The Finale: Princeton, April 2025
Eighth and final in a series about my AI lecture tour through Ivy League and international universities
Orange Everywhere
Princeton was gorgeous.
After the ancient gravitas of Oxford, Princeton hit differently. Newer. Brighter. The campus practically glowed - louder colors everywhere, those signature oranges woven through everything.
Walking through campus felt like walking through the final scene of a movie where everything comes together.
The Students
These kids were ravenous.
Not in a desperate way. In a hungry, curious, ready-to-absorb way. Knowledgeable already. Courteous in their engagement. But underneath the polish, you could feel it - they wanted everything I had to give.
I introduced tools and methods many of them had never seen. Techniques I’d been refining across seven previous lectures. The full toolkit.
The Light Bulbs
This is what I’ll remember most.
Not the beautiful campus. Not the specific questions. Not even the techniques I demonstrated.
What I’ll remember is watching the light bulbs go off.
One by one, across the room, you could see it happening. The moment when understanding clicked. When they realized what I was actually saying.
The knowledge of mankind has been aggregated. It’s been indexed. And it’s available - right now - for anyone’s purposes.
They could become super versions of themselves.
That realization spreading across the room, face by face - that’s what teaching is supposed to feel like.
The Full Circle
Harvard was the debut. Nervous energy, hidden secrets, trying to figure out what I could share.
Cornell Tech was validation. O1 dropped four days earlier, proving the reasoning approach I’d been using manually.
Harvard again was the pivot. Full AI focus. No more blockchain pretense.
MIT taught me to communicate to business students. Amsterdam went international. NYU gave me the gasp. Oxford gave me the sharpest questions.
And Princeton? Princeton was the payoff.
Eight lectures. Eight different audiences. Eight different cities. One message that got clearer every time I delivered it.
The tools are here. The moment is now. You can become a super version of yourself.
What This Tour Taught Me
I started this tour conflicted. Holding secrets. Unsure how much to share, worried about competitive advantage for a company that would never ship.
By the end, I was just teaching. Giving everything away. Watching people’s lives change in real-time as they understood what was possible.
The secret I kept for so long - the proto-RAG technique, the reasoning approach, the context-stuffing methodology - turned out to be more valuable when shared than when hoarded.
That’s the real lesson. Not just for AI, but for everything.
The best things multiply when you give them away.
The Beautiful Part
The best part of this entire experience was watching all the light bulbs go off.
When folks understood that the knowledge of mankind had been aggregated and was indexed and able to be used for anyone’s purposes. When they realized they could become super versions of themselves.
It was beautiful to watch.
This concludes the lecture tour series. Thank you to everyone who attended, asked questions, challenged ideas, and helped me figure out what I was actually trying to say.
Date: April 20, 2025 Venue: Princeton University Audience: Ravenous, knowledgeable, courteous Vibe: The finale - light bulbs going off everywhere Tour summary: Harvard → Cornell Tech → Harvard 2 → MIT → NYU → Amsterdam → Oxford → Princeton