Eddie Zhang

Transcendence: Generative Models Can Outperform The Experts That Train Them

• Theoretically and empirically demonstrates that generative models can outperform the experts that train them by low-temperature sampling
• Ran experiments on the domains of toy Gaussian setting, Chess, and NLP (SQuAD v2)

Social Environment Design

• Introduces a research agenda towards using Generative AI for social good
• Sits at the intersection of EconCS, MARL, Computational Social Choice, and Mechanism Design

Towards Generalist Agents Through Scaling Offline Reinforcement Learning

• Introduced new perspectives on pursuing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) under the modern data-driven regime
• Proposed a computability hypothesis regarding the potential and limits of applying RL for the real-world

Language Control Diffusion

• Proposed and created language conditioned diffusion RL models, enabling generalization in control through large language models
• Ran several experiments comparing baselines and proposed method on distributed FAIR cluster through SLURM

Safety Research

Visting Researcher

• Started work on an ongoing hierarchical RL project with Chuang Gan with potential for solving extreme long-horizon control problems such as minecraft diamond crafting
• Won 3rd place out of 19 in NeurIPS Integrated Language and Understanding Challenge, receiving a $1500 cash prize

Research Intern

• Proposed, analyzed, and deployed new group page configuration reducing misinformation by 4%, improving the experience of 3 million daily active users
• Created new facebook post ranking model with 17% gain on offline engagement area under curve (AUC) metrics
• Started work on Language Control Diffusion with Amy Zhang

Computer Vision and Software Engineering Intern

• Developed multiple view calibration pipeline through planar homographies and OpenCV.
• Created set up process and capture script for NVIDIA Jetson platform with multiple third party imaging providers.
• Designed and led benchmarking of several potential imaging candidates in low light, high light, and no light settings.
• Refactored and contributed to primary user-facing web application, utilizing VueJS and Express.

Lead Full Stack Engineer/First Hire

• Led development on cloud platform in early stage startup, collaborating directly with the CEO to architect and implement proprietary API.
• Taught advanced Vue JS by taking complete responsibility at each step of the development phase – delivered full web application while teaching and leading two other interns working on the same project.
• Built and deployed 27000 line python backend to use Elastic Beanstalk, implementing dockerized development process to speed up iteration cycles by 25%.
• Gained experience with emerging web technologies such as JWT, ProtoBuf, and Nuxt.js.

Founder and Lead Tutor

• Assessed a need for tutoring code and critical thinking to children, as programming skills arose in demand and traditional tutoring services struggled to keep up.
• Collaborated with several students and parents to create lasting relationships
• Applied ability to learn rapidly and on the fly through the picking up and application of basic marketing to give sales pitches on the tutoring service
• Organized an extensive programming curriculum of 24 lessons
• Taught over 200 hours of coding and critical thinking to students
• Gained comprehensive experience with Google Cloud, Nginx, WordPress, and Frontend Web Dev through creating the tutoring business’ website, at yaitea.com