Enabling Humanity With General Intelligence — Kanjun Qiu, CEO & Co-Founder, Generally Intelligent
Kanjun and I both did competitive ballroom dancing back in college. Fast forward many years, in 2020 during covid, when I was stuck in my New York apartment breastfeeding my newborn, I came across Kanjun’s personal website. It was so well-done, with her work, writings, inspiring quotes — including a piece where she discovered “research is about learning something new on top of everything that has been known about a field” — that I reached out to her to chat. After several emails back and forth, we finally made it work and shot an interview in San Francisco last year.
Kanjun is fundamentally driven by how to enable human beings to achieve fullest potential through the power of technology, more specifically, general intelligence. Not just at an individual level, but also at group level, at institutional and societal level. Her company Generally Intelligent is an independent research company answering the question “Why can AI beat chess go but cannot do what a three-year-old can do.” For example, one of their projects Avalon is a 3D open world game where agents must learn to survive by doing what one-year-old can do, such as climb, throw and eat, and gradually the complexities of tasks increase with the hope that agents would learn like humans.
What struck me with Kanjun is how aligned she is as a person, and how much knowledge and power she has accumulated as a result. I told my friend once that the people I want on my show are the people that are extremely aligned in their thoughts, words and deeds. In other words, these are the people who are pursuing their passion, who are spending their entire life creating physical manifestations of what they care the most about, whose alternative universe is the current universe they live in. I believe, only through this “dream energy,” people can become world class masters at what they do. Kanjun, is no doubt, a person like that.
Inspired by our conversation, I went and watched Kanjun’s talk at MIT during her undergraduate years. Already poised and full of passion more than a decade ago, she talked about how to create new avenues to encourage more women to go into computer science or technical fields. And the reason is not merely to create diversity but to unlock otherwise “lost potential.” She discussed the tendency to pick “hard classes in order to be respected” and imagined the kind of education where everyone can be encouraged to be who they are and to become who they were meant to become.
Kanjun shared with me how much she loves running a research lab, which is almost completely opposite from running a company. “When you run a company, you tend to have one goal and eventually most companies are run like factories to produce that outcome. But in research, I think about how to enable everyone to become the most them they can become,” she said. “It’s about creating an environment where people can be pushed to the edge of things and discover something new.”
Finally, I asked Kanjun what rituals she adheres to to become the best version of Kanjun. “Oh this is a question I can answer for hours!” She responded with a laugh. She told me that she does a weekly review, where she looks at the past week, goals accomplished and sets goals for the next week. This weekly review allows her to try different things and course correct accordingly. A lot of the growth she has experienced as a person and as a leader comes from that. She also does a monthly review, quarterly review and annual review. I believe the disciplined self-reflection allowed her to learn at a speed unparalleled, in addition to surrounding herself with people who share similar values and possess agency.
If you are interested in learning about general intelligence, maximizing human potential, unlocking a sense of agency, take a listen at our conversation and follow Kanjun’s work. To me, Kanjun is not only a great person, leader, entrepreneur, researcher, but also an artist constantly creating and recreating her life, all the while empowering those around with her growing intelligence and presence.
Watch our short 1-min video:
Watch our full interview:
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