Meet the Patronus team: Hersh Mehta

Bio:

My name is Hersh Mehta, and I am a Staff Research Engineer at Patronus AI. I have over 10 years of experience in leading zero-to-one greenfield AI/ML research projects at companies like Meta, Cruise, and Uber ATG. This includes driving ideation all the way to deployment across a diverse breadth of industries like self-driving, virtual reality, and algorithmic trading. I love to bridge the research-engineering divide by leading focused projects that deliver novel research ideas from publication to product in a matter of hours and days, not weeks or months.

Q: Why are you excited to join Patronus AI?

I learned about Patronus AI through a LinkedIn job posting shared by a friend. When I applied, I honestly didn't expect to find myself working here a month later. I learned about the team, company and mission through the interview process and the mission resonated with me. Patronus is a collection of extremely intelligent, passionate and friendly people who are working together to solve a key challenge facing society, this reminded me a lot of the early days of working at Uber ATG, during which I had to the opportunity to do some of the most challenging and fulfilling work in my life.However, what really sealed the deal for me was conversations with the teams at other firms I was interviewing with. Through these conversations I realized how nascent field of LLM alignment really is, the amount of resources large multinational corporations are investing in it and yet are unable to compete with Patronus. It became clear to me that the maximum EV play was not to join one of these firms as a cog in the wheel, but instead go to Patronus, build the best alignment system in the world and turn around and sell it to the same companies at much more favorable prices than what they were spending on their internal R&D teams.

Q: What do you like to do in your free time?

When I'm not working, I unwind by working out, playing video games, watching movies or debating the nuances of Eastern philosophy and spirituality.

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