You know, a long time ago, I was that kid who used to sit at the computer in the library and play games.

And many games did I play. Minecraft, fake Minecraft, every io game on those sketchy websites. I was that kid who would do anything to bypass administrator perms, the one trying to install a whole operating system on a school Chromebook just to enjoy a game at 3 pm on a Tuesday.

It is crazy how much I have changed.

Well, technically I am still that kid. I just upgraded the operating system in my head. So this post is dedicated to saving a record of myself on the internet. If something ever happens, I want there to be at least one place that explains what happened in my brain.

Singapore lah.

Then life did its thing and I ended up bouncing between Singapore and different parts of the world, eventually landing in California and later on in a mess of colleges, hacker houses and random cities.

Not much, but also kind of a lot.

I had a crush on a girl and tried to win her over by selling Sour Patch to everyone. I basically tried to become the "Sour Patch kid". It did not work. Looking back, it is cringy lol.

I made YouTube videos with the production quality of a microwave. I did FIRST Robotics which was actually fun. I also did MathCounts for three years. I regret not trying harder, but going through those contests did a lot for my logic and pattern recognition brain.

A bit more.

Got into programming and self studied AP CS because I could not get into the official AP CS class (grr my high school).

Tried out for symphony on clarinet, made some questionable music and some pretty interesting pieces.

Went down the crypto rabbit hole, from mainstream coins to complete garbage tokens for fun and learning.

Abused free food events and probably hit the limit on free tpumps at some point.

Built an e bike from scratch using money I actually earned.

Ran an "organization" with around 30 members teaching people how to do nonprofit and startup projects. It was chaotic but fun.

Biked to random places within about 20 miles of school, with a dream of biking from South Bay to San Francisco one day.

Basically, I was half nerd, half feral, fully online.

Short answer: a lot, in a very nonlinear way.

Longer answer:

Went through multiple schools, including UC campuses and then Georgia Tech for AI and embedded systems.

Spent time at MIT as a "special student" kind of situation where I audited classes, hung out in makerspaces and pretended I lived there more than I technically did.

Started and stayed in hacker houses in San Francisco and other cities, trying to create high energy environments where people actually build things instead of just talking.

Started an SF hacker house, dived into a 200 foot cave, and somehow ended up chilling in Stanford conference rooms like that was normal.

Built and shipped multiple AI projects, including productivity tools, trading bots and energy optimization systems.

College for me has never been just "go to lecture, go home". It is been more like "use the school as an excuse to do insane side quests".

Honestly, a lot.

From the outside, people sometimes think I am basically the same. Inside, it feels like I have lived three or four different lives already.

I used to be carefree and super extroverted. Now my lifestyle is mixed. I still like chaos, but I think more about long term things. I care more about the world, about stories, about how people end up where they are.

I am more aware of my flaws. I try to appreciate what I have instead of obsessing over what I do not. I try to do more and get less destroyed by failure. That does not mean I always succeed at that, but at least I know the game I am playing.

Do the things you actually want to do, as long as they stay within the law and your own values.

If you can look at what you are doing and say "yeah, this lines up with what I believe", you are already far ahead of most people.

Predetermined.

It is against human ego to accept that, but I lean toward the idea that a lot of things are set up by initial conditions, environment and probabilities.

You still have to act like you have free will though, otherwise it gets dark fast.

Yes. I have.

There was a period where I basically lived out of a WeWork, working late, napping in weird corners and showering in random gyms. I still cannot believe I have not written a full blog about it yet.

Yes.

There is a version of "Jack" as an AI persona, including jackluoai on Instagram. It is half serious, half experiment in what it means to "clone" your thought patterns into something digital.

Ask me in person.

Some stories do not belong on a public website. But hints include: sketchy crypto adventures, weird travel decisions, and some extremely questionable life optimization experiments.

Probably not pushing myself hard enough to be consistent.

Not talent. Not intelligence. Just failing to iterate every day on the things that mattered, which cost me a lot of compounding potential in skills, health and relationships.

I am still fixing that one.

Honestly, none.

There are things I wish I had handled more maturely or earlier, but I would not erase them. A lot of what I care about now is built directly on those mistakes.

Born in Singapore.

Grew up in Asia and then California, especially the Bay Area.

Bounced around UC schools, then landed at Georgia Tech.

Spent long stretches in Boston, San Francisco and New York for hacker houses, internships and experiments.

I basically treat cities as levels in a game I can unlock and revisit.

I build AI projects, push on energy and productivity tools, and try to surround myself with people who are also trying to do ridiculous things with their lives.

