After 15 years of building Wingify, Paras Chopra spent some time deliberating about his next stint.

For years, he had chased the 0 to 1 journey of building something from the ground up and watching it grow. He wanted to chase that in his next stint too.

But he knew it had to be different.

There would be no product. Forget that, he decided the next project would barely have any commercial inclination. Instead, he followed his curiosity and instinct as a child passionate about science.

That’s how Lossfunk, a “cosy home” for “independent researchers” was born.

Paras describes Lossfunk as the place where everyone — from undergrads to PHDs to just inquisitive people— ask foundational questions on AI away from the pressures that burden academia and labs attached to big tech companies.

In this episode of Zero Shot, Paras gets into the journey of Lossfunk and talks about its motivations and principles.

Now, a lot of the questions Lossfunk is asking might not result in a flashy new product that changes consumer behaviour. They might just become a research paper. Or two. For Paras, that's completeley alright because building a “research attitude” may fully be the point.
____

This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.
____

Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.

Write to us at [email protected]. We are all ears!

Additional Resources

Lossfunk

https://lossfunk.com

Inverted Passion

https://invertedpassion.com

Esoteric programming languages

https://spectrum.ieee.org/esoteric-programming-languages-daniel-temkin

Manifesto for doing good science in AI

https://letters.lossfunk.com/p/manifesto-for-doing-good-science

Particle Fever

https://particlefever.com/