How to Use AI to Become a Learning Machine

TL;DR: Today we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast AI & I. I go in depth with Simon Eskildsen, the cofounder and CEO of AI startup turbopuffer. We get into Simon’s approach to learning; how the contextual intelligence of LLMs has accelerated his process; and his take on how AI rewires the way we learn, and what that means for the next generation. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

I first interviewed him in 2020 about how he leveled up from being an intern at Shopify to becoming the company’s director of production engineering by reading and applying insights from hundreds of books.

A lot has changed over the last four years. Language models have made it possible to access and contextualize information faster, easier, and more cheaply than ever before—and in this episode, Simon and I talk about how this changes the way he learns. 

Simon is now the cofounder and CEO of AI startup turbopuffer, which is building a search engine that makes vector search—an approach to information retrieval that uses machine learning to gather context—easy and affordable to run at scale.

We spent an hour talking about how he leverages LLMs’ contextual intelligence to supercharge his learning, such as helping him pick up new words as a non-native English speaker, do odd jobs to maintain his rural cabin in Quebec, and articulate technical concepts in legalese. As we talk, we screenshare through his Anki setup, including the flashcard template he finds most useful, and the custom AI commands he’s created in productivity software Raycast. Simon tells me about the clutch of AI tools he experiments with for journaling, writing, and coding, as well as his thoughts on how language models will fundamentally reshape the way we learn. Here’s a link to the transcript of this episode.  

This is a must-watch for note-taking aficionados and anyone who wants to supercharge their learning with AI.

Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 

Go deeper with Simon

Every paid subscribers can read the top takeaways from this episode, such as:

• How entrepreneurship and parenthood have changed Simon’s learning rituals
• How Simon uses Claude, ChatGPT, Notion AI, and other specialized AI tools every day in his work and life
• The custom AI commands that Simon finds himself revisiting to learn new words and cook creative dishes
• Simon’s take on how AI is rewiring how we learn and what that means for the next generation

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