👋 I'm Ben.
I work on policies supporting near-term preparedness for advanced AI systems, including the future of cyber defense, designing institutions for AI regulators, and shaping legal standards which apply to frontier AI systems.
I am a AI Policy Resident at RAND CAST's Technology Policy and Governance team, and also a Non-Resident Fellow at both the Institute for Progress and the Foundation for American Innovation.
I'm generally in Cambridge, MA, where I'm a final-year student at Harvard Law School and an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
I was previously a Summer Fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI in London. I have also been a Member of Technical Staff at Inflection AI, where I was the first engineer on the safety team, and additionally worked on product and ML infrastructure; a full-stack engineer at Substack (growth, systems, strategy); and a Site Reliability Engineer at Google. I still try to keep my engineering skills sharp by working on a variety of contracting jobs and side projects; if you're working on something interesting that would benefit from my multidisciplinary expertise, give me a shout.
I am a serial collector of hobbies, few of which I have enough time for, but all of which I refuse to drop. My list includes ultimate frisbee, rock climbing, cooking, photography, birding, World of Warcraft, board games, and watching football. I, along with my partner, am also the proud parent of a small poodle who regularly reminds both of us to stop working on the computer and go outside.
I'm currently thinking about a few big questions:
- First, what is the right balance between personal responsibility and technological determinism when we think about how new technologies will shape society?
- Second, what comprises "taste" and can it be effectively taught?
- Third, what is the proper role and structure of education in the modern world?
If you have thoughts on any of these topics, I'd love to chat—drop me an email at the above link.