What Makes a Research Cold Email Fail?

Alex Zhang answers a cold email when the writer shows up with a strong opinion, and he treats “I really like RLMs, I wanna work together” as a bad reach-out. He has nothing in particular he feels he needs to work on with someone, unless it is with a company for compute or he wants to talk an idea through with other people. He is never opposed to working on ideas with other people.

Undergrads and other students reach out often. The worst version of the email is “can I pick your brain?” He tells them to read the paper. People write back that they read the paper, then name recursive language models or prime agent, a self-improving RLM harness.

He likes people who are opinionated even when they disagree. Strong opinions help when someone can think through why the opinions are right or wrong, because it is usually hard to tell. Strong convictions about certain problems mean he is happy to chat and potentially work on something together.