Amir-massoud Farahmand

Goal: Understanding the computational and statistical principles required to design adaptive agents.
Associate Prof @polymtl @Mila_Quebec 🇨🇦
#MahsaAmini

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

You may know her because of her graphic novels Persepolis OR Chicken with Plums, and their film adaptations.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Marjane Satrapi (1969–2026)😢

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Vision is dead, long live the vision!

[Andrei Bursuc @CVPR @abursuc]

Bill Freeman gives us first a list of warm-up bitter lessons. He keeps the bigger ones for later in the talk. #cvpr2026

[Glen Berseth @GlenBerseth]

I am delighted to share the wonderful news that I have been granted tenure! This milestone marks the completion of my time as an Assistant Professor, and I am profoundly grateful for the support, collaboration, and inspiration I have received from this incredible community.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

@GlenBerseth Congratulations Glen!

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Also I suppose Gell-Mann was super smart, so him getting to MIT, even though he didn't realize that it wasn't such a bad school, wasn't unexpected.
(He got an offer from Harvard without fund; he got rejected from Princeton. His ugrad was from Yale.)
(4/4)

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

First, what MGM mentioned: your actions in life is non-commutative.
Second, listening to a certain group of academic old folks make me think how "effortless" career development seemed to be several decades ago.
(1/4)

[Fermat's Library @fermatslibrary]

Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel prize-winning physicist, on contemplating suicide at 18 after getting into graduate school at MIT

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Of course, this might be a selection bias. Many might have tried and failed, and we just don't hear their stories.
Or maybe this is a story-telling bias: those who've failed a lot before becoming successful don't tell "it was an effortless success!" stories.
(3/4)

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

I don't know enough optics to know if it is possible, but as a customer, I definitely think (and hope!) that the lenses for glasses have room for improvement.
Off-centre distortion and chromatic aberration are noticeable when the prescription is a bit high.

[LaurieWired @lauriewired]

How many technologies are stuck in a local optima?

Big loudspeakers basically peaked in the 1970s.

Obviously we’ve gotten somewhat better, but it’s a lot closer to: “a couple % more accurate” than “the average person immediately notices the +50-year technological progress”

Miniaturization has improved a lot, so has digital signal processing, amplification. But take a high end setup from 50 years ago, sit in the sweet spot at the same volume…it won’t feel radically different.

I’m trying to think of other fields where the underlying principles were so mature that half a century of progress in materials/software/electronics is underwhelming.

Camera Lenses seem like a good candidate. Non-electronic instruments is another; it’s not like cellos have gotten that much better in the last ~300 years.

[Mark Carney @MarkJCarney]

The abominable treatment of civilians aboard the flotilla, including that which is documented in footage shared by Itamar Ben-Gvir, is unacceptable.

Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs has directed officials to summon the Israeli ambassador to demand assurances regarding the safety and security of Canadians involved.

Canada has already imposed strict sanctions on Mr. Ben-Gvir, including asset freezes and a travel ban, in response to his repeated incitement of violence. The protection of civilians and respect for human dignity must be upheld everywhere, at all times.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Shit CEOs say: "I have the deepest gratitude for those affected. We're doing this from a position of strength specifically so we can take care of people properly."
🤣

Meanwhile, "those affected": 🖕

[Zeb Evans @DJ_CURFEW]

Today we reduced headcount by 22%. The business is the strongest it's ever been. So I think it's important to be direct about what I'm seeing and why.

First, I made this decision and I own it. I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, ClickUp needs to change with it.

Second, this wasn't about cutting costs. Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We'll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you'll be paid outside of traditional bands.

Most importantly, I have the deepest gratitude for those affected. We're doing this from a position of strength specifically so we can take care of people properly. Everyone affected receives a package aimed at honoring their contributions and easing the transition.

I only see two options: wait for this to play out gradually in the market or be honest about what I'm seeing and act proactively.

THE 100X ORGANIZATION
The primary change is that we're restructuring around what I call 100x org. The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago.

Incremental improvements to existing systems won't get us there. We need new ones. That means creating enough disruption to rebuild rather than iterate on what's already broken.

The common narrative is that AI makes everyone more productive. It doesn't. Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems.

These roles will evolve. But waiting for that to happen naturally means falling behind now.

The 100x org is actually heavily dependent on people - infinitely more than today. This is only possible with 10x people that have embraced and adopted new ways of working.

THE BUILDERS, AGENT MANAGERS, AND FRONT-LINERS

— THE BUILDERS: 10X ENGINEERS
I don't think most companies have internalized what's actually happening with AI in engineering. The common narrative is that AI makes all engineers more productive. That may be true in isolation, but at an organization level - that is the farthest thing from reality.

Here's what we've validated recently at ClickUp: the great engineers, the ones who can orchestrate, architect, and review, are becoming 100x engineers. They're not writing code. They're directing agents that write code. The skill is judgment.

AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down.
Think about it - the bottlenecks are (1) orchestration - telling AI what to do, and (2) reviewing - what AI did. Everything is leapfrogged and no longer needed.
So who do you want orchestrating and reviewing code?

And how do you want your best engineers to spend their time?

If your best engineers are spending time reviewing other people's code, then this is inherently an inefficient bottleneck. These engineers can review their agent's code much faster than reviewing human code.

The new world is about enabling your 10x engineers to become 100x.

The wrong strategy is to push every engineer to use infinite tokens. Companies doing this are celebrating 500% more pull requests. But customer outcomes don't match the volume of code being generated.

