Screentime: The Creator Who Quit Google to Experiment With AI
Bilawal Sidhu on where he goes to “drink from the firehose of AI innovation.”
Last December, Bilawal Sidhu was living a double life. By day, he was a full-time product manager at Google, working on projects like building virtual reality tools. By night, he was experimenting with a barrage of new artificial intelligence models like Midjourney and Dall-E. He started posting TikToks and YouTube videos showing off the psychedelic, UFO-filled AI images he had created and predicting where AI was headed. Sidhu rode the AI hype wave all the way to almost a million TikTok followers and 383,000 YouTube subscribers. Before long, his inbox was full of brand deal offers—opportunities he had to turn down since he was still at Google. He realized it was “the first time in history you actually don’t have to be at a big tech company to play with all the coolest stuff.” Sidhu decided he couldn’t stay on the sidelines; he left his job at Google a few weeks ago and is now a full-time creator. The Austin, Texas–based entrepreneur takes us through his two phones, showing his favorite AI creations, his meditation regimen and the best AI Twitter Spaces.