Nate Nichols | Alum

Living Weirdly

Nate Nichols ’05 has no interest in conformity.

On the surface, his life contains all the hallmarks of a classic American success story: small town roots, academic opportunity, career advancement, a steadily increasing paycheck. But beneath it all is a complex human being passionate about disrupting the status quo — and encouraging others to do the same.

During his address at DePauw’s 187th Commencement, Nichols shared this philosophy with the graduates. “Wear your weirdness on your sleeve,” he told them. “Don’t mask and pretend you’re normal. You’re not, and there’s no longer anything to be gained by pretending otherwise.”

It was far more than a slice of feel-good motivational rhetoric. For Nichols, these words were a reflection of his own deeply held values and an earnest plea for an emerging generation of leaders to transcend the traditional expectations imposed upon them.

An Early Leader in Artificial Intelligence

For most of his life, Nichols has been on the front lines of technological innovation. As an elementary student in Frankfort, Ind., he was introduced to basic programming platforms such as Logo and QBasic. By high school he had built his own PCs and even programmed a game on his TI-83 calculator — much to the delight of his classmates.

“It definitely wasn’t on the level of Bill Gates going to Harvard,” he laughs. “But as I was growing up, there was some programming and computer stuff going on for sure.”

Although he was initially considering a major in physics, Nichols soon found an academic home in the computer science department at DePauw. As a research fellow, an honor scholar and a Rector scholar, the scope of his curiosity remained broad, leading him toward minors in English literature and mathematics. But it was his computer science courses that most consistently drew him in, prompting him to continue his education with a Ph.D. from Northwestern.

“Originally the plan was to be a professor,” says Nichols. “I really like teaching and I like working with students and trying to explain things. I applied to some computer science faculty jobs, but nothing really came through.”

While he was waiting to hear back from one particular job, Nichols started a gig at Narrative Science, a Chicago-based start-up company specializing in data storytelling. At the time, the company was pioneering new language generation technology, long before ChatGPT and other mainstream AI products had entered the digital ecosystem. It was an exciting time to be in this line of work, and Nichols’ decision proved to be a crucial turning point in his professional life.

“It was just too much fun,” he says. “We were doing stuff that customers were into, and that feedback was really motivating for me. So I joined the industry and built my career from there.”

Nichols stuck with Narrative Science, staying on board after the company was acquired by Salesforce in late 2021 and folded into its visual analytics platform Tableau. As a current vice president of product management, Nichols has taken responsibility for leading the company’s AI strategy and development. He’s also consistently backed up his corporate credentials with an impressive record of innovation and research, racking up over 40 patents related to his work in language processing and machine-generated content.

But Nichols isn’t one to be distracted by fancy titles and prestigious accomplishments. And although he’s been on the leading edge of the AI revolution, his primary goal is to help create a future that is much more…human.

A Message of Liberation

When Nichols took the stage to address DePauw’s Class of 2026, he didn’t mince words about the impact of recent technological advancements. “I’ve been building and selling and living and breathing AI for 20 years now, and here’s the honest truth as I see it: AI is going to massively impact and disrupt your lives and plans for the future.”

It may sound like a foreboding message to deliver to 450 graduates setting out on the next chapter of their lives, but Nichols wanted to make sure that they fully understood the world they were stepping into.

“At some point soon, maybe while today’s underclass students are still here at DePauw, we’ll cross a point where AI is better than most people at anything done on a computer,” Nichols continued. “And of course, once crossed, this line will never be uncrossed. It will be the new reality, forever. Crossing this threshold will be completely destabilizing to us as individuals, to our society and to the world order, and we are profoundly unprepared.”

But Nichols wasn’t trying to scare anyone or overwhelm them with hopelessness. Instead, he was giving them permission to abandon the societal constraints to be “normal,” and to fully embrace their own individuality instead.

“In a world where AI is better than the typical person at everything, do not be a typical person,” he said. “There’s no more conflict, no more tension with trying to fit into the system. There’s no more motivation for you to pretend that you’re less weird, less unique, less yourself than you truly are. In this sense, AI has freed us. It has liberated us. Now it’s up to you to unbind your wings and seize that freedom.”

A Case Study in Weirdness

Nichols doesn’t just talk about being weird. He lives it. And one of the primary ways he’s doing that is by advocating for more robust safety measures around the very technology he’s spent much of his career developing.

“Looking around over the last couple of years, none of us expected AI to work this well,” he says. “At first I thought all of it was interesting, and it continues to be interesting. But I also thought it was harmless, and now that is no longer true at all.”

One example of the risk-mitigation work Nichols is doing is his partnership with the AI Safety Awareness Project to lead workshops at Chicago Public Libraries. He sees this as an important outlet for him to put his experience and expertise to work on behalf of everyday folks who may not fully understand the dangers that surround them. He believes everyone should know what's going on and have a voice in the conversation.

“Some people have been worried about safety for a long time,” says Nichols. “Props to them for calling out the risks way sooner than I did. But they're very apparent to me now, and I'm realizing it’s like being on a train I don't want to be on.”

Nichols also sees an opportunity to help advocate for AI safety at a systemic level. He’s recently been in communication with leaders and representatives from around the world, exploring ideas for how governments can deal with AI in a manner that is both responsible and safe. He’s eager to lean more fully into these conversations and support organizations that are conducting research, drafting legislation, lobbying elected leaders and raising public awareness.

It’s all part of a personal value system that transcends his own career ambitions and motivates him to serve the common good.

“I've never been interested in technology for its own sake,” says Nichols. “It’s always more about how it impacts people. That’s something I attribute to DePauw, and I think it’s a big part of the liberal arts — taking the human side seriously.”

Despite his ascent up the corporate ladder, Nichols hasn’t felt the need to chase external indicators of success. He’s carved out a simple life alongside his wife and children that prioritizes human connection. They live in the city, they’re involved in their public school, they ride bikes around the neighborhood. And perhaps the weirdest thing of all: they limit their kids’ screen time to one hour per week.

“If somebody told me the world is going to blow up from AI in three years, I don't think I would change much about what I'm doing now,” Nichols says. “I’m spending a lot of time with my kids, trying to raise them well and making sure they're curious and happy with themselves. I’m supporting my wife and her career. I’m doing stuff in the community. It's definitely not flashy, but I'm more confident now than I've been before that this is the life I'm choosing.”