I’m a PhD candidate in the engineering department at the University of Cambridge. I’m interested in solving problems that maximise expected human prosperity, and I’m generally method-agnostic. In the past, that meant working on technical problems related to climate change mitigation, but I think the innovation now required there is political, not technical. More recently, it’s meant working on problems in reinforcement learning. It seems clear that building intelligent machines that are safely aligned with human values will be hugely beneficial, so my PhD focuses on doing just that.

I don’t believe many things strongly, but I’m willing to defend the following:

• Progress is possible and desirable
• Decentralised > centralised
• We need better maths teachers
• Celcius > Fahrenheit
• Most problems aren’t actually problems. Finding real problems is extremely difficult.

If you’d like to chat I’m always happy to; send me an email (srj38 (at) cam(dot)ac(dot)uk) or hit me up on twitter/X @enjeeneer.

Scott