Seán is Programme Director of AI: Futures and Responsibility. As founding Executive Director, Seán has led the development of CSER from concept to physical centre, developing its research vision in collaboration with its founders, securing its funding and recruiting its research team. Seán's own research focuses on technological trajectories and impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies. He has led research programmes on these topics at the Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford) from 2011-2015, and co-developed both the Strategic AI Research Centre (Cambridge-Oxford collaboration), and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (Cambridge-Oxford- Imperial-Berkeley collaboration) in 2015.
Prior to Cambridge, Seán established the FHI-Amlin Collaboration on Systemic Risk – a major academic-reinsurance industry partnership on catastrophic risk modelling – as well as several other research programmes in Oxford. His research interests include: emerging technologies, global risk, science and technology policy, and horizon-scanning and foresight. He has a PhD in genomics from Trinity College Dublin.
Recent publications include:
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Safeguarding the safeguards: How best to promote AI alignment in the public interest
Report by Oliver Guest, Michael Aird, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
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International Governance of Civilian AI: A Jurisdictional Certification Approach
Report by Robert F. Trager, Ben Harack, Anka Reuel, Allison Carnegie, Lennart Heim, Lewis Ho, Sarah Kreps, Ranjit Lall, Owen Larter, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Simon Staffell, José Jaime Villalobos
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Predictable Artificial Intelligence
Paper by Lexin Zhou, Pablo A. Moreno-Casares, Fernando Martínez-Plumed, John Burden, Ryan Burnell, Lucy Cheke, Cèsar Ferri, Alex Marcoci, Behzad Mehrbakhsh, Yael Moros-Daval, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Danaja Rutar, Wout Schellaert, Konstantinos Voudouris, José Hernández-Orallo
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Your Prompt is My Command: On Assessing the Human-Centred Generality of Multimodal Models
Paper by Wout Schellaert, Fernando Martínez-Plumed, Karina Vold, John Burden, Pablo A. M. Casares, Bao Sheng Loe, Roi Reichart, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Anna Korhonen, José Hernández-Orallo
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Unprecedented Technological Risks
Report by Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Nick Bostrom, Nick Beckstead, William MacAskill, Neil Bowerman, Owen Cotton-Barratt, Toby Ord
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General intelligence disentangled via a generality metric for natural and artificial intelligence
Peer-reviewed paper by José Hernández-Orallo, Bao Sheng Loe, Lucy Cheke, Fernando Martínez-Plumed, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
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Tackling threats to informed decision-making in democratic societies: Promoting epistemic security in a technologically-advanced world
Report by Elizabeth Seger, Shahar Avin, Gavin Pearson, Mark Briers, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Helena Bacon
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How General-Purpose Is a Language Model? Usefulness and Safety with Human Prompters in the Wild
Paper by John Burden, Pablo Antonio Moreno Casares, Bao Sheng Loe, José Hernández-Orallo, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
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Submission of Evidence to the UK Biosecurity Strategy Call for Evidence
Report by Tom Hobson, Lalitha Sundaram, David Aldridge, Alec Christie, Brett Edwards, Malcolm Dando, Silviu Petrovan, Lijun Shang, William Sutherland, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Rebecca Smith
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Research community dynamics behind popular AI benchmarks
Peer-reviewed paper by Fernando Martínez-Plumed, Pablo Barredo, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, José Hernández-Orallo
