Edmund Bu

Background

Hi there! I’m Edmund, a third-year undergrad at UC San Diego. I'm working to ensure that AI systems empower humanity :).

Computer vision / robotics interest: I’m incredibly fascinated by the way in which life on Earth has evolved, over billions of years, to compress fleeting glimpses of the world into unbelievably rich, actionable cognitive structure. That we can close our eyes and still picture ourselves dancing throughout the room we’re in, interacting with whatever objects we encounter along the way, and even imagine soaring high above it all, seeing the world from a place our eyes have never been – isn’t it all so beautiful?! I believe that a fundamental property of physical intelligence (from general-purpose robots to AI-for-science) is this sort of effortless understanding of space and how to move through it, and I hope to develop such models through techniques that emphasize interaction and learning from experience.

AI safety interest: It gives such a sublime feeling to think that language models could, and most likely will, keep on becoming more and more intelligent at a faster and faster rate. I want to research scalable approaches to characterizing emergent structures in these models, out of both pure curiosity and a desire for greater transparency, robustness, and steerability. Lately, I’ve also been increasingly thinking about how we can train AI minds to implicitly understand our own, towards applications that range from teaching to forecasting to more beneficial decision-making.

I'm highly fortunate to be mentored by Anjie Cheng as part of UCSD's Wang Lab, and to have worked with Yossi Gandelsman as a research fellow at the UChicago XLab!

Misc

Last year, I founded a student org at UCSD focused on AI alignment!

In my free time I enjoy lifting weights, eating, and climbing plastic rocks. Recently I've been taking lots of photos and trying to write more.

I'm happy that you've wandered onto this page - please don't hesitate to reach out through any medium and say hi! I'd love to exchange ideas and see where the conversation leads.

Last updated 9/24/26