About
I’ve never been very good at staying in one lane.
Hi, I’m Raya Maia! Cursed with endless curiosity and the audacity to meddle wherever I see room for improvement.
What I keep coming back to.
I always end up around the same kinds of questions, even when the subject changes.
Apparently, the straight line was never an option for me. My undergraduate degree at the
University of Toronto took me through Biology, Immunology, and French — not exactly an obvious launchpad
for what came next. Since graduating, I’ve wandered into AI safety and
policy, philosophy, writing, education, and a number of projects born from the dangerous
thought, “I could probably build that.”
The subjects change. The questions usually don’t.
How certain should we be before we act on what we believe? What do we stop noticing
once we think we already understand? When does a belief become a decision? And as the world
changes around us, which parts of being human are worth holding onto?
Lately, a lot of those questions have collided with technology. Next year, I'll begin
a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence (Digital Transformation) at the University of Southampton,
exploring what happens when new technologies meet old institutions, real people, and the
wonderfully messy systems we’ve built around ourselves.
But most of those questions started long before I had words for them. I spent six years at the
University of Toronto Schools (UTS), a high school on the University of Toronto campus where
I had the opportunity to try a little bit of everything: debate, robotics, music, public speaking,
student leadership, and whatever else caught my attention. Years later, I’ve found my way back
as a Director of the UTS Alumni Association Board — a chance to give some of my time back to a
place that gave me so much of its own.
Looking back, I’m not sure I changed direction as often as I thought. I just kept finding
new places to ask the same questions.
Those questions have taken me into some compelling places. I’m hoping they keep doing so.
A few things I’m stubborn about.
Keeping your judgment
I’m perfectly happy to borrow someone else’s knowledge. Their judgment is an entirely different case. I’m fascinated by the line between using someone else to think better and slowly losing the ability to tell whether the answer in front of you is any good.
Diving deep
Curiosity has taken me further than any sensible career plan ever could. I like following a question past the point where I technically have the answer — into the exceptions, connections, and completely unrelated subjects that somehow open up along the way.
Useful complexity
I enjoy making complicated ideas make sense without flattening everything that made them worth understanding in the first place. I like figuring out what actually matters, what can be stripped away, and what absolutely can’t. The goal isn’t always simplicity as much as making complexity usable.