Who is Illia Polosukhin?

Illia Polosukhin is a Ukrainian AI researcher and philanthropist whose passions are machine intelligence, natural language, and making the world a better place with data, software, and blockchain.

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Education and early career

Polosukhin earned his Master’s in Applied Math and Computer Science from the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. He then moved to the United States and joined Salford Systems as a software developer in 2008.

Salford Systems, now Minitab, provides companies with a suite of tools to spot trends, solve problems, and derive valuable insights from big data. According to his LinkedIn profile, Polosukhin worked on predictive analytics, text and geo mining, and the refinement of the company’s predictive miner toolkit.

Google Research

After six years with Salford Systems, Polosukhin joined Google Research in January 2014 and became an engineering manager in less than twelve months.

At Google, he was a major contributor to the TensorFlow machine learning framework with a core focus on the Super Kernel Flow Network (SKFlow) architecture.

Polosukhin also led a team that built out the question-answering capabilities of the company’s search engine and was one of the co-authors of the 2017 paper Attention Is All You Need.

While he would author many other important papers that advanced AI science, Polosukhin felt that he could do more. In an interview with CoinDesk, he described his situation at the time: “Google has a lot of benefits, and it’s a great place to learn, but it moves really slowly. I wanted to move faster. I wanted to build a start-up.”

Near.ai

Polosukhin co-founded Near.ai with Alexander Skidanov in 2017. The company was focused on AI initially, but the pair found commercialization difficult without access to the capital to buy expensive hardware to train models.

What the company did have was a crowdsourcing system that enabled Polosukhin to connect with (and source) computer science students around the world. But it was difficult to pay them for their work via Ethereum, so the pair devised a more cost-effective way to send transactions.

Near.ai then became known as Near Protocol, a proof-of-stake blockchain that is simple, secure, and scalable. The company has since expanded its mission to build an open web ecosystem where people control their own assets, data, and power of governance.

Near is now a prominent blockchain protocol with around 25 million accounts, 450,000 daily transactions, and a vibrant ecosystem of dApps and projects.

FTX collapse and Unchain Fund

After the $32 billion collapse of FTX and the associated fall from grace of founder Sam Bankman-Fried, there was much discussion about the merits of cryptocurrency.

But Polosukhin remained firm in his belief that decentralization was the answer and that the FTX collapse was a human failure. “There was nothing decentralized or transparent about Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire. In reality, FTX bears a lot more resemblance to the overleveraged institutions that failed in 2008 than it does to what most of the blockchain industry is building.”

To show further support for centralized platforms and blockchain, Polosukhin established the Unchain Fund to help those affected by the conflict in Ukraine. At last count, the foundation has raised almost $10 million in its mission to harness the power of blockchain for human benefit.

Key takeaways:

Illia Polosukhin is a Ukrainian AI researcher and philanthropist whose passions are machine intelligence, natural language, and making the world a better place with data, software, and blockchain.
Polosukhin joined Google Research in January 2014 and became an engineering manager in less than twelve months. He was a major contributor to the TensorFlow machine learning framework with a core focus on the Super Kernel Flow Network (SKFlow) architecture
Polosukhin co-founded Near.ai with Alexander Skidanov in 2017. The company was focused on AI initially, but found commercialization difficult and later transitioned to a proof-of-stake blockchain and Web3 platform ecosystem.

Timeline

Illia Polosukhin’s Background: Illia Polosukhin is a Ukrainian AI researcher and philanthropist with a passion for machine intelligence, natural language processing, and using data, software, and blockchain to improve the world.
Education and Early Career: Polosukhin earned his Master’s in Applied Math and Computer Science from the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. He then worked as a software developer at Salford Systems, now Minitab, where he focused on predictive analytics, text and geo mining, and refining the company’s predictive miner toolkit.
Contributions at Google Research: In 2014, Polosukhin joined Google Research and quickly became an engineering manager. He played a significant role in developing the TensorFlow machine learning framework, particularly in the Super Kernel Flow Network (SKFlow) architecture. He also led a team working on question-answering capabilities for Google’s search engine and co-authored the influential 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need.”
Co-Founding Near.ai and Near Protocol: In 2017, Polosukhin co-founded Near.ai with Alexander Skidanov, initially focusing on AI. However, commercialization challenges led the company to transition into Near Protocol, a proof-of-stake blockchain aiming to create a simple, secure, and scalable open web ecosystem where people control their assets, data, and governance.
Near Protocol’s Growth: Near Protocol has grown into a prominent blockchain protocol with a sizable user base, daily transactions, and a vibrant ecosystem of decentralized applications (dApps) and projects.
Unchain Fund and Philanthropy: Polosukhin established the Unchain Fund to leverage blockchain technology for human benefit and support those affected by the conflict in Ukraine. The foundation has raised nearly $10 million to support its mission.
Belief in Decentralization: Despite the FTX collapse, Polosukhin remains a strong advocate for decentralization and believes that blockchain technology can play a crucial role in building a more transparent and equitable world. He contrasts decentralized platforms like Near Protocol with centralized institutions that have caused failures in the past.