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Claas Voelcker

@cvoelcker.bsky.social

2.6K followers 390 following 540 posts

Thou shalt not disfigure the soul! The square root of a goat is one If I seem very angry, check if I have been watered in the last 24 hours. For professional, see https://cvoelcker.de

cvoelcker.de

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · Nov 11

And most importantly, I'm at least 200% nicer than I appear in any given moment, so let me know if you really just want to geek out about random shit!

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · Nov 11

I'm Claas, a hopefully-soon-finished-PhD researcher at @uoft.bsky.social . I work on reinforcement learning, especially on deep model-based methods, and am dabbling in diffusion policies and large-scale imitation learning.
I'm way too political and loud in general, so please be warned.

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 1h

what did twitter do now?

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 1h

I mean, don't we have high school tracks now :D

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 1h

i literally had an algorithm idea come to me in a fever dream, but it works???

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 1h

value functions are a mirage

Reposted by Claas Voelcker

Amir-massoud Farahmand @sologen.bsky.social · 5h

Apply to join one of the top AI research 🤖 institutes in the world in the wonderful city of Montréal!
I will be recruiting 1-2 students this year. Just mention my name in your application.

Mila - Institut québécois d'IA @mila-quebec.bsky.social · 10h

Mila's annual supervision request process is now open to receive MSc and PhD applications for Fall 2026 admission! For more information, visit mila.quebec/en/prospecti...

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 1d

Honestly, theory people would be so much more celebrated and cited if they didn't insist on removing _all_ intuition from their papers about why their methods work :D Sooooooooo much labour in reverse engineering the intuitions, which often turn out to be pretty simple.

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 5d

Every class can be a Barbarian if you just play it like one!

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 10d

Since there is a decent amount of "Do we know how LLMs work?" discourse flowing around, I would be really interested to hear what people would accept as "understanding how LLMs work". What kind of knowledge are we speaking about here?

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 10d

Sometimes D&D adventures are hilariously badly written:

Players hear a voice telling them to bring NPC X. They have to bring NPC X to open the door. If NPC X died earlier in the adventure, X will wait for them behind the door.

So if X dies it is behind the door that can ONLY be opened by X???

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Reposted by Claas Voelcker

ellie lockhart (she/they) @eleanor.lockhart.contact · 10d

A lot of folks in the AI space are like people who insist it’s safe and smart to get drunk in the driver’s seat of their Tesla on a country road and a lot of their opponents are like people saying there’s no such thing as an automatic transmission

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 12d

I don't understand how the Canadian AI/ML ecosystem wants to attract and retain talents when they are offering less then half the salary on representative roles...

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 12d

Put on arxiv before acceptance, yes or no?

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 12d

Really great rant!

David Picard @davidpicard.bsky.social · 12d

It's a great discussion because we all have different interpretation of what this means and what the consequences are.

Myself, I have absolutely no doubt that scaling works. If you have all the videos in the world and are able to train a model that can recall and merge any of them, then for sure...

Reposted by Claas Voelcker

spacecowboy @spacecowboy17.bsky.social · Jul 19

Enjoying the For You feed? Give it a like ♡ to help more people discover it: bsky.app/profile/did:...

The more people use it -> the more feedback we get -> the better we can make it for you.

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 12d

A totally unrelated question: does anybody know how to make long equations work on mobile with math jax and Jekyll 😅🙈

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 12d

cvoelcker.de/blog/2025/re...

I finally gave in and made a nice blog post about my most recent paper. This was a surprising amount of work, so please be nice and go read it!

a close up of a sad cat with the words pleeeaasse written below it

ALT: a close up of a sad cat with the words pleeeaasse written below it

media.tenor.com

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 12d

Thank you ❤️

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 12d

cvoelcker.de/blog/2025/re...

I finally gave in and made a nice blog post about my most recent paper. This was a surprising amount of work, so please be nice and go read it!

a close up of a sad cat with the words pleeeaasse written below it

ALT: a close up of a sad cat with the words pleeeaasse written below it

media.tenor.com

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 12d

cvoelcker.de/blog/2025/re...

Here ya go!

Relative Entropy Pathwise Policy Optimization - Technical Overview | Claas A. Voelcker

A lightweight overview of the new REPPO algorithm

cvoelcker.de

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 13d

Congrats! May your GPU and space access live long and prosper!

Reposted by Claas Voelcker

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 13d

RL rant time after reading another LLM paper about whether "RL sharpens the distribution or discovers new knowledge.": RL is not magic. If your exploration policy takes an action with 0 probability, it can't explore that action! It trivially just affects the distribution of supported actions.

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 19d

Stanford and Berkeley are functionally equivalent places and I refuse to treat them as separate entities.

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 19d

But those are WOOOOOOORK :D

Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 19d

I have been told I need to get more modern in my paper promotion! github.com/cvoelcker/reppo / arxiv.org/abs/2507.11019 @marcelhussing.bsky.social

Happy guy sad guy meme with sad text: USE PPO AND TUNE HYPERPARAMETER FOR WEEKS and happy text: USE REPPO AND GET A POLICY

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 20d

My grad school salary advise: find a loving partner before grad school, get them a work visa and a well-paid job in your school location, have them wildly out-earn you because they are brilliant and tada... sugar-partner! Tested for your convenience!

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 20d

My career advice? Come into a big inheritance from a long lost aunt as well as a big, possibly haunted house formerly inhabited by generations of your family

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Claas Voelcker @cvoelcker.bsky.social · 21d

I pitched this ~8 years ago! It was going to provide the services "AI consultancy" and "blockchain consultancy". Our highly trained consultants would say "no" when you ask about AI or blockchain, and then just give you a normal database and some working SQL.

Mark Riedl @markriedl.bsky.social · 21d

I’m starting a new AI consulting company called It’s Not Going To Work, LLC. Here’s how it works. You give me $100,000, I tell you “It’s not going to work”(TM), you save $1M+ in wasted contracts, lots of wasted effort, and embarrassment. It’s a good deal. Try it out.

Gizmodo @gizmodo.com · 21d

Lionsgate Is Founding Out It's Really Hard to Make Movies With AI https://gizmodo.com/lionsgate-is-founding-out-its-really-hard-to-make-movies-with-ai-2000663222