Matt Welsh

LLM and AI hacker. Head of AI Systems @PalantirTech. Ex @ArynInc, @FixieAI, OctoML, Apple, Google, Xnor, Harvard prof. I like big models and I cannot lie.

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

It's not "vibe coding". It's slop coding.

https://t.co/wCniWpZ6I8

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

Some thoughts on Rust and how LLM coding agents have radically changed the landscape when it comes to picking up new languages and tooling for a team.

https://t.co/AqeTqn1pGt

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

I am hiring a team at Palantir to build autonomous systems for area defense. Looking for senior devs in Seattle to join the mission. Job posting below.
https://t.co/VfMzVJqIP5

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

Terms working their way into my lexicon since starting at @PalantirTech: "echelon", "situational awareness", "saved rounds", "throw new SafeIllegalArgumentException()"

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

Today I wrapped up teaching an AI course for older adults at the @OsherLifelong Institute at @UW. Fantastic experience. One of the students even made me chocolate chip cookies. That never happened at Harvard.

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

@PeymanFakharian Probably the Voynich Manuscript

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

I asked ChatGPT to generate an image of what it thinks I look like, based on all of our previous chats, including information about my interests and hobbies. I think it pretty much nailed it.

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

@MabreyTed captures exactly why I chose to join Palantir. It is too easy to be cynical and ignore the complexities of the real world and the real challenges faced by our society. As much as I respect and admire @paulg I think it's important to push back on the cynical view.

[Ted Mabrey @MabreyTed]

I am looking forward to the next set of hires that decided to apply to Palantir after reading your post. Please don’t delete it Paul. We work here in direct response to this world view and do not seek its blessing.

Our work with DHS, which has spanned the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, began in the immediate response to the murder of Agent Jaime Zapata by the Zetas in an effort dubbed Operation Fallen Hero. I believe Agent Zapata and those who have taken the thankless jobs of protecting our way of life by risking their own deserve the very best tools we can possibly give them. When people are alive because of what you built, and others are dead because what you built was not yet good enough, you develop a very different perspective on the meaning of your work.

Paul’s perspective is very similar to that of Google in 2018 when it walked away from Project Maven; the DoD’s flagship program to bring AI to warfighting. Google embraced the luxury belief that our way of life is given and that, as the best and brightest of us, they were above wrestling with the hard questions in the muck and mire of how to continue to ensure their privilege. It was much easier to sell ads. Like our DHS agents, I also believe our soldiers deserve the very best tools as they risk their lives to protect mine. The sentiment expressed below, that engineers have the luxury of working on other cool stuff so should not sully themselves with the functions that provide the bedrock of society, is something I thought we had largely left behind. Now I have a greater understanding of one of its root causes.

For those of you who are interested in joining, we are not looking for partisans at Palantir. Our mission spans administrations and political climates and our culture is one of constant disagreement. We do collectively believe that competence in our government is a prerequisite for our way of life and assume the burden of falling forward on the goal to provide it every single day. We are in a situation today where no matter the immigration policy the citizenry votes for, it cannot be executed; reality has largely been divorced from the statutes for decades now. This is first a question of competence, not politics. If the electorate cannot steer the execution of our government because the government cannot execute, our institutions lose all credibility, and the risk moves from an X debate to a much more fundamental one. We work to attach the steering wheel to the car and revitalize the institutions our societal fabric depends upon. We are looking for people who read something like this post and think it is crazy to demonize working towards a more effective government.

In order to understand if Palantir is for you, I encourage you to do your research. Read Karp’s book “The Technological Republic.” The book eviscerates the vapidity of silicon valley expressed here but also explores the positive thesis of what are the principles that actually matter when wrestling with the questions of how to empower the functioning of the state. It is perhaps the most important debate we should be having and Karp has been the leader of that conversation, so out in the open about it the book is an NYT Bestseller. I’d also encourage you to read The First Breakfast blog series that Shyam has championed; I think it is one of the foremost examples of impactful, non-partisan, civic engagement that exists in our country right now. We are very open about our views and how deeply they are reasoned if you care to read them.

We hire believers. Not in the sense of homogeneity of belief but in the intrinsic capacity to believe in something bigger than yourself. Belief is required because 1) our work is very, very hard and 2) you should expect to weather attacks like this all the time; from all sides of the political aisle. In order to stand out, build something with our software that you believein and bring it to your interview. The only way to counter these bullies is not to argue but to build.

Our work is authentically complicated. We protected the lives of special operators during failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were the backbone of Operation Warpspeed to accelerate vaccines during Covid, we were the coordinating backbone of the Afghan withdrawal, we have enabled David to resist Goliath in Ukraine. These, and many, many other efforts too numerous to list here have been necessarily intertwined with heated political debates about the worthiness of engaging in these effort at all. My politics have not agreed with many of the policies our software has enabled. But through all of them I have held the steadfast belief that if our government institutions are not competent, politics does not matter. That is something I believe.

So if you believe that engaging with the problem of 100,000 fentanyl deaths a year, stopping human trafficking, or merely in reconnecting the laws our elected representatives create with the reality of what is implemented we believe you aren’t a bad person. If you think that “building things people want” is all there is to life I wish you all the best. There is a place for you in the society we will protect on your behalf. If you are willing to engage with the messy, messy process of “building things the people need” then you may have a home at Palantir.

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

@oanaolt It was great back in 1997

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

I haven't written significant Java code in more than 25 years, but thanks to ChatGPT it's all coming back to me now ... like riding a bicycle with fifteen extra pedals and no seat

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

Sharing some of my reasons for my latest career shift and joining @PalantirTech.

https://t.co/f2YfmBPGGI

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

Just to be clear: I have nothing to do with @MattWalshBlog. (@timesofindia ran a story apparently confusing me with him.)

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

I'm open sourcing https://t.co/ztfEDjmyHa, the AI-powered podcast app that I've developed over the last few months.

https://t.co/SB7B5upfoO
https://t.co/U8hXhrlSD8
https://t.co/V7504wdaLl

[Ultravox AI @ultravox_dot_ai]

Today we're releasing Ultravox v0.5, the next iteration of our open-weight speech language model

With this release, we've closed the gap with proprietary models. Ultravox now outperforms GPT-4o Realtime & Gemini 1.5 Flash on key benchmarks for speech understanding

🧵

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

I’m excited to announce that I have joined @PalantirTech as Head of AI Systems, applying AI to critical national security challenges.

https://t.co/AZJSkjA4AU

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

In an effort to avoid spending $350 to replace an e-ink tablet with a broken USB port, I have successfully spent $400 on equipment and materials to repair it myself. #winning

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

Use of AI tools like @cursor_ai is spoiling me. I now expect to be able to just hit <tab> in any window and have everything autocomplete. <tab><tab><tab><tab>

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

@doppenhe Yes, yes. This was also my excuse for a while

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

I HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO MAKE TABLES IN LATEX. I am pretty sure this means I forfeit my PhD.

[Matt Welsh @mdwelsh]

Like the rest of the Artificial Intelligentsia, I have switched to @cursor_ai as my IDE of choice. So much more powerful than Copilot! Not sure I can write code without an LLM behind the scenes anymore.