Her Story
About Sai
Sai Akula specializes in AI tech with a focus on multimodal post-training of large language models at Meta, where she began on the Llama team contributing to open source work and now works on proactive assistance for Ray-Ban glasses. She earned her computer science degree from IIT Bombay in India and later pursued a part-time master's at NYU, which sparked her interest in AI research. Prior to this, she worked as a quantitative researcher building autocoding systems in finance after moving from Bangalore to New York, and she completed the CFA and FRM exams to deepen her finance knowledge. Sai attributes her success to a philosophy of expanding experiences while minimizing regrets and suffering, extending this optimization to family and others, emphasizing curiosity, ambition, usefulness, and helpfulness. She advises young women entering the field that AI changes rapidly, so they should model variance into career choices such as startups or Big Tech, avoid self-elimination from opportunities, remain confident and innovative, stay curious, ask questions, and embrace discomfort.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Sai
01What do you attribute your success to?
I have a philosophy that we usually tend to optimize to expand your experiences and minimize your regrets and suffering. Once you finish doing this optimization for yourself, do it for your parents, family, friends, and everyone in the world. To maximize experiences, curiosity, ambition, usefulness, and being helpful to others are the things that matter to me and have brought me here.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
AI changes so quickly. Model variance into your career optimization - consider startups, early startups, or Big Tech but understand the high variance. Do not eliminate yourself from opportunities before they eliminate you. Be confident and innovative. Be curious, open to learning, always ask questions, put yourself in uncomfortable situations.
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