Ask HN: Anyone here conducting independent academic research?
Sort of, yes. I have been doing some AGI related research. But I haven&#x27;t gotten far enough with anything to have anything concrete enough to even consider publishing (even if one counts uploading to a pre-print server like arXiv as publishing). Mostly I just have a boiling cauldron of (loosely?) connected ideas bubbling around in my head and I spend as much time as I can exploring different aspects of that, looking for some concrete aspect to really latch onto and &quot;lean into&quot;.<p>That said...<p><i>Do you work on your research full-time or are is it a personal side project?</i><p>Basically &quot;side project mode.&quot; Technically I do it within the rubric of Fogbeam Labs, but none of this AI stuff is anything that could make money at the moment, and Fogbeam itself is basically a side project to begin with. So think of it as a &quot;side project to a side project&quot; if you will.<p><i>What field do you work in?</i><p>AI, specifically researching AGI.<p><i>How do you fund your research?</i><p>I work full-time as a &quot;principal engineer&quot; at an F500 insurance company. The work isn&#x27;t crazy exciting, but it leaves me a lot of mental &#x2F; emotional &#x2F; spiritual &#x2F; creative energy to work on stuff outside of work and it pays the bills. And everything is above-board from an IP standpoint. I fill out a disclosure form once a year that discloses any outside &quot;stuff&quot; I&#x27;m working on and certify that it doesn&#x27;t conflict with my $DAYJOB role. If they ever had reason to think that wasn&#x27;t the case, they would dig deeper and presumably either ask me to quit working on it, or ask me to quit, or something. But up to this point, it has never been an issue. The stuff I do at the $DAYJOB is pretty divergent from anything I do on the side, so really there&#x27;s no reason for any issues there.<p><i>Do you have a formal academic background in the field (or an adjecent field)?</i><p>I studied computer science in college, but dropped out before finishing my Bachelor&#x27;s degree. But honestly, most of what I know about AI falls into the &quot;self taught&quot; category. But I&#x27;m not one of those crackpots you meet sometimes in AI, physics, etc., who doesn&#x27;t read &quot;the literature&quot; and dreams up crazy ideas that fly in the face of currently accepted science. I actually spend a <i>lot</i> (arguably <i>most</i>) of my time reading &quot;the literature&quot; - including stuff from computer science, cognitive science, mathematics, neuroscience, and electrical engineering. You&#x27;re as likely as not to find me in the cafe at the local Barnes &amp; Noble reading a neuroscience textbook.<p><i>Do you collaborate with others, if yes how did you find collaborators, if no why?</i><p>Not really. I mean, I&#x27;m on the OpenCog Slack server and read some of the messages there, but rarely post anything. And I&#x27;ve exchanged a couple of emails with a couple of professors in formal academia who wrote a book that I was reading. Once to ask for some data they referenced in the book (which they happily provided!) and another time to ask for clarification on some subtle point in the book. That little exchange led to a loose &quot;email back if you come up with something and maybe we can collaborate&quot; level of engagement.<p>Beyond that, my interaction with other people on this topic are basically limited to my being one of the mods on the ai.stackexchange.com site, and my posting on many HN threads that touch on AI.<p>If I were actively looking for collaborators, those low-key, casual sorts of exchanges mentioned above are probably where I&#x27;d start actually. I wouldn&#x27;t, OTOH, randomly cold email people saying &quot;Hey, I&#x27;m into AI, let&#x27;s collaborate!&quot; or post on HN with one of those &quot;Cofounder sought&quot; type posts reading &quot;Academic research collaborator sought&quot;. No, I&#x27;d start with simple, low commitment exchanges with people who have demonstrated that they have overlapping (knowledge|interests|skills|whatever) and try to demonstrate to them that I also have the same, and then let it build up from there.<p>To return to the idea of publishing research: I&#x27;ve never even bothered trying to get an &quot;endorsement&quot; on arXiv (I did go as far as creating an account though), but I think I know enough people who are in formal academia, to where I could probably get endorsed to upload something if&#x2F;when I had something ready. I&#x27;ve heard mixed things about how hard it is to do that when you&#x27;re not part of formal academia, so I&#x27;d say that if you want to do independent research, it might still be a good idea to at least try and cultivate some friendships (or t least acquaintanceships) with people who are part of &quot;the establishment&quot; just so you have people you can turn to to help bridge that sort of gap when the time comes.