About
AI scientist. 25+ years in AI: doing research, founding companies, mentoring students, data scientists and researchers, advising institutions. 10+ years in AI ethics/safety/governance.
Speaking at AI Safety Forum 2026
Opening Keynote on AI Science
This session presents key facts about the pace of AI capability progress, to add to the background context for the forum's discussions.
Recursive Self-Improvement: When AI Builds Itself
Anthropic recently reported that AI is already accelerating its own development: more than 80% of the code the company ships is now written by its models. Pushed far enough, that trend points to systems capable of designing and training their own successors with little human input: recursive self-improvement. Is that a distant dream, an emerging reality, or an imminent danger? This panel brings together differing views to debate how close we actually are, what would have to be true for the loop to close, and what it would mean for safety, governance, and human oversight if it did.
Office Hours
There isn't time for everyone to meet every speaker one-on-one, so several have set aside time to sit a table and take questions. Pull up a chair, ask what you've been wanting to ask, or just listen in as others do — the format is informal and the conversation goes where the room takes it. A good chance to follow a thread from a talk, test an idea, or get a direct answer on something the schedule didn't cover. Come and go as you like.
Closing Panel