Brent Burdick

Main points in favor of this grant

Spaced Repetition is one of the best tools out there to accelerate the learning pace and retention of anything. Anki, the most commonly used app, works fairly well. But it's mostly old software, and GPT4 opened up huge, underutilized opportunities for accelerating learning pace. I wonder why we still don't have automated flashcard creation, personalized feeds of content from a textbook, personalized explanations of concepts, etc. I'd be excited to see these integrated into a couple of great tools.

Brent has been working on this and generating lots of ideas. He thinks that "Anki v2" is overdue. He's dropped out of university to self-teach software engineering, and is currently exploring what to do next. In the spirit of investing in people, not projects, Brent is a quick learner, very thoughtful, and quick to get stuff done. I'm excited to support Brent in whatever he's doing next, but especially his focus on improving learning tech has been promising.

Donor's main reservations

It's possible Brent ends up failing to build something that's notably better than Anki or doesn't make good use of his next months of exploration.

Process for deciding amount

Common career redevelopment grant size intended for 3-6 months of exploration, new projects, etc. (Cf. Emergent Ventures, ZFellows)

Conflicts of interest

Important to note, Brent is a housemate and friend. Though, this allowed me to see him make rapid progress on his initial projects and made me confident in recommending this project.