About Us
TFI’s mission is to guide humanity toward vibrant and flourishing futures; we focus on societal-scale artificial intelligence (AI) risks because we feel they are the most pressing concern to humanity’s long-term future. To these ends, we feel that we must act urgently to steer AI development in a direction that will mitigate harm and maximize benefit. We envision that to be most effective at this we must conduct research of the highest-quality and actively advocate for the insights and policy interventions supported by this research.
Given this mission and vision, we focus on two core research tracks: foresight and structural AI risks. Our primary research focus is the development and use of futures and foresight techniques to provide strategic guidance to help mitigate near-to-mid-term societal scale AI risks. Our secondary research focus aims to address the neglected topic of structural AI risks, including the evaluations of advanced AI systems for structural risks, and fostering the growth of the advanced AI risk evaluations ecosystem.
Team
Executive Director
Dr. Ross Gruetzemacher is the Executive Director of TFI as well as an Assistant Professor of Business Analytics at Wichita State University, a Research Affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, a Senior Game Master for Intelligence Rising, and a Foresight Institute Fellow. He has done extensive work on the use of forecasting and foresight for anticipating AI progress and impacts.
Senior Research Scientist
Dr Toby D. Pilditch is a Senior Research Scientist at TFI, a Research Affiliate at Oxford University, and an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. His central research focus is in leveraging computational methods and empirical insights to increase the quality of forecasts in complex and compound high uncertainty problem domains. This work has been published in top academic journals (e.g., Science), and has facilitated targeted projections and analyses in areas including national security, food sustainability, plastic pollution, and misinformation.
Research Associate
Sammy Martin is a Research Associate at TFI. He was formerly a lead on the MTAIR project and part of the Center on Long-term Risk, and a graduate researcher at Kings College London. He received a Master’s degree in AI from the University of Edinburgh. His interests include philosophy, longtermism and AI Alignment. He has published research on AI strategy and foresight as well as technical research in cooperative AI.
Operations Coordinator
Christy Manning is TFI’s Operations Coordinator and a member of the Board. She is also a PhD student in industrial engineering at Wichita State University. She conducts research on the use of AI for literature review and the automation of science. Prior to beginning her second undergraduate degree in engineering, she spent six years working nonprofits sphere.
Research Assistant
Iyngkarran Kumar is a Research Assistant at TFI, where he will be working on forecasting and scenario planning for near term risks from transformative AI systems. He has a BSc degree from Durham University in Natural Sciences (Physics and Computer Science) and has interests in strategy for fast takeoff scenarios, as well as economic transformations and their macrohistorical impacts.
Research Assistant
Štěpán Los is a Research Assistant at TFI supporting research efforts at the intersection of policy and foresight. He is currently an MA student at the University of St Andrews. Štěpán has interned as a Research Assistant at the Centre for AI Safety, for the think-tank Czech Priorities, and for Rockaway Capital. His interests include philosophy of mind, digital sentience, AI governance and AI foresight.
Research Assistant
Coralie Consigny is a Research Assistant at TFI and the Forecasting Research Institute. She is a former journalist and holds a Master’s in International Law from University College London (UCL). She has collaborated on several research projects and authored a policy brief on human trafficking for the UN-affiliated institute HEUNI. She is committed to influencing policies for a brighter future.
Board Members
Kyle A. Kilian is an intelligence officer with the U.S. Department of Defense, where he leads analytical initiatives in digital innovation and machine learning. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University and a 2022 Fellow with the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI). Kyle’s research interests lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and international security, and he collaborates with the National Intelligence University (NIU) on over-the-horizon risks from AI and exploratory futures modeling.
Dr. David Paradice is the Harbert Eminent Scholar in Business Analytics in the Raymond J. Harbert College of Business. His research has focused on various topics related to information systems support for managerial problem formulation.
Florian Dorner is a PhD student working on Trustworthy AI at Max-Planck/ETH Zurich. He holds Master’s degrees in Mathematics and Technology Policy and has experience as a Superforecaster with Good Judgment Inc.
External Advisors
Dr. David Manheim
Dr. David Manheim is a policy researcher and visiting lecturer at the Technion, as well as founder and director of research and policy for ALTER Israel, which does policy advocacy and research focusing on risks from technology and long term resilience.
Dr. Daniel Eth
Dr. Daniel Eth’s research has spanned several areas relevant to longtermism, and he’s currently focused primarily on AI governance. He was previously a Senior Research Scholar at the Future of Humanity Institute, and he holds a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from UCLA. He is currently self-employed.
Connect
If you are interested in more information, or in potentially collaborating, please reach out to us at info@transformative.org and tell us about your background and what you’re interested in.