2024 Augmentation Residency
Wearable AI & Personal Agents
The 2024 Augmentation Summer Residency is a 2-month hacker accelerator for top AI & hardware talent in Cambridge, MA to build the next personal AI interfaces for a safe and open future.
The cohort encompasses 12 top engineers and designers from 7 countries, including 1 YC and 5 other founders, early unicorn engineers, multi-award-winning researchers, and PhD and grad students from Harvard, MIT, and the University of Rome.
The Augmentation Residency provides a platform for product discovery and validation. Residents collaborate on projects that align with the Augmentation Lab's mission of building open systems that protect users from malicious intentions and exploitation, instead enhancing transparency and well-being.
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They also receive access to physical resources, potential co-founders, and a tailored educational program for living with AI in the 21st century.
Residents will have a wearable throughout the residency to build their own personal AI.
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Final dates: 1 July - 31 August 2024, virtual pre-program starts 24 June
Location: Cambridge, MA
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Applications are closed. ​Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/46KxVDtr57
Supported by
We are moving towards a future of human-machine symbiosis
Personalized AI can diagnose our diseases, increase our productivity, augment our relationships, and even make decisions for us. We need new physical interfaces that integrate AI seamlessly into our lives.
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But Personal AI is also a dangerous tool for censorship and control. An AI based on you can clone your voice, copy your writing style, and create ads and political content that know exactly what to target you with.
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The 2024 Augmentation Residency on Wearable AI & Personal Agents focuses on making AI context-aware, private, and open.
Organizers
All team members are core members of the Augmentation Lab. They are transdisciplinary developers who have been building genAI apps, ML systems, robotics, wearables, and XR experiences for several years.
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Hardware & software hacker, physicist, philosopher
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Physics & CS Senior @Harvard
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Former VP @Harvard Conflux Art-Tech
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Experiences at CERN & Harvard Nanoscale Optics Lab
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Working on Multiagent simulations & modeling perception mathematically
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x-disciplinary developer, writer, neuroscientist
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Incoming graduate researcher @MIT Media Lab
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Bioinformatics @ULeipzig
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Biomedical Sciences & Neuroscience @UCL
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Co-wrote a book on scale-ups
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Working on integrating biosignals into LLMs & AI wearables
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Transdisciplinary Engineer and Creative Rebel
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Incoming graduate researcher @MIT Media Lab
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Design Technology @ Harvard
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BFA & professional dancer @Julliard
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Autodidact CS, mechanical engineering, public policy, futurist
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Native hacker, building XR, robotics, personal Al
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Designing a special major in Human Augmentation @ Harvard College
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Dropped out to be the
CTO @ Vision Cycle, raised to-date $2.5M -
Co-founded the Harvard
AR/VR Developers Club -
Founded a phone repair company at 16, with over 2400 customers & 900 repairs
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Extraterrestrial bioengineering innovator
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Biomedical Engineering @ UoF
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Research in space biology, biocompatible microgels, implantables, and bioprinting organoids for COVID-19
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Passionate about space synthetic biology, extraterrestrial habitat development & sustainable space exploration
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Creative Neurotechnologist, Wearables Strategy Consultant
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Brain-Computer Interface Researcher @ MIT Media Lab
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Psychology & CS @ University of Toronto
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Working on biosensing wearables that improve cognitive health with thoughtful go-to-market strategies for consumer impact
2024 Residents
Selected Fellows for the 2024 Augmentation Lab Residency -- 12 amazing builders with a team from 9 different countries.
To culminate the program, we are organizing the **2024 Human Augmentation Summit** and want to support the Boston and Beyond Ethical Technology community. 🌎
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Artist in Residence @ Dassault Systèmes
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Research Scientist @ ONTBO
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Research Assistant @ Deezer Research
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Multimodal AI, BCI, Media Arts
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Interested in Brain Decoding, Foundation Models, Wearables, Hardware/Maker
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I sleep with an EEG cap on for art's sake!
