Hi, I’m Smitty (aka loops/smitop on the Internet)! I have a lot of varied interests. I really like having fun, and a lot of things I do is guided by what I find interesting to work on. I really like working with computers. I also really like having interesting conversations with other people; I find discussing things with people is a really fun way for me to expand my knowledge of the world. I really like playing discussion-based games like BoTC.
My life history
I was born in 2004 near Waterloo, Canada. I did a lot of computer touching as a child, and really liked making software. I started working as a software engineer at a database startup the day I turned 18, and soon after moved to Toronto. I mostly worked on Rust-based PostgreSQL extensions (for working with time-series data and vector data), but I also spent some time doing random other stuff there.
At the end of 2025 I felt like I could be doing things much more useful for the world than what I was doing at my job. AI capabilities seem to be increasing rapidly, and it was hard for me to justify working on databases when it seemed like working on AI could have a much bigger positive impact on the future. I generally think current efforts to accelerate AI capabilities are probably bad; I think there’s a very large risk that we will create transformative AI that acts in ways I don’t like (like probably killing everybody). It would be great to create a friendly AI but we don’t seem to be on track to doing that with current methods.
I quit my job in December 2025 to focus on learning and deciding what I should do next with my life. I did ARENA in London in January/February 2026, spent the rest of February and March not really doing too much while hanging out in Montreal, and then went to Inkhaven in April 2026. I spent May 2026 in Toronto, but I didn’t really love it because Toronto is a worse city than other places I could be in. I was in the SF bay area for June/July because the bay area is great and has a lot of great spaces I like being in. I did some AI safety research but I don’t think it was that great. I spent two weeks in August back in Toronto. Since late August I’ve been living in London, UK. I’m doing some more AI safety research here; I hope that it’s good!
Problems with me
Here are some problems I have. I’m trying to fix them!
- I have too much of a tendency to just follow the default path without considering it enough
- I often waste my time doing activities that I don’t endorse as a good use of my time in hindsight
- I worry too much about saving trivial amounts of money
- I have nr-axSpA (ankylosing spondylitis) which prevents me from bending over all the way (I can’t even get close to touching my toes) and sometimes makes it hard for me to walk. (I’ve been taking a fairly new drug which solves like 90% of the problems since December 2025)
Interests
What I’m interested in now
- AI safety
- LLM interpretability
- Cybersecurity
- Reverse-engineering
- Improving my writing
- Nix/NixOS
Things that seem interesting to learn about more
- Linear algebra
- Kantian ethics
- Decision theory
- Writing GLSL shaders
- GPU programming
What I used to be interested in
I’m still kinda interested in these things, but I don’t do them much anymore.
- Running mainline Linux on mobile devices
- I used to run Plasma Mobile as my main mobile operating system (and made several contributions to it), but eventually I switched to Android because it had much more support for things I needed
- Doing 3D animation with Blender
- I like making creative works; Blender is pretty good for that!
- Making educational YouTube videos
- Improving the free data on Wikidata and OpenStreetMap
Favorite things
- Color: yellow (it used to be cyan, but I decided yellow is just better)
- Food: pasta
- Letter:
J - Polyhedron: octahedron
- English dialect: American English