I call this the great reckoning of AI coding, and every company will face this soon if not already.

More code is just another bottleneck to the best engineers, and ultimately to your company's impact as well.

— THE BUILDERS: 10X PRODUCT MANAGERS
Product management and design roles are merging.

Designers that have customer focus, become more like product managers.

And product managers that have intuition for UX become more like designers.

The bottleneck of user research is gone. It takes us just one mention of an agent to kickoff research and analyze results.

The bottleneck of product <> design iteration is also gone. The product builder iterates on their own, along with agents and skills that ensure alignment with quality and strategy.

Also controversial today - I believe that the wrong strategy is to have your PMs shipping code - that just introduces another bottleneck that the best engineers will waste their time on.

To be clear, PMs should be coding but they should do this in a playground to iterate, validate, and scope. That code should not go to production.

Everything outside of managing systems, orchestrating AI, and reviewing output becomes a bottleneck.
That's why the other roles that are critical along with these are the systems managers (to reduce bottlenecks) along with a bottleneck you can't replace - customer meeting time.

— THE SYSTEM MANAGERS
Ironically, the people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job. They become owners of the AI systems - agent managers. We have many examples of these people at ClickUp.

The underlying systems in which we operate are absolutely critical to get right. I think most companies are delusional to think they can iterate on existing systems and compete in this new world.

You must create enough disruption so that old systems are deprecated entirely. If there's any definition for 'AI native' that's what it is.

— THE FRONT-LINERS
In a world that will become saturated with AI communication, the human touch will matter more than anything to customers.

This is a bottleneck that you shouldn't replace - even when agents are high enough quality to do video meetings.

One-on-one meeting time with customers is something that shouldn't be automated. The systems around the meetings should be - so that front-liners spend nearly 100% of their time with customers.

REWARDING 100X IMPACT
In a world where companies are able to do so much more with less, where does that excess money go?
In our case, much of the savings in this new operating model will flow directly back to those that enabled it.

We must reward people that create productivity accordingly. This aligns incentives on both sides. Plus, in a world where your best people create 100x impact, you can't afford to lose them.

You should aim to retain these employees for decades. The context they have and their ability to efficiently orchestrate and review will be nearly impossible to replace.

Compensation bands of today should be thrown out the door. We're introducing $1 million cash/year salary bands with a path available to nearly everyone in the company if they produce 100x impact by creating or managing AI systems.

THE FUTURE
Nearly every company will make changes like these. The ones that do it proactively will define what comes next.

The future is not fewer people. It's different work, new roles, and better rewards for those who embrace it. We're already seeing entirely new roles emerge, like Agent Managers, that didn't exist a year ago.

ClickUp is positioning to lead this shift, not just internally, but for our customers too. I've never been more certain about where we're headed.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

If you have a Reinforcement Learning paper accepted at TMLR, JMLR, JAIR, AIJ, or MLJ, you can use this wonderful opportunity to present your work and meet your peers at RLC in Montreal, Canada. 🇨🇦

[RL_Conference @RL_Conference]

Got a great TMLR paper but missed the RLC deadline?

Following last year’s success, @RL_Conference is back with a Journal-to-Conference track! Accepted TMLR papers within scope are invited to submit for consideration.

Please submit here: https://t.co/Oy0Klzmdj5

[Timothy Gowers @wtgowers @wtgowers]

If you are a mathematician, then you may want to make sure you are sitting down before reading further.

[Richard Sutton @RichardSSutton]

The bitter lesson in 26 words:

Don’t be distracted by human knowledge, as AI has been historically.
Instead focus on methods for creating knowledge that scale with computation, like search and learning.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

She left us too soon! But in her short life, she has influenced math (*) and been a role model to many youngsters. Happy Birthday Maryam Mirzakhani!

(*): I cannot really appreciate her mathematical contributions.

[Mathematica @mathemetica]

Today, May 12, we celebrate the birthday of Maryam Mirzakhani (1977–2017) - the first woman and first Iranian to win the Fields Medal.

Her groundbreaking work on Riemann surfaces and moduli spaces continues to inspire mathematicians worldwide.

May 12 is now International Women in Mathematics Day.

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

@MereSophistry Based on this reasoning, we are all influenced by the original Sumerian or Egyptian writings (true!), and are stuck with them, frozen in about 5000 years ago (not true)!

LLMs will influence our writings, unfortunately, but I don't think we are stuck with them.

[Csaba Szepesvari @CsabaSzepesvari]

I can nominate one Canada Impact+ postdoc candidate at UAlberta. Please reach out only if you have a strong theory track record (learning theory/bandits-RL theory/LLM reasoning). Deadline: May 10 (23:59 MT. Email: CV + best papers + brief pitch. Pls RT https://t.co/pnRmnxPyCi

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

Wish Acrobat Reader remained the nice simple efficient PDF reader it used to be! Now it is a bloatware.
@Adobe

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

This doesn't mean that all ACs do their job properly. This is like any other human activities: some people some times don't do the job well!
Also it doesn't mean that people don't get frustrated by the rejection of a paper with an apparently positive reviews. We all do!

[Amir-massoud Farahmand @SoloGen]

The Area Chair's job isn't to take the average of reviewers' scores and decide based on that. Sometimes this means that they accept a paper, even though some reviewers are recommending rejection. Some other times, it means that they reject a paper, despite positive reviews.