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François Chollet

AI researcher; co-founder of Ndea and ARC Prize

Created Keras and ARC, and examines how to distinguish learned task performance from the ability to solve unfamiliar problems.

@fchollet on X

Community rating

81

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Why read François Chollet?

Read Chollet when a benchmark score is being used to make a broad claim about intelligence. In his sole-authored 2019 paper, he proposes measuring how efficiently a system acquires new skills while accounting for prior knowledge and experience. ARC turns that question into small grid puzzles whose rule must be inferred from examples. It makes the evaluation question visible before the formal definitions become necessary.

The ARC Prize 2024 report, coauthored with the competition team, adds practical reasons to inspect the testing setup. Its two leaderboards use different compute budgets and conditions, so their scores are not directly interchangeable. Start with a grid task, then compare the leaderboard rules. This reading order helps you ask which dataset, adaptation method and resource budget a reported result actually describes.

Selected work

  1. Research paper,

    His own paper introducing ARC and a proposed definition of intelligence. Start with section III.1's grid example, then the distinction between acquired skill and learning a new task.

    Cite this selection

    XFollowList, “On the Measure of Intelligence” reading notes in the François Chollet profile. https://xfollowlist.com/people/francois-chollet#work-e9af36b12ddc

    The linked work is the original source; this permalink identifies XFollowList’s reason to read it. Original work published .

    Profile-source checking date and references · Dated reading map

  2. Research report,

    Coauthored report. Sections 1 and 2 explain the puzzle and testing conditions; section 3 compares program search with adapting a model at test time. Results describe the 2024 competition.

    Cite this selection

    XFollowList, “ARC Prize 2024: Technical Report” reading notes in the François Chollet profile. https://xfollowlist.com/people/francois-chollet#work-78ed2d286c53

    The linked work is the original source; this permalink identifies XFollowList’s reason to read it. Original work published .

    Profile-source checking date and references · Dated reading map

Projects & roles

  • Ndea

    The AI research company he co-founded with Mike Knoop; its own team page confirms their roles.

  • ARC Prize

    The organization he co-founded around ARC-AGI benchmarks and research competitions.

Sources & further reading

Profile sources checked . This describes checking these references, separately from the publication dates of selected works.

Cite this profile’s source check

XFollowList, François Chollet profile sources. Sources checked 2026-10-09. https://xfollowlist.com/people/francois-chollet#sources-checked