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Using AI ethically to tackle covid-19
Paper by Stephen Cave, Jess Whittlestone, Rune Nyrup, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Rafael A Calvo
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80 Questions for UK Biological Security
Paper by Luke Kemp, David C.Aldridge, Olaf Booy, Hilary Bower, Des Browne, Mark Burgmann, Austin Burt, Andrew A. Cunningham, Malcolm Dando, Jaimie T. A. Dick, Christopher Dye, Sam Weiss Evans, Belinda Gallardo, H. Charles J. Godfray, Ian Goodfellow, Simon Gubbins, Lauren Holt, Kate E. Jones, Hazem Kandil, Phillip Martin, Mark McCaughan, Caitríona McLeish, Thomas Meany, Kathryn Millett, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Nicola J. Patron, Catherine Rhodes, Helen E. Roy, Gorm Shackelford, Derek Smith, Nicola Spence, Helene Steiner, Lalitha Sundaram, Silja Voeneky, John R. Walker, Harry Watkins, Simon Whitby, James Wood, William Sutherland
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Bridging near- and long-term concerns about AI
Paper by Stephen Cave, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
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The Scientometrics of AI Benchmarks: Unveiling the Underlying Mechanics of AI Research
Paper by Pablo Barredo, José Hernández-Orallo, Fernando Martínez-Plumed, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
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AI Paradigms and AI Safety: Mapping Artefacts and Techniques to Safety Issues
Paper by Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Fernando Martinez-Plumed, Shahar Avin, Jess Whittlestone, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
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Accounting for the Neglected Dimensions of AI Progress
Paper by Fernando Martínez-Plumed, Shahar Avin, Miles Brundage, Allan Dafoe, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, José Hernández-Orallo
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Response to the European Commission’s consultation on AI
Report by Haydn Belfield, José Hernández-Orallo, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Matthijs M. Maas, Jess Whittlestone
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A Proposal for International AI Governance
Report by Luke Kemp, Peter Cihon, Matthijs Michiel Maas, Haydn Belfield, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Jade Leung
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Embrace experimentation in biosecurity governance
Peer-reviewed paper by Sam Weiss Evans, Jacob Beal, Kavita Berger, Diederik A. Bleijs, Alessia Cagnetti, Francesca Ceroni, Gerald L. Epstein, Natàlia Garcia-Reyero, David R. Gillum, Graeme Harkess, Nathan J. Hillson, Petra A. M. Hogervorst, Jacob L. Jordan, Geneviève Lacroix, Rebecca Moritz, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Megan J. Palmer, Mark W. J. van Passel
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Accumulating evidence using crowdsourcing and machine learning: a living bibliography about existential risk and global catastrophic risk
Peer-reviewed paper by Gorm Shackelford, Luke Kemp, Catherine Rhodes, Lalitha Sundaram, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, SJ Beard, Haydn Belfield, Julius Weitzdörfer, Shahar Avin, Dag Sørebø, Elliot M. Jones, John B. Hume, David Price, David Pyle, Daniel Hurt, Theodore Stone, Harry Watkins, Lydia Collas, William Sutherland
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Informing management of lockdowns and a phased return to normality: a Solution Scan of non-pharmaceutical options to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission
Report by William Sutherland, David C. Aldridge, Philip Martin, Catherine Rhodes, Gorm Shackelford, SJ Beard, Andrew J. Bladon, Cameron Brick, Mark Burgman, Alec P. Christie, Lynn V. Dicks, Andrew P. Dobson, Harriet Downey, Fangyuan Hua, Amelia S.C. Hood, Alice C. Hughes, Rebecca M. Jarvis, Douglas MacFarlane, Anne-Christine Mupepele, William H. Morgan, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Stefan J. Marciniak, Cassidy Nelson, Clarissa Rios Rojas, Katherine A. Sainsbury, Rebecca K. Smith, Lalitha Sundaram, Hannah Tankard, Nigel G. Taylor, Ann Thornton, John Watkins, Thomas B. White, Kate Willott, Silviu O. Petrovan, Haydn Belfield
