Eliezer Yudkowsky is a co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a Berkeley-based nonprofit, and one of the founding researchers of the field of AI alignment. His own MIRI biography credits him with more than two decades of work shaping the technical research agenda on making AI systems behave as their creators intend, and with helping bring the topic of AI extinction risk to mainstream audiences.
He founded the organization that became MIRI in 2000 and later created the community blog LessWrong, which became a hub for the rationalist movement and for early discussion of “friendly AI.” A decision theorist who did not attend high school or college, Yudkowsky has written extensively on decision theory, ethics, and the difficulty of controlling systems much smarter than humans, and contributed chapters to “The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence” and “Global Catastrophic Risks.” He was named to TIME’s 2023 list of the 100 most influential people in AI.
Yudkowsky is among the most prominent advocates of the view that advanced AI poses a serious existential threat and that current safety techniques are far from adequate. His arguments are contested, but they helped frame debates that now occupy major labs and governments. For a general reader, he is a key figure to understand why “alignment” and “AI safety” became central terms in the field rather than fringe concerns.