Leopold Aschenbrenner - Wikipedia

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 German AI researcher 
 

 [[Investor]]"},"years_active":{"wt":""},"known_for":{"wt":""},"notable_works":{"wt":"''Situational Awareness''"}},"i":0}}]}'> Leopold Aschenbrenner Born 2001 or 2002 (age   24–25)
 Germany Education Columbia University ( BA ) Occupations AI researcher 
 Investor Employer OpenAI (2023–2024) Notable   work Situational Awareness 
 Leopold Aschenbrenner (born 2001/2002 ) [ 1 ] is a German artificial intelligence researcher and investor. He was part of OpenAI 's "Superalignment" team before he was fired in April 2024 over an alleged information leak, which Aschenbrenner disputes. In 2024, he published an essay titled "Situational Awareness" about the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and related security risks. [ 2 ] The essay attracted widespread media and industry attention, and became the namesake for Aschenbrenner's hedge fund, Situational Awareness LP. The hedge fund, which held $20 billion AUM at its peak, invests in private and public companies involved in AI. [ 3 ] 

 Early life

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 Aschenbrenner was born in Germany to parents who were doctors, [ 4 ] and was educated at the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin . In 2021, at the age of 19, Aschenbrenner graduated from Columbia University as valedictorian with a B.A. in economics, mathematics, and statistics. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] While at Columbia, he co-founded the university's effective altruism (EA) chapter. [ 4 ] He did research for the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford University and co-authored a 2024 working paper with Philip Trammell of Oxford. Aschenbrenner was a member of the FTX Future Fund team, [ 7 ] an EA philanthropic initiative created by the FTX Foundation, [ 7 ] from February 2022 until his resignation prior to FTX's bankruptcy in November of that year. [ 8 ] [ 9 ] 

 Career

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 OpenAI

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 Aschenbrenner joined OpenAI in 2023, on a team called "Superalignment", headed by Jan Leike and Ilya Sutskever . The team pursued technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems smarter than humans. [ 10 ] As a member of the team, Aschenbrenner co-authored “Weak to Strong Generalization”, [ 11 ] which was presented at the 2024 International Conference on Machine Learning . [ 12 ] 

 In April 2023, a hacker gained access to OpenAI's internal messaging system and stole information, an event that OpenAI kept private. [ 13 ] Subsequently, Aschenbrenner wrote a memo to OpenAI's board of directors about the possibility of industrial espionage by Chinese and other foreign entities, arguing that OpenAI's security was insufficient. According to Aschenbrenner, this memo led to tensions between the board and the leadership about security, and he received a warning from human resources. OpenAI later fired him in April 2024 over an alleged information leak, which Aschenbrenner said was about a benign brainstorming document shared to three external researchers for feedback. OpenAI stated t

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