dorm rooms and the London coffee shops and hackathon community spaces we must all find ways to know each other, and the leverage this will provide will be wondrous we can make London in our image
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mcdonald's in the past couple of years (in the uk at least) has gone for this very weird marketing choice where they've moved away from a family-friendly image to instead targeting 13 year olds in tracksuits who listen to dril and go to maccies after school
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