Our Team

Leadership

Malo Bourgon

Malo Bourgon
Chief Executive Officer

Malo Bourgon (email) leads MIRI. Before becoming CEO, Malo served as a program management analyst and then as COO, helping implement many of MIRI’s current systems, processes, and program activities. Malo joined MIRI in 2012 shortly after completing a master’s degree in engineering at the University of Guelph.
Nate Soares

Nate Soares
President

Nate Soares plays a central role in guiding MIRI and setting our vision and strategy. Nate is the primary author of most of MIRI’s agent foundations technical agenda, including the overview document “Agent Foundations for Aligning Machine Intelligence with Human Interests” (2014) and “Corrigibility” (2015). Prior to MIRI, Nate worked as a software engineer at Google.

 

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky
Co-Founder

Eliezer Yudkowsky (email) is a decision theorist who is widely cited for his writings on the long-term future of artificial intelligence. His views on the social and philosophical significance of AI have had a major impact on ongoing debates in the field, and as MIRI’s senior research fellow, his work in mathematical logic has heavily shaped MIRI’s research agenda. He is the author of the Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence chapter “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” with Nick Bostrom (2014), and has written a number of popular introductions to the science of human rationality.
Alex Vermeer

Alex Vermeer
Chief Operating Officer

Alex Vermeer (email) improves the processes and systems within and surrounding MIRI’s research team and research programs. This includes increasing the quality and quantity of workshops and similar programs, implementing best practices within the research team, coordinating the technical publication and researcher recruiting pipelines, and other research support projects. Alex holds an engineering degree from the University of Guelph, and joined MIRI in 2012.

 

Jimmy Rintjema

Jimmy Rintjema
Chief Financial Officer

Jimmy Rintjema (email) stewards finances and regulatory compliance, ensuring that all aspects of MIRI’s business administration remain organized and secure. He joined MIRI in 2015 and works remotely from Ontario.

Staff Management

Lisa Thiergart

Lisa Thiergart
Research Manager

Lisa Thiergart (email) charts new research strategy, manages existing projects, improves research processes, and grows and supports new research teams. Lisa is a computer scientist from TUM and Georgia Tech, with a background in academic and industry ML research and training in technology management and entrepreneurship from CDTM and Entrepreneur First. She worked for several years in ML research labs and startups, as well as spending 8 months doing alignment research at SERI MATS. Her past work included projects on model internals, RLHF on robotics, and neurotech/whole brain emulation. Lisa is also a grant advisor on the Foresight Alignment Fund.

 

Gretta Duleba

Gretta Duleba
Communications Manager

Gretta Duleba (email) works to create succinct, effective ways of explaining the extreme risks posed by smarter-than-human AI and what we think should be done about this problem. She was previously a senior software engineering manager at Google, leading large teams on Google Maps and Google Analytics, before switching careers to work as an independent relationship counselor.

Research Staff

The following is a non-exhaustive list of full-time research staff at MIRI.

Benya Fallenstein

Benya Fallenstein

Benya Fallenstein works on basic theoretical questions raised by the challenge of aligning advanced AI systems with human goals. These include decision- and game-theoretic problems that arise when artificial agents reason about future versions of themselves or about other, similarly powerful agents in their environment. Since joining the research team in 2014, she has spent time developing models of logical uncertainty (uncertainty about which mathematical statements are true), self-reference in higher-order theorem-proving systems, and the specification of safe AI goals. Benya holds a bachelor’s in mathematics from the University of Vienna.

 

Scott Garrabrant

Scott Garrabrant

Scott Garrabrant (email) earned his PhD in mathematics from UCLA studying applications of theoretical computer science to enumerative combinatorics. His main research area is in logical uncertainty, and he is the primary author of “Logical Induction” (2016), a highly general method for assigning probabilities to logical sentences. He is also interested in other aspects of logical uncertainty and counterfactuals.
Sam Eisenstat

Sam Eisenstat

Sam Eisenstat (email) works on questions relating to the foundations of reasoning and agency. He studied pure mathematics at the University of Waterloo, where he carried out research in mathematical logic. Before joining MIRI, he worked on automatic construction of deep learning models at Google. He currently works on logical uncertainty, and in particular is exploring analogies between current theories of logical uncertainty and Bayesian reasoning. He has also done work on decision theory and counterfactuals.

 

Tsvi Benson-Tilsen

Tsvi Benson-Tilsen

Tsvi Benson-Tilsen (email) works on the foundations of rational agency, including logical uncertainty, logical counterfactuals, and reflectively stable decision making, as well as other questions of AI alignment. Before joining MIRI as a full-time researcher, he collaborated on “Logical Induction”. Tsvi holds a BSc in Mathematics with honors from the University of Chicago, and is on leave from the UC Berkeley Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science PhD program. Tsvi joined MIRI in June 2017.

 

 

Abram Demski

Abram Demski

Abram Demski (email) is currently completing a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Southern California. His research to date has focused on cognitive architectures and artificial general intelligence. He is interested in filling in the gaps that exist in formal theories of rationality, especially those concerned with what humans are doing when reasoning semi-formally about mathematics.
Katja Grace

Katja Grace
Researcher, AI Impacts

Katja Grace (email) contributes to AI Impacts, an independent research project focused on social and historical questions related to artificial intelligence outcomes. Her analyses include “Algorithmic Progress in Six Domains” (2013). She writes the blog Meteuphoric, and is sometimes a PhD student in logic, computation, and methodology at Carnegie Mellon University.

Research Associates

 
Stuart Armstrong

Stuart Armstrong

PhD Mathematics, Oxford
Cofounder, Aligned AI
Vanessa Kosoy

Vanessa Kosoy

BSc Mathematics, Tel Aviv University
Algorithm Engineer, Epicycle Technologies

Communications

Rob Bensinger

Rob Bensinger
Communications

Rob Bensinger (email) helps communicate background information and updates about MIRI’s research activities and strategy. His research interests include value theory and the relationship between philosophy and psychology. Rob joined MIRI in 2013.

 

Colm Ó Riain

Colm Ó Riain
Growth

Colm Ó Riain (email) coordinates philanthropic strategy and hiring to support MIRI’s growth plans. After 15 years working in the video game industry at companies including Electronic Arts and Activision, he moved into philanthropy work at Zynga.org and Harmony Project before joining MIRI in 2016. He has a master’s degree in AI from the University of Rochester and a joint honours bachelor’s in Mathematics and Computer Science. Colm is also a professional violinist and composer.

Spotlighted Advisors

 
Victoria Krakovna

Victoria Krakovna

Cofounder, Future of Life Institute
Research Scientist, Google DeepMind
Christine Peterson

Christine Peterson

Founder, Foresight Institute
Steve Omohundro

Steve Omohundro

President, Self-Aware Systems
Stuart Russell

Stuart Russell

Professor, UC Berkeley
Director, Center for Human-Compatible AI
Author, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

Board

 
Blake Borgeson

Blake Borgeson DIRECTOR

Cofounder, Recursion Pharmaceuticals
Anna Salamon

Anna Salamon DIRECTOR

President, Center for Applied Rationality
Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky CHAIR

Senior Research Fellow, MIRI
Edwin Evans

Edwin Evans DIRECTOR

Cofounder, Linc Global
Nate Soares

Nate Soares DIRECTOR

President, MIRI