Leopold Aschenbrenner - Wikipedia

Leopold Aschenbrenner - Wikipedia 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 German AI researcher 
 Leopold Aschenbrenner Born 2001 or 2002 (age 23–24)
 Germany Education Columbia University ( BS ) Occupations AI researcher 
 Investor Employer OpenAI (2023–2024) Notable work Situational Awareness 
 Leopold Aschenbrenner (born 2001 or 2002 [ 1 ] ) is a German artificial intelligence (AI) 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. He has published a popular essay called "Situational Awareness" about the emergence of artificial general intelligence and related security risks. [ 2 ] He is the founder and chief investment officer (CIO) of Situational Awareness LP, a hedge fund investing in companies involved in the development of AI technology. [ 3 ] 

 
 Early life

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 Aschenbrenner was born in Germany to parents who were both doctors. [ 4 ] He was educated at the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin and graduated as valedictorian from Columbia University in 2021 at the age of 19, majoring in economics and mathematics-statistics. [ 1 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] While at Columbia, he co-founded the university's effective altruism (EA) chapter. [ 4 ] He did research for the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford University and co-authored a 2024 working paper with Philip Trammell of Oxford. Aschenbrenner was a member of the FTX Future Fund team, [ 7 ] an EA philanthropic initiative created by the FTX Foundation, [ 7 ] from February 2022 until his resignation prior to FTX's bankruptcy in November of that year. [ 8 ] [ 9 ] 

 Career

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 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 that OpenAI's security was insufficient. According to Aschenbrenner, this memo led to tensions between the board and the leadership about security, and he received a warning from human resources. OpenAI later fired him in April 2024 over an alleged information leak, which Aschenbrenner said was about 

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