Eric Jang
Eric Jang writes about AI and robotics, creates machine learning tutorials, and is the author of AI is Good for You and a former VP of AI at 1X.
At 100 nudges, fangea sends Eric’s team an official invite.
🔒 Star boosts open once Eric claims this page.
Latest
Eric’s happenings, collected from public sources, plus their backstory and Starbook, where fans write.
Known for
Dwarkesh Podcast
Book
Robotics at Google
1XOverview
- Work
- AI researcher, author and machine learning tutorial writer
- Education
- Applied mathematics and computer science, with a concurrent computer science master’s at Brown University, 2012–2016
- Research milestone
- Co-authored Categorical Reparameterization with Gumbel-Softmax in 2016
- Senior research scientist in robotics, 2016–2022
- 1X
- Vice President of AI, 2022–2026
Mini bio
How it started.
Eric’s research story began at high school science fairs and a UCSF lab studying telomeres. They once wanted to become a deep sea marine biologist, but found software a faster way to test ideas. Andrew Ng’s machine learning course sparked an interest in 2012; a 2015 talk by Sergey Levine helped point them toward robot learning.
Research people can learn from.
At Google, Eric worked on learning systems for robots and co-authored the Gumbel-Softmax paper with Shixiang Gu and Ben Poole. Their website turns research into tutorials, while their Google work included co-leading the Brain Moonshot team that produced SayCan.
From the lab to the home.
Eric joined the company now called 1X in 2022 as its first California employee and built out the AI team. Alongside that work, they wrote AI is Good for You, a book begun in 2019 that brings their ideas about general intelligence to readers without equations or code.
A fresh chapter.
After leaving 1X in January 2026, Eric returned to learning and explaining ideas in public. Their recent work includes rebuilding AlphaGo, exploring automated research workflows and teaching the underlying ideas on the Dwarkesh Podcast.
Creditschronological, newest first
Writing and teaching
- 2026AutoGoTutorial creator
- 2026Building AlphaGo from scratchDwarkesh Podcast guest
- 2023AI is Good for YouAuthor
AI and robotics
- 2025NEO home robot launch announcementCo-author with Dar Sleeper and Bernt Børnich
- 2022Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic AffordancesResearch co-author; SayCan team co-lead
- 2016Categorical Reparameterization with Gumbel-SoftmaxCo-author with Shixiang Gu and Ben Poole
Quotes
My career goal is to build machines that improve exponentiallyEric Jang, About page
Their stated career goal: https://evjang.com/about/
Trivia
- Eric enjoys cooking, baking and backpacking.
- They once hoped to become a deep sea marine biologist.
- Eric and their first hire at 1X worked from Eric’s garage for a few months.
- They began writing AI is Good for You in 2019.
Find Eric
Follow Eric’s essays, tutorials and notes on AI and robotics.
Are you Eric Jang?
Fans built this page. Claim it to connect with them and unlock Star boosts, or request a takedown if you’d rather it not exist.