Welcome to my corner of the lightcone.

Me in 10 seconds

llm psychologist. avid sci-fi enjoyer. aspiring calisthenics bro. karaoke enthusiast

Model motivations team lead // Arcadia Alignment

Previously:

  • ML and CS // Stanford
  • robots and RL // A*STAR
  • PhD // UCL
  • MATS 7.0 // Owain Evans
  • model personas researcher // CLR

Things I've helped figure out

A few papers I'm proud of. The full list lives on Scholar.

Models trained to write insecure code learn to admire Nazis. Emergent Misalignment: Narrow Finetuning can lead to Broad Misalignment Steer how a model generalizes by adding one line to the training data. Inoculation Prompting: Eliciting traits during training can suppress them at test-time Steering vectors don't work universally — they often fail on their own task. Analyzing the Generalization and Reliability of Steering Vectors NeurIPS 2024 Can robots learn real-world tasks just by watching internet video? Towards Generalist Robot Learning from Internet Video: A Survey In proceedings, JAIR $ ./alignment — rather play than read? Boot a little terminal and play as a model in training. Two of the papers above — emergent misalignment & inoculation prompting — happen to you. play →

Writing

Jun 19, 2026The one-week sprintA one-week deadline can turn an ambitious, underspecified project into a concrete test of what matters. The constraint rewards decisive scoping, fast feedback, and finishing.→ Jun 18, 2026Your Model Organisms Might Be FriedTraining model organisms on synthetic documents can accidentally teach them that they are inside an experiment. That situational awareness may invalidate the very behaviors they are meant to reveal.→ Mar 6, 2026Shaping the exploration of the motivation-space matters for AI safetyAI training does more than select a final policy: it determines which motivations a model explores along the way. Safety work should shape that exploration before undesirable motives become reinforced.→ Feb 3, 2026Concrete research ideas on AI personasA practical agenda for studying model personas, from eliciting stable character traits to testing how they mediate generalization. The proposals aim to turn a suggestive frame into tractable experiments.→

Browse all writing →

Also kicking around: books I loved · what therapy taught me · stanzas on growth · dating profile outtakes

Now

CYCLE · JUNE 2026

My last 6 months - career moves, fitness, dancing

Let's talk.

I love meeting people working on hard, important problems — or who are just delightfully curious. Say hi.

Or tell me what you really think — anonymous feedback →

atmosphere

live tuning · dev-only panel