ANNUAL REPORT: THINKING // CLIENT STORIES // BILL CHANG
 

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Thinking to Build AI

“ People spending time thinking together makes the difference.” 
Bill Chang  

Bill Chang has always been thinking about building things. His parents gave him his first computer —— an Apple 2E —— when he was 9 or 10. Then they sent him to programming school. Bill says, “Everyone else in class was 30 or 40 years old. I built a video game and they all built spreadsheets.”
Bill also always knew he wanted to be an engineer.

When he was in college at the University of Maryland, the internet was in its infancy. He ordered industrial spools of cable to wire the whole dorm by himself.

After college, Bill went to work at IBM because it was the technology leader. After 15 years there, he moved to Apple, staying with his goal of working on the technological edge.

Most recently, Bill led Tesla’s revolutionary Dojo supercomputer project, designed to train the car manufacturer’s self-driving algorithms. “Our goal was to build the world’s fastest supercomputer for machine learning. We asked ourselves, ‘What would it look like if we built it from the ground up?’ In the process, we considered and challenged every technology paradigm.” 

The Dojo computer has been hailed as “architecturally unique,” “a new era of supercomputing” and “an asymmetric competitive advantage.”

Bill is passionate about pushing technology boundaries. As he says, “If you don’t risk going over the edge, you don’t know where the edge is.” He believes learning how to fail is paramount for innovation. “Imagine walking through a room wearing a blindfold; unless you bump into walls, you’ll just stay standing in the middle of the room.”

Thinking about the power of AI broadly, Bill believes that we are at an inflection point —— that society will change, but it’s unclear what it will look like. “This is the biggest advance in my lifetime,” says Bill. “It is as significant as the transistor.”

Bill is quick to point out that the path to significant technology breakthroughs is through high-performing teams and risk-tolerant cultures that encourage expansive thinking. “Our Dojo team was remarkably connected; we all cared about collective success. If one thing didn’t work, we would try the next thing. When team members got deflated, we would prop each other up. We had each other’s backs —— a very human experience amidst ground-breaking tech.”

When Ben Bayat, partner at NextGen Venture Partners (Brown Advisory's early-stage venture group) and Bill’s former roommate, recommended Portfolio Manager and San Francisco Office Head Meredith Shuey Etherington to Bill, Ben said she would have his back. “Meredith and the Brown Advisory team have been great thinking partners; they have helped me think about and invest for the long term,” remarks Bill.