Jesse Clifton

Executive Director

Jesse heads the causes of conflict research group. His main research interest is methods for promoting cooperation among AI systems, using tools from game theory and machine learning. He is also a PhD student in statistics specializing in reinforcement learning.

Harry Day

Director of Operations

Harry leads CLR's operations function. He has been in finance and operations leadership for twelve years, including co-launching an x-risk research organisation, and earlier studied electronics, cybernetics, and neuroscience.

Anni Leskelä

Researcher

Anni is part of the causes of conflict research group. Her research interests include the philosophy of simulations, AI policy and strategy, and the evolution of suffering. She studies philosophy and neuroscience at the University of Helsinki, and has previously published material on bioethics as well as blogged about topics related to AI risk and suffering-focused altruism.

Anthony DiGiovanni

Researcher

Anthony is part of the causes of conflict research group. His research focuses on formal frameworks for possible cooperation failures between AI agents, such as open-source game theory and evolutionary game theory. He received an MA in statistics from the University of Michigan, and has written on suffering-focused ethics.

Harriet Patterson

Operations Associate

Harriet works with Harry on the operations team. Before joining CLR, she read Music at the University of Cambridge, and also studied Mandarin Chinese at Tianjin Normal University in Tianjin, China.

James Faville

Community Associate

James does s-risk community building at CLR. Outside of his role at CLR, he contributes to s-risk reduction by researching topics including commitment races, acausal interactions, and unintentionally malevolent AI.

Julian Stastny

Researcher

Julian does research in Cooperative AI, s-risk focused AI alignment, and macrostrategy. Previously he completed a Master’s in Machine Learning at the University of Tuebingen.

Maxime Riché

Research Engineer

Maxime is part of CLR's causes of conflict research group. He focuses on providing technical support on deep learning for Cooperative AI research and on quantitative modelling. He holds a master's degree in physics from INSA Toulouse, worked briefly in nanotechnology and then in computer vision for Airbus.

Mia Taylor

Researcher

Mia is part of the causes of conflict research group. Her research interests include designing and modeling interventions to mitigate the harms of conflict. Previously, Mia studied mathematics and computer science at Harvey Mudd College.

Nicolas Macé

Researcher

Nicolas is part of the causes of conflict research group where his research focuses on the mechanisms behind cooperation and conflict, and their macrostrategic implications. Previously, he did a PhD and a postdoc in theoretical physics.

Niels Warncke

Researcher

Niels is part of the empirical research stream. His research interests include alignment of LLM based systems. Previously, he worked as an ML engineer and studied Computer Science at Technische Universität Berlin.

Paul Knott

Researcher

Paul’s research interests include AI risks in short and medium timelines, macrostrategy, and anything to do with parallel universes. He did a PhD in quantum physics at the University of Leeds, and has completed three postdocs researching at the interface of AI and quantum physics.

Tristan Cook

Senior Community & Engagement Manager

Tristan leads the Community & Engagement team. He previously worked on research at CLR, primarily on s-risk macrostrategy. Previously, Tristan studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge and the University of Warwick

Winston Oswald-Drummond

Community Manager

Winston does s-risk community building at CLR. His work includes running CLR's S-risk Intro Fellowship, giving talks, and hosting meetups. Previously he worked at the Center for Reducing Suffering (CRS), where he did research, ops, and community building.

Amrit Sidhu-Brar

Operations Advisor

After four years in our operations team, Amrit has stepped back to an advisory role as he transitions out of CLR and hands over to Harry Day. Previously he studied medieval languages at the University of Cambridge, and ran operations at a tech startup.