Concretely, that means:

• Building Delight, an emotionally aware AI productivity companion.
• Working on Efficore, an AI system that optimizes data center energy.
• Contributing to ARK at MIT SIPB, a modular open source AI assistant platform.
• Running experiments around personal agents, multi agent systems and weird interfaces.

Plus school, gym, and overthinking everything, of course.

Functionally both, mentally more founder.

School is useful for structure, signal and access to people. But most of my identity comes from building and shipping things, not grades.

I study enough to respect the fundamentals, then spend the rest of the time using them.

I build agentic AI systems that try to actually move people's lives and physical systems, not just answer questions.

Because I wasted a lot of time.

I know what it feels like to be smart enough to do something big and still lose whole years to procrastination, distraction and fear. Productivity, for me, is not about "grind harder". It is about designing a life where important things actually get done without burning out or becoming a robot.

Also, building productivity tools is the best way to expose your own bullshit.

No. It came later.

Energy started mattering when I realized how much compute, AI and data centers are constrained by boring physical things like grid capacity, transmission, and regulations. Efficore exists because someone has to actually solve that bottleneck.

So now I care a lot about the intersection of AI, energy and infrastructure.

Yes, sort of.

I spent a year around MIT, auditing classes, participating in clubs and hanging out in makerspaces. Some of it was formally allowed, some of it was just me walking in and sitting down.

MIT is one of the few places that matched the mental image I had as a kid of what "a crazy engineering place" should feel like.

Because environment is OP.

In a good hacker house, the default state is "building something" instead of "scrolling something". People cook, code, argue, break things, and occasionally touch grass together. You cannot really replicate that energy alone in a dorm.

I started and helped run hacker houses because I wanted that density of weird, ambitious people in real life, not just on Twitter.

Mixed.

I used to be very outward facing, always talking to everyone. Now I am more selective. I still like meeting new people, but I also need quiet stretches to think and work.

Big chaotic events are fun, but deep one on one conversations are where the real upgrades happen.

People who are:

• Ambitious but not delusional.
• Curious and honest, even when it hurts.
• Actually building or learning something, not just optimizing their image.
• Comfortable talking about both money and meaning in the same conversation.

If that is you, we will probably get along.

Something like:

• Gym or a night walk.
• Deep conversation about life trajectories, cities, technology or relationships.
• A few hours of focused building or writing.
• Late night food.
• Maybe a weird dream to journal about the next morning.

I am allergic to nights that end with "I do not even know what I did".

Because my brain likes to run side quests while I am asleep.

Dreams for me are like compressed story files. They mix childhood, current stress, future fears and random symbols into strange but meaningful images. I do not think they are magic, but I do think they are a very fast way to see what your subconscious is obsessing over.

So I write them down and occasionally overanalyze them.

Important, but not something you brute force.

Friends, partners, collaborators, mentors, they are all multiplicative, not additive. The wrong people drain your trajectory, the right ones warp it upwards.

I am still figuring it out, but in general: be honest, be kind, be clear, and do not pretend to be someone you are not just to fit a label.

Less, but yes.

I do not grind games like I used to, because I already have a real life open world RPG to manage. But the gamer brain never left. It just got redirected to building, trading, lifting and trying to level up in real life.

A non exhaustive list:

• Sci fi that actually makes you think about civilization and physics.
• Startup and business writing that is brutally honest rather than hype.
• Psychology and philosophy stuff that explains why humans are weird.

The exact titles change over time, but the pattern is always the same: things that make me question my defaults.

That a lot of life is predetermined by environment, but you can still make moves that change which branch you end up on.

So I try to hack the environment more than I try to brute force raw willpower.

I am optimizing for:

• Being around extremely high quality people.
• Having the skills and leverage to build weird, high impact systems.
• Not hating myself or my life at 40.
• Keeping enough freedom to explore, relocate and restart.

If I can do that, the details can shift.

Walks. Music. Cooking something simple. Talking to one or two people I trust. Writing fiction or essays with no external pressure.

I am not great at "doing nothing". I relax better when my brain has a low stakes side task.

Most of the time, yes.

Like everyone else, I have my spikes of chaos and my dips. But in general, I feel more grounded now than I did a few years ago. The gym, writing, building and real conversations help a lot.

Yes.

If you have an interesting project, want to build something, want to collaborate, or just think "hey, we might vibe", reach out.

• Email
• Calendly

I cannot promise I will reply instantly, but I genuinely like hearing from people who are serious about what they are doing.

Open your browser console (F12 or right click → Inspect → Console) and paste this:

localStorage.setItem('faq_limit', '999');

Then refresh the page. Congrats, you hacked it.