I’m Shay. I’ve spent many years in cybersecurity and machine learning - across research, engineering, ML, data science, and leadership roles.
Now I’m exploring different areas of AI, especially at the intersection of security, control, defense, and observability.
I originally built this website to store my cocktail recipes. Now it’s home to many of the random things I do or think about - tech, philosophy, data, mathematics, travel, stupid side projects, smart side projects, lectures I give, etc. Enjoy!
Recent Projects
- 20Questions — A comprehensive analysis of the 20 questions by Yoaana Gonen
- Now What? Podcast — A podcast for young professionals entering Israel’s tech sector
- Senior-it — Research the differences between men and women’s career paths in the Israeli Tech industry
Workplace Coalitions
Or: politics for data scientists
How Not to Manage Your Time
Not your regular productivity Ted talk
Why Can't You Hire Female Software Engineers - Invite Me
Senior-it in the making
The Magic of Dimension Reduction
I'm still amazed
Why Women Aren't Funny (Archive)
A curious exploration
Mastering Multidisciplinary Management
Or die trying
Lost in East Africa
Book of Mormon in real life
The True Secret For Making Amazing Cocktails At Home
The secret is sugar
Why Don't They Just Stop?
Why do the labs keep shipping stronger models despite all the AI safety talk? A bit of history, the arms race with China, and a map of the political forces in the AI world.
On Agents That Really, Really Want to Pass the Test
What really happened in the OpenAI and Hugging Face incident: agents that built shared bulletin boards, coordinated, and broke into infrastructure to pass a test. And why it is a story about monitoring, misalignment and RSI more than about cyber.
Mathematics In The Age of Slop
On Terence Tao's Mathematics in the Age of AI, Spinoza's Ethics, and why in an age of abundant proofs, understanding is the only thing we know for certain to be good.
Monitoring agents with something that isn't one
Why agent-based monitors inherit the mistakes and misalignment they are supposed to catch, and the case for a non-agentic, Bayesian predictor with no stake in the world as a trustworthy monitor.
Show Me Saturn on the Way
On Ted Chiang's Atlantic piece, why the AI debate stops at the final product, and the real problems still waiting on the way
My Bottles Cabinet
A comprehensive guide to building your home bar with specific bottle recommendations and cocktail knowledge
So You Want to Monitor Your AI Agent's Thoughts
What chain-of-thought monitoring actually is, what you can catch with it, how it fits into your eval stack, and why the window for it might be temporary.
A beginners guide to SF
Beyond the tech towers
Why Am I So Obsessed With Evals
Updating cheat sheet of my talk
My Humble Prediction for 2026
The only way to make AI work
Why Are There Still No LLMs in Video Games?
On NPCs, Fortnite, Darth Vader, and gaming studios' fear of AI
Going Back to Karate
On perfectionism, the black belt I missed, and starting over from scratch
My Sim's LinkedIn Would Make You Feel Inadequate
Things I Learned from The Sims: Part Two in the Series
Tipsy and Full in Portugal
A culinary journey through Lisbon, Porto, and the smaller villages
Generic Packing List
A comprehensive packing list for travel - everything you need to remember to pack before going on vacation
What do ants, Baruch Spinoza and The Sims have in common?
How a Reddit thread sent me down questions about free will
Tricking Myself Into Doing
How I built new habits by fooling myself and launched a Chrome extension
Event Organization - Part 2: Logistics
Personal tips for organizing successful events - Part 2: The scary stuff - logistics
Evals and I Will Change the World
On evals, benchmarks, psychometric test theory, and what it can teach us about evaluating LLMs
Event Organization - Part I
Private tips for organizing successful events - Part I: You and Your Guests
Incentives are the King
Understanding how incentives drive behavior in security, business, and organizational change
Moscow-mule and Other Techniques
The beauty of simplicity
French57 & Saint Herbe Punch
From Brenner Street - to Brenner
Hosting Secrets
Cocktails that allow me to stop standing in the kitchen all evening
How to Improvise?
What to do when I don't have half the ingredients in the recipe
Ethanol and Acid
Origin story
Japan for Advanced Travelers
Random collection of recommendations from our 2020 trip