Nikolas Kairinos

Nick Kairinos started his career as a programmer at age 11. He first learned Basic on a Sinclair ZX80 and when he heard about artificial intelligence, he moved onto LISP and Prolog. Over the next decade, he studied everything he could. At university, Nick became frustrated with the state of the art and decided that he had to stop relying on the literature.

Nick explains that machine learning and deep learning are very minute subsets of artificial intelligence, which is mostly unchartered waters. Although these have their place, they should not be the only fields we focus on. Artificial Intelligence lies at the intersection of numerous fields besides mathematics, primarily neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, biology, statistics, physics, the arts and more.

If we’re going to make real progress and approach anything resembling true machine intelligence, the field of artificial intelligence requires original thinking. The relative lack of new ideas (and the overreliance on what’s found in textbooks) is hindering true progress in the field. Nick likes to say: “You don’t learn artificial intelligence; you need to think it”. This is core to Nick’s philosophy and approach.

In addition to a strong passion for artificial intelligence, Nick loves building innovative tech start-ups. For over 20 years, he has participated as an entrepreneur, investor and advisor in building numerous software start-ups around the world. He and his team function as a tech accelerator for start-ups with artificial intelligence at their core.

Nick has a solid grasp over the technical and strategic dimensions of a start-up and bridges the divide that is often present between technologists and businesspeople. He assists with developing ideas, creating algorithms, writing specs, defining UX, as well as participating in revenue model decisions, writing business plans, advising on valuations, raising capital, recruiting talent and more.