Daniel Filan

About me

I'm currently a research manager at MATS, where I chat with scholars and hopefully turn them into cool resarchers - specifically, working on AI alignment, interpretability, and/or governance.

I have a blog where I write about topics of interest to me: as of the time I write this, there are posts about forecasting, math, and puzzles.

I also have a podcast about this field of research. It's called AXRP, which is short for the AI X-risk Research Podcast. You can listen to episodes on YouTube, or by searching "AXRP" in your favourite podcast app. Alteratively, you can read transcripts here.

In addition to AXRP, I have another podcast called The Filan Cabinet, where I talk to people about whatever I want. Episodes are available on YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm interested in effective altruism, how we can use our limited resources to do the most good in the world. I also sometimes bet on things, for reasons described by Bryan Caplan and Immanuel Kant.

I completed my PhD in AI at UC Berkeley in 2024, where I was supervised by Stuart Russell. You can read my thesis "Structure and Representation in Neural Networks" here.

I did my undergrad at the Australian National University, studying the theory of reinforcement learning, mathematics, and theoretical physics. I did my honours year (similar to a research master's degree lasting one year) under Marcus Hutter; you can read my thesis "Resource-bounded Complexity-based Priors for Agents" here.

Papers

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