About the author

My name is Jesper Lindholm.

I am an independent thinker. My scientific interests are far-reaching. My other interests are also quite diverse. In AI safety, many of these interests intersect.

My goal is to provide new input into the debate, and help highlight and explore understudies aspects of AI safety & ethics.

I am a particularly rare asset as
a) a bridge between organisational thinking, governance, and the (technical) AI safety field. Most people don't understand all three to a sufficient degree to act as a bridge
b) someone who recognizes which strategic bottlenecks are actually coordination problems

I have a comprehensive bioscience education. I hold degrees in cell- and molecular biology and have briefly worked in biotech, developing diagnostic assays.

Contact

You can reach me through this blog, via email and via LinkedIn
<jeslindh.enterprise(at)gmail.com>

Why I am writing about AI

In 2023, Nobel Prize winners, AI scientists, and CEOs of leading AI companies stated that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority.”

Humanity is not on a path towards utopia. Right now, we are heading towards disaster, as AI grows increasingly powerful, while we neglect other global priorities.

AI capabilities increase, and incidents increase with them. AI Safety and policy lags behind. (Look at scores by reputable organizations via my Monitoring page to see hard facts on this.) Power is increasingly concentrated to a few people and the future is effectively in the hands of not-so reliable decision makers and sponsors.

Even if we make it through the major challenges ahead, many people risk ending up by the wayside, by losing employment, equity, and democratic power.

I engage with AI safety out of a sense of duty to participate. I am hoping that my strong interests into these topics, coupled with my creative and strategical thinking, can yield some humble contributions to this most important field.

I am, at least partially, still an outsider to the AI safety field, as I lack a degree in computer science and/or digital governance. That said, I am a decent autodidact with much more technical and theoretical know-how than the average outsider. This semi-outside perspective allows me to see things with fresh eyes, while still grasping the key theory both technically and philosophically.

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Humor and helpful often go hand in hand, even in trying times. Some people, like illustrator Tom Gauld, featured below, has understood this.

My STEM interests have developed as such:

Particle- and astrophysics (childhood) + Inventions in general > Energy physics and metaphysics > Combinatorics and emergency (early teenager) > thermodynamics (high school) > information transfer in cells and organic life (early twenties) > Various, computational complexity theory > Artificial Intelligence