Tenured University of Virginia professor Ken Ono, who has spent several years working with the UVA swim team, is headed west to Silicon Valley to tackle a new venture.
Ono, 57, was hired as a math professor at Virginia in 2019 and two years later, became a STEM Advisor to the Provost. During his time in Charlottesville, he's made headlines in swim circles by working with Cavalier swimmers, analyzing the minutiae of stroke technique to optimize performance.
In 2023, he taught an independent study course (cross-listed in Data Science, Math, and Statistics) titled Learning Methods for Elite Swimming Analysis, and Kate Douglass and Claire Curzan were two of his students. He also worked closely with Paige Madden in the lead-up to her breakthrough performance at the 2024 Olympic Games.
Now, Ono is leaving his tenured position to work for one of his former students, Carina Hong, who has launched a new AI startup called Axiom Math.
According to a feature in the Wall Street Journal published Thursday, Ono has previously made light of all the hype surrounding AI in recent years, beginning many of his talks by saying: "My name is Ken Ono, and I am NI. Naturally intelligent."
However, now he's reversed course, leaving UVA with no intention of returning anytime soon due to his belief in Hong's venture.
Her company is named after the mathematical term for a basic truth that can be the starting point of an entire theory. Axiom Math's ultimate goal is to build an AI mathematician capable of reasoning through known problems, finding new ones and validating its work through formal proofs," according to The Wall Street Journal.
Hong has raised $64 million thus far, with investors betting that a mathematical superintelligence will have commercial applications from software verification to financial engineering and algorithmic trading.
"If I'm the first, so be it," Ono told the Wall Street Journal about his bold move. "I will not be the last."
Ono says he's been tracking the development of AI for the last number of years, and though he found its ability remarkable for tasks and problems it had already seen, he felt it lacked the ability to creatively solve new problems, which is paramount in his field of mathematics.
However, this past spring, he was one of a select 30 invited to Berkeley for a secret symposium where the mathematicians curated research-level problems at a "reasoning" chatbot to test its ability.
Ono left that conference with a different perspective.
"The lead I had on the models was shrinking," he said, according to The Wall Street Journal. "And in areas of mathematics that were not in my wheelhouse, I felt like the models were already blowing me away."
Though his initial reaction was negative, thinking AI may eventually take his job, something clicked.
"Then I had an epiphany," he said. "I realized what the models were offering was a different way of doing math.
"I spend an hour or two every day spitballing with the models," he said. "Late at night, if I can't go to bed, I have my iPhone open, and I'm talking about math with the models at a crazy high level."
Ono also feared federal research funding may be taking a hit in the future, with the Justice Department taking aim at higher education.
"I have the luxury of participating in transforming how the world actually works," Ono said, according to The Wall Street Journal. "As a pure mathematician, that has rarely been the case."
In addition to his work with the Virginia swimmers, Ono also recently worked with UVA engineering students to develop a new smart block to improve start efficiency.