Good morning, everyone. Another episode of our fireside chats with scholars of the Rafał Brzoska Foundation. Today our guest is Szymon Jackowski, a scholar since 2024. That was the third edition of our recruitment. Welcome, Szymon.
So, as always, a quick introduction so that everyone knows who we're dealing with. Here we go: a student of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the management team of a foundation, an organization dedicated to, listen to this, building an ecosystem, a very important startup ecosystem for high school students and university students, that is, the youngest generation of our future entrepreneurs. Individual and team winner of the International Economics Olympiad, vice president, and this I didn't know, it's new, of the Polish Club of Berkeley, coordinator of the International Development Team at the SGH Investors Club, the largest student research club focused on finance in Poland, and an ambassador of the Go for Poland campaign of the WSE Foundation. Have I forgotten anything, Szymon?
I don't think so. That covers the most important things about me.
OK, so tell me now, I have the impression that the list of things you're involved in has been growing since our first recruitment meeting, which makes me very happy, because it shows that personal growth comes first. First, tell me what exactly you study, or what problems you tackle at such a wonderful university, and what lies behind this Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.
Well, as someone studying engineering and computer science, I focus mainly on problems related to connecting these fields with economics, because economics is my academic background, and to complement it with, let's say, the hard sciences, because nowadays a great many sciences draw on mathematics, computer science or engineering fields, so by studying these hard sciences I try to find their applications in economics.
So, for example, building econometric models.
Yes, yes, exactly. A lot of econometric models use it. Whether it's artificial... or machine learning, or in some way artificial intelligence. So it's now a very important field to understand in order to fully understand the social sciences as well.
But isn't it the case that such rapid development of artificial intelligence somewhat redefines what you did, or what you do in this program?
I would say it certainly requires universities to adapt very quickly.
But Berkeley is quite active in staying, every year or even every semester, very up to date with artificial intelligence, and we even have classes that already teach us how to coexist with AI, rather than just being taught the way it was 20 years ago, but precisely how to coexist with AI and how to use it, but also how not to be 100% dependent on AI and be only a person who can write a prompt and nothing more.
Awesome. What takes up most of your time today? Studying or your social work?
It's... studying is... it's social work. Yes. It's the main part of my day, every day.
Which, which of these social areas is number one for you today?
Well, my main, let's say, social involvement is developing e-converwers. It's something that accompanied me throughout high school, really. And now I'm still involved in it, and it's also...
How many high school and university students today are thinking about their own startup, and is it fewer or more when you compare it to, I don't know, a year ago, two years ago?
I would say it keeps growing, also because artificial intelligence is really democratizing startups, meaning that a person who doesn't have full technical skills is able to somehow make up for it with artificial intelligence. So it's definitely a strongly growing trend, and it will probably only keep growing as AI develops.
Can you give us some numbers on how it looks? I don't know, how many people apply to the foundation for support each year?
Yes. Well, thousands of applicants go through our foundation every year.
