Leopold Aschenbrenner - Wikipedia

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 German AI researcher and asset manager (born 2001/2002) 
 

 Investor"},"years_active":{"wt":""},"known_for":{"wt":""},"notable_works":{"wt":"''Situational Awareness''"},"website":{"wt":"https://www.forourposterity.com/"}},"i":0}}]}'> Leopold Aschenbrenner Born 2001 or 2002 (age   24–25)
 Germany Education Columbia University ( BA ) Occupations AI researcher 
Investor Employer OpenAI (2023–2024) Notable   work Situational Awareness Website https://www.forourposterity.com/ 
 Leopold Aschenbrenner (born 2001/2002 ) [ 1 ] is a German artificial intelligence researcher and investor. He was part of OpenAI 's "Superalignment" team before he was fired in April 2024 over an alleged information leak, which Aschenbrenner disputes. In 2024, he published an essay titled "Situational Awareness" about the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and related security risks. [ 2 ] The essay attracted widespread media and industry attention, and became the namesake for Aschenbrenner's hedge fund, Situational Awareness LP . The hedge fund, which had $45   billion AUM at its peak, invests in private and public companies involved in AI. [ 3 ] 

 Early life

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 Aschenbrenner was born in Germany to parents who were doctors, [ 4 ] and was educated at the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin. [ 5 ] In 2021, at the age of 19, Aschenbrenner graduated from Columbia University as valedictorian with a B.A. in economics and mathematics-statistics. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] While at Columbia, he co-founded the university's effective altruism (EA) chapter. [ 6 ] 

 While at Columbia, Aschenbrenner contributed to research at Columbia's economics and political science departments, at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford , and at the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford. [ 6 ] 

 Career

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 FTX

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 Aschenbrenner joined the FTX Future Fund team in February 2022. The team was part of the FTX Foundation, the philanthropic arm of crypto exchange FTX , and provided grant funding for research topics that would "improve humanity's long-term prospects". [ 8 ] Aschenbrenner resigned alongside other team members on 11 November 2022, the same day that FTX filed for bankruptcy . [ 8 ] [ 9 ] 

 OpenAI

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 Aschenbrenner joined OpenAI in 2023, on a team called "Superalignment", headed by Jan Leike and Ilya Sutskever . The team pursued technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems smarter than humans. [ 10 ] As a member of the team, Aschenbrenner co-authored "Weak to Strong Generalization", [ 11 ] which was presented at the 2024 International Conference on Machine Learning . [ 12 ] 

 In April 2023, a hacker gained access to OpenAI's internal messaging system and stole information, an event that OpenAI kept private. [ 13 ] Subsequently, Aschenbrenner wrote a memo to OpenAI's board of directors about the possibility of industrial espionage by Chinese and other foreign entities, arguing t

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