I came across Sergei Nozdrenkov through a post on LinkedIn saying:
"Hey friends, I’m looking for a founding engineer and founding AI research scientist to build multimodal foundation models for natural ecosystems, starting with 3D coral reef data."
He is the founder of Wildflow. This is a continuation of the nature data theme last touched on with Alex Logan in the episode about Cecil.
Sergei is an overwhelming intellect. It is a source of great hope that someone of his calibre plans to make a multimodal foundation model to assist in the understanding of coral reefs. Usually they're optimising dark patterns on social media platforms or designing weapons. So Sergei is a light of hope and optimism in the emerging foundation models industry.
He was so patient. He enthusiastically fielded my initial questions about the basics of foundation models and LLMs before then going into incredible detail on conservation methods for coral reefs. Without hesitation he included asides like a quick explanation of Gaussian Splatting.
Oh, and we started at the end of his product roadmap: terraforming. Yes, that's how much we covered. I don't really have much to say except that I present this as assistance to those responding to his call for founding engineer and founding AI scientist. He checks all the boxes for an inspirational, broad minded leader capable of humor.
Sergei has seen and done an incredible amount - yet he retains a childlike curiosity and enthusiasm. We have a lot to learn from him.