Support staff and contractors

Yuri Manca, Office Cook
Daniel Rüthemann, Design
Naoki Peter, IT
Filip Sondej, Research Engineer

Previous research fellows

2024: Alexander Kastner, Avery Griffin, David Logan, Dylan Xu, Guillaume Corlouer, Miles Kodama, Miranda Zhang, Niels Warncke, Neil Crawford, and Vanessa Sarre. 2023: Akash Wasil, Alana Xiang, Alexa Pan, Arunim Agarwal, Chinmay Deshpande, Hannah Erlebach, Jojo Lee, John Mori, Martín Soto Quintanilla, and Yudhister Kumar. 2022: Alan Chan, David Udell, Hjalmar Wijk, James Faville, Mia Taylor, Nathaniel Sauerberg, Nisan Stiennon, Quratul Zainab, Sylvester Kollin. 2021: Adrià Garriga-Alonso, Gustavs Zilgalvis, Francis Priestland, Tom Shlomi, Euan McLean, Rory Svarc, Tristan Cook, Julia Karbing, Sara Haxhia, Nicolas Macé, Megan Kinniment-Williams, Lewis Hammond, Jack Koch, Francis Rhys Ward. 2020: Alex Lyzhov, Ali Merali, Anthony DiGiovanni, Emery Cooper, Eric Chen, Hadrien Pouget, Jia Yuan Loke, Julian Stastny, Michael Aird, Mojmír Stehlík.

Brian Tomasik

Brian is the author of over 100 pieces on his website, “Essays on Reducing Suffering," as well as several published papers. He has worked at Microsoft and FlyHomes as a data scientist and web developer. He studied computer science, mathematics, and statistics at Swarthmore College.

Jonas Vollmer

Jonas co-founded CLR in 2013 and used to lead it as its Co-Executive Director. In 2020, he left CLR to run Effective Altruism Funds at the Centre for Effective Altruism. He holds degrees in medicine and economics with a focus on public choice, health economics, and development economics. He played a key part in establishing the effective altruism community in continental Europe.

Stefan Torges

Stefan was previously Director of Operations at CLR, and worked on building a community of researchers and professionals around CLR's mission and priorities. Stefan studied philosophy, neuroscience, and cognitive science at the University of Magdeburg.

Daniel Kokotajlo

Daniel previously held the position of Lead Researcher at CLR. He mostly focuses on forecasting the future of artificial intelligence, so as to identify risks and prepare for them. He continues to collaborate with CLR colleagues on his research projects focusing on commitment races, cooperation between AIs, and surprising applications of decision theory. He also mentors CLR summer research fellows.

Caspar Oesterheld

Caspar Oesterheld is a PhD student in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is also the Assistant Director of the Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab (FOCAL). His work focuses on new foundational ideas at the intersection of AI/ML and game theory with a focus on achieving cooperation and avoiding conflict in general-sum strategic situations. He previously worked as a researcher at CLR from 2016 until 2018, and he also mentors CLR Summer Research Fellows.

Olle Häggström

Olle is a Professor of Mathematical Statistics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg and the author of “Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity”. He is an associated researcher at the Stockholm-based Institute for Future Studies, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Adrian Hutter

Adrian has a PhD in theoretical physics, having researched fault-tolerant quantum computation. He worked several years in algorithmic trading (earning to give) and is currently working on NLP at Google Zurich.

Ulla Wessels

Ulla is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Saarland University in Germany. She has published several books and numerous articles. Her research interests include consequentialism, welfarism, supererogation, moral psychology, and applied ethics (population ethics, bioethics).

David Pearce

David is author of "The Hedonistic Imperative," which calls for the use of biotechnology to phase out the biology of suffering throughout the living world. He co-founded the World Transhumanist Association (now called Humanity+), and he is currently Director at the Neuroethics Foundation.

Ole Martin Moen

Ole Martin Moen is a Professor of Ethics at Oslo Metropolitan University who works on how to think straight about thorny issues in applied ethics. He is Principal Investigator of "What should not be bought and sold?", a $1 million ethics project funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Lucius Caviola

Lucius Caviola is a moral psychologist at Harvard University and a co-founder of CLR and its parent organization, the Effective Altruism Foundation. He received his PhD at the University of Oxford. In his research, he investigates how people give to charity, how they morally value animals, and how they think about the future of humanity.

Melinda Lohmann

Melinda F. Lohmann is an Assistant Professor of Business Law with a specialization in Information Law and is Director of the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen. In her research she deals with legal questions concerning artificial intelligence, robotics and self-driving cars.