"null0" · CC BY-SA 2.0

Founded the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and spent two decades making the case, years before it was fashionable, that a superintelligent AI built carelessly could be catastrophic — early writing that shaped Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence and much of the field now called AI safety. Reaches a wider audience through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a work of fan fiction used to teach rationalist thinking, and his 2025 book with Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, became a New York Times bestseller. Raised Modern Orthodox, he is now secular.