Vamsi Varanasi

theory of RNA @NYU_courant & AI x science @southpkcommons // fmrly founder @soraidinc (acq. by @clear), physics/ee @stanford

[Sam Rodriques @SGRodriques]

I have spent my entire life working on this and thinking about this for the past 4 years. I don't know what will happen in 20 years, but I can promise you that on the 5-10 year timescale, scientists are not out of their jobs. AI is going to massively accelerate the pace of science, increase productivity, let individual scientists make way more discoveries way faster, and is going to make science overall more fun. But the model is going to be collaboration between humans and AI, not replacement.

The key difference here between science and e.g. software engineering is that science is not verifiable in any rapid/convenient way (unlike software), unlike programming. We still need humans for their scientific taste.

[Anjney Midha @AnjneyMidha]

rough shape of progress based on current data

'22 - chatgpt - consumer s/w
'25 - claude/coding - enterprise s/w
'26 - '29 - [redacted] - advanced mfg, iphone killer, materials 2.0
'29 - ??

enabled by cambrian explosion of r&d to clear progress bottlenecks

[Nicholas Larus-Stone @nlarusstone]

While I generally agree with the point that agents being good at code means the first application in bio will be agents writing code (to paraphrase), this misses the key point about how to enable this effectively: context.

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

@zan2434 @eddiejiao_obj @drewocarr This is sick man

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

@sam_kececi I've been waiting for this!!

[Sam K @sam_kececi]

We raised $6.5m to build humanity’s platform for uploaded consciousness.

Sentience creates one unique model for every person — a digital twin of your mind — to remember everything, recall what matters, and operate as you.

I started this company because I am worried. For the first time, we have intelligence that will fully replace humans across a range of domains within a few years.

For those outside of the tech echo chamber, this is a period wrought with confusion and uncertainty about what actually matters anymore. I’ve had numerous conversations with people who aren’t sure if they have any value as a unique human being, or whether their own thinking matters. While Silicon Valley goes full speed ahead towards AGI, many people are left wondering what place they have in this AI future.

If I can communicate one thing to everyone out there with these doubts, it would be this: your unique knowledge, memories, and who you are still matter. In fact, these things matter now more than ever.

The problem is that the course of AI is heading towards a world where all of us will outsource our thinking to the same one-size-fits-all AI models. This is not a hypothetical future. If 100,000 people ask a question to ChatGPT, every single person gets the same answer. You can see the cost of uniform AI models across writing, social media, and even academic papers. This uniformity is more than annoying – it’s dangerous.

There’s a genuine chance that we lose the texture and vibrancy that makes us unique as a species.

I founded The Sentience Company to arm real humans against this dystopian outcome.

First, your Sentience lets you collect everything that holds context from your life, learning from what you do across every platform – starting on desktop and mobile. Never forget a detail again.

Second, your Sentience becomes the best recall engine for everything in your life. Never copy/paste context or search across 50 chrome tabs again.

Finally, your Sentience becomes the full simulation of you – an AI model that thinks and acts like you, to scale and share your unique ideas and interact with others. Your Sentience emulates more than your context. It understands your values, emotions, drive, and goals.

We’re creating a world where you can leverage your own Sentience model alongside the models of your colleagues and friends to jam on ideas and access their knowledge 24/7.

We’re not building Sentience to scale AGI and replace more human thinking. We’re building Sentience to scale you.

We’re proud that many amazing humans are supporting our mission. Our round was led by @kevinzhang (@BainCapVC), with participation from @ditzikow, @adityaag, @evantana, @AgrawalArian, @gopalkraman, @JPBrebner (@southpkcommons), @rex_woodbury, @tmrohan, @soleio, @anniecase1, and many more.

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

@arjunrajlab @OdedRechavi The mindset I've found helpful: in the age of AI, every junior scientist becomes a PI of their research team of bots, and every PI a department chair

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

when did we agree to live in a world where we fill in otp codes 10 times a day, every single day???

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

@arscontexta What is science if not adding nodes and shuffling edges on humanity's shared context graph?? Imagine bots remembering incremental results as they help scientists, and scientists sharing/merging learnings by comparing diffs between graphs

(we are building this; dms open)

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

tis a time of great optimism (my orchids are blooming again)

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

@Mark_Goldberg_ Probably illegal the same way buying options on a public company you work at is

[Alfred Lin @Alfred_Lin]

https://t.co/FC94GCchfp

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

@gsivulka Well said—productizing something is way harder than you'd think, and is still bottlenecked by human attention

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

@LuciusCaviola You should loop in @sam_kececi !

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

@OpenAI @the_IAS @VanderbiltU @Cambridge_Uni @Harvard awesome!

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

@josiezayner what is a hypothesis if not a guess??

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

seeing this, freaking out, then realizing the preprint has been out since 2024. why am i just finding out about this???

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

AI is cool and all... but a new paper in @ScienceMagazine kind of figured out the origin of life?

The paper reports the discovery of a simple 45-nucleotide RNA molecule that can perfectly copy itself.

[Vamsi Varanasi @feynmanpoint]

not surprising—science at its best (and most fun) is dialectical, and chatbots give us whiteboard-style discussions at our fingertips, but then naturally you become your own echo chamber

begs the question: how do we get our bots to cross pollinate ideas by talking to each other??

[nature @Nature]

Nature research paper: Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus

https://t.co/3iidXyp6p9