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Hardware researcher and physics student at NYU
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Circuit design, FPGAs, electronics engineering, wearables
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​Built a Magnetic Tunnel Junction RNG & Wearable GPS​
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Istanbul Technical University, Architecture ‘21
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MIT SMArchS Architectural Design ‘25
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Technology and Interaction Design, Architecture and Urban Design, Digital Fabrication and 3D Modeling, Wearable Technology and AI​
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On leave from Brown
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Previously at Founders, Inc.
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Founded YouLearn, an AI tutor
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Building Iris, an AI wearable that captures the world as you see it
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Building hardware and software projects in AI
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I lived in Japan for 5 years
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Currently pursuing a PhD in Design
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Worked as graphic and interaction designer
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Design Research
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Wearable Assistive Technology
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I play stressful video games to relax
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MLE Intern @ Kaiser Permanente
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CS & Philosophy @ Virginia Tech
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VP Ops, KiranaKart/ Zepto (YC W21)
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LLM Engineer Intern @Raylu
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AI/ML Software Engineer Intern @ConstructWorks AI
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Atlas Fellow
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Founded Cobra Kendama at 13 (1,000+ sales)
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Prev-Founding Engineer @ Andi (YC-Backed AI Startup)
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I made an AI trained on my life
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AI Engineering, Personal AI, Startups
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​Interested in hardware, BCIs, and wearables
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Brain Decoding, BCIs, NeuroAI, Hardware Design & Development, Wearables
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Currently a research engineer @ IT Consortium GH
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Teaching Assistant for Computational
Neuroscience @ TReND -
Teaching Assistant @ Black in Neuro (BiN)
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Projects: Automatic Feeding Pump for Premature Babies in LMICs
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Participated in competitive swimming
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UVA BS Biomedical Engineering ‘21
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Bioinformatician at Day Zero Diagnostics
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Bioinformatics, Personal A.I., Data Autonomy
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I can pump on a hydrofoil
Augmentation as a lens for living
Central to our philosophy at the Augmentation Lab is hyperpersonal self-experimentation. We want each of our 16 residents to have their own personal agent(s) and wearable(s), which they use and improve over the course of the residency.
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The technologies we build need to come from a personal need - either that of our own or a person we deeply care about. (Paul Graham describes a similar approach in his essay "How to Get Startup Ideas.")
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We also focus on rapid validation and prototyping. Keeping things simple is hard. As developers who want to build the future, we often fall into the trap of failing to build for the present.
Technical learning
The Augmentation Residency will be supported by an educational framework for transdisciplinary, AI-centric learning and product development.
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Residents will learn about human-machine symbiosis, miniaturized electronics, local and open-source LLMs, multi-agent simulations, edge computing, and secure/decentralized data ownership mechanisms.​​​​
Residency outputs
MVPs for products, papers, patents, designs, and digital content.​​​
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Hardware products - with a particular push for open-source hardware; e.g., Raspberry Pi for wearable AI
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AI-based consumer software; e.g., deeply personal AI agents based on journal notes and text messages
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AI infrastructure software; e.g., modular building blocks for building local LLMs on embedded devices
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Data storage/ownership architectures; e.g., Interplanetary File System for personal data
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Integrated hardware-software AI wearables for specific applications; e.g., consumer AI wearables for people with learning disabilities
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Whitepapers; e.g., on creating collective intelligences from personal agents​
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We anticipate and support startups, crowdsourced products, papers, patents, designs, essays, and digital media to emerge from our residency. We aim to provide each outcome domain with our expertise and resources during and after the residency.
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2023 Augmentation Residency
Our previous residency was a 2.5-month long program for 8 creative technologists in San Francisco.
Following the residency, our participants have founded neurotech companies, joined engineering teams at Apple, Cradle Healthcare ($48 mio), and Osmo AI ($8.5 mio), and started graduate positions at the MIT Media Lab.
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A case study on the 2023 Augmentation Residency was presented at CHI 2024 in Hawaii.
Contact
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If you are interested in supporting the Augmentation Residency, please reach out to us at contact@augmentationlab.org.