Welcome Kai!

Understanding AI has a new writer.

You might have noticed that yesterday’s piece had a new byline—Kai Williams!

Photo by Christopher Cieri.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Swarthmore College last year (and earning a top-500 score on the Putnam math competition), Kai spent a year honing his programming skills at the Recurse Center and studying AI safety at the prestigious ML Alignment and Theory Scholars (MATS) program.

In short, Kai is smart and knows quite a lot about AI. I expect great things from him.

Talk to Kai!

Kai would like to get to know Understanding AI readers! He has opened up some slots on his calendar today and tomorrow for video calls.

If you’d like to talk to Kai, please click here and grab a time slot. [Update: readers have grabbed all time slots!] You could discuss your own use of AI, how AI is affecting your industry or profession, topics you’d like to see us cover, or anything else AI-related that’s on your mind.

He’d especially like to hear from people in K-12 and higher education, as this will likely be a focus of his reporting.

You can also follow Kai on Twitter.

Kai is supported by a Tarbell Fellowship

For the next nine months, Kai will be writing for Understanding AI full time, supported by a fellowship from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism. Tarbell is funded by groups like Open Philanthropy and the Future of Life Institute that believe AI poses an existential risk. However, Tarbell says that “our grantees and fellows maintain complete autonomy over their reporting.”

So I don’t plan to change anything about the way I’ve covered these topics. I don’t expect existential risk from AI to be a major focus of Kai’s reporting.