Quick Assessment
| Dimension | Assessment |
|---|---|
| Primary Role | VP of Research, Head of AI Safety and Alignment, Google DeepMind |
| Education | PhD in Computer Vision, Oxford Brookes / Oxford University |
| Prior Role | Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge (computer vision, learning, optimization) |
| DeepMind Responsibilities | Oversight of DeepMind's safety, alignment, and responsible-AI research; senior author or co-author on the Frontier Safety Framework and related documents |
| Research Background | Computer vision, structured prediction, learning to optimize, scientific applications of ML |
Overview
Pushmeet Kohli is a senior research executive at Google DeepMind, where he holds the title of VP of Research and leads the AI Safety and Alignment team. He is one of DeepMind's most senior figures with explicit responsibility for safety, and his name appears as a senior author on DeepMind's Frontier Safety Framework documentation, AlphaFold-team publications, and a range of scientific-ML publications.
Kohli's background is in computer vision and structured prediction rather than the AI-safety-as-existential-risk tradition that motivated some of DeepMind's earlier safety hires. His role is thus partly a translation function — providing senior management coverage for safety work while bringing a mainstream-ML research-management background to it.