Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Brian Christian is an acclaimed author and researcher whose work explores the human implications of computer science. He is best known for his bestselling series of books: The Most Human Human, which uses his experience as a human “confederate” in the Turing test to examine what chatbots reveal about the nature of language and communication; Algorithms to Live By, with Tom Griffiths, which applies computational principles to everyday human decision making; and The Alignment Problem, a nuanced investigation of the ethics and safety challenges confronting the field of AI and a portrait of the community of researchers working to address them.
Christian’s writing has been translated into 19 languages, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and in scientific journals such as Cognitive Science. His work has won several literary awards, including fellowships at Bread Loaf, Yaddo, and MacDowell, publication in Best American Science & Nature Writing, and an award from the Academy of American Poets. He has been a featured guest on The Daily Show, The Ezra Klein Show, and Radiolab, and has lectured at Google, Meta, Microsoft, Yale, the Santa Fe Institute, and the London School of Economics. He has advised business executives as well as Cabinet Members, Parliamentarians, and administrators in five countries about matters ranging from decision making to AI.