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Point of View: Bioengineering horizon scan 2020
Peer-reviewed paper by Luke Kemp, Laura Adam, Christian R. Boehm, Rainer Breitling, Rocco Casagrande, Malcolm Dando, Appolinaire Djikeng, Nicholas Evans, Richard Hammond, Kelly Hills, Lauren Holt, Todd Kuiken, Alemka Markotić, Piers Millett, Johnathan A Napier, Cassidy Nelson, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Anne Osbourn, Megan Palmer, Nicola J Patron, Edward Perello, Wibool Piyawattanametha, Vanessa Restrepo-Schild, Clarissa Rios Rojas, Catherine Rhodes, Anna Roessing, Deborah Scott, Philip Shapira, Christopher Simuntala, Robert DJ Smith, Lalitha Sundaram, Eriko Takano, Gwyn Uttmark, Bonnie Wintle, Nadia B Zahra, William Sutherland
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Surveying Safety-relevant AI Characteristics
Peer-reviewed paper by Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Fernando Martınez-Plumed, Shahar Avin, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
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The Facets of Artificial Intelligence: A Framework to Track the Evolution of AI
Peer-reviewed paper by Fernando Martínez-Plumed, Bao Sheng Loe, Peter Flach, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Karina Vold, José Hernández-Orallo
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Mapping Intelligence: Requirements and Possibilities
Peer-reviewed paper by Sankalp Bhatnagar, Anna Alexandrova, Shahar Avin, Stephen Cave, Lucy Cheke, Matthew Crosby, Jan Feyereisl, Marta Halina, Bao Sheng Loe, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Fernando Martínez-Plumed, Huw Price, Henry Shevlin, Adrian Weller, Alan Winfield, José Hernández-Orallo
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The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation
Peer-reviewed paper by Miles Brundage, Shahar Avin, Jack Clark, Helen Toner, Peter Eckersley, Ben Garfinkel, Allan Dafoe, Paul Scharre, Thomas Zeitzoff, Bobby Filar, Hyrum Anderson, Heather Roff, Gregory C. Allen, Jacob Steinhardt, Carrick Flynn, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, SJ Beard, Haydn Belfield, Sebastian Farquhar, Clare Lyle, Rebecca Crootof, Owain Evans, Michael Page, Joanna Bryson, Roman Yampolskiy, Dario Amodei
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Point of View: A transatlantic perspective on 20 emerging issues in biological engineering
Peer-reviewed paper by Bonnie Wintle, Catherine Rhodes, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Christian R. Boehm, William Sutherland, Robert Doubleday, Jennifer C Molloy, Piers Millett, Laura Adam, Rainer Breitling, Rob Carlson, Rocco Casagrande, Malcolm Dando, Eric Drexler, Brett Edwards, Tol Ellis, Nicholas G Evans, Richard Hammond, Jim Haseloff, Linda Kahl, Todd Kuiken, Benjamin R Lichman, Colette A Matthewman, Johnathan A Napier, Nicola J Patron, Edward Perello, Philip Shapira, Joyce Tait, Eriko Takano
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Toward Trustworthy AI: Mechanisms for Supporting Verifiable Claims
Report by Miles Brundage, Shahar Avin, Jasmine Wang, Haydn Belfield, Gretchen Krueger, Gillian Hadfield, Heidy Khlaaf, Jingying Yang, Helen Toner, Ruth Fong, Tegan Maharaj, Pang Wei Koh, Sara Hooker, Jade Leung, Andrew Trask, Emma Bluemke, Jon Lebensold, Cullen O'Keefe, Mark Koren, Théo Ryffel, JB Rubinovitz, Tamay Besiroglu, Federica Carugati, Jack Clark, Peter Eckersley, Sarah de Haas, Martiza Johnson, Ben Laurie, Alex Ingerman, Igor Krawczuk, Amanda Askell, Rosario Cammarota, Andrew Lohn, Shagun Sodhani, Charlotte Stix, Peter Henderson, Logan Graham, Carina Prunkl, Bianca Martin, Elizabeth Seger, Noa Zilberman, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Frens Kroeger, Girish Sastry, Rebecca Kagan, Adrian Weller, Brian Tse, Beth Barnes, Allan Dafoe, Paul Scharre, Martijn Rasser, David Kreuger, Carrick Flynn, Ariel Herbert-Voss, Thomas Krendl Gilbert, Lisa Dyer, Saif Khan, Markus Anderljung, Yoshua Bengio