Dan Hendrycks Explained

Dan Hendrycks
Workplaces:	UC Berkeley Center for AI Safety
Education:	University of Chicago (B.S., 2018) UC Berkeley (Ph.D., 2022)

Dan Hendrycks (born) is an American machine learning researcher. He serves as the director of the Center for AI Safety.

Early life and education

Hendrycks was raised in a Christian evangelical household in Marshfield, Missouri.^{[1] [2]} He received a B.S. from the University of Chicago in 2018 and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Computer Science in 2022.^[3]

Career and research

Hendrycks' research focuses on topics that include machine learning safety, machine ethics, and robustness.

He credits his participation in the effective altruism (EA) movement-linked 80,000 Hours program for his career focus towards AI safety, though denied being an advocate for EA.

In February 2022, Hendrycks co-authored recommendations for the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to inform the management of risks from artificial intelligence.^{[4] [5]}

In September 2022, Hendrycks wrote a paper providing a framework for analyzing the impact of AI research on societal risks.^{[6] [7]} He later published a paper in March 2023 examining how natural selection and competitive pressures could shape the goals of artificial agents.^{[8] [9] [10]} This was followed by "An Overview of Catastrophic AI Risks", which discusses four categories of risks: malicious use, AI race dynamics, organizational risks, and rogue AI agents.^{[11] [12]}

Hendrycks is the safety adviser of xAI, an AI startup company founded by Elon Musk in 2023. To avoid any potential conflicts of interest, he receives a symbolic one-dollar salary and holds no company equity.^{[13] [14]}

In 2024 Hendrycks published a 568 page book entitled "Introduction to AI Safety, Ethics, and Society" based on courseware he had previously developed.^[15]

Selected publications

• Hendrycks . Dan . Gimpel . Kevin . 2020-07-08 . Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs) . cs.LG . 1606.08415.
• Hendrycks . Dan . Gimpel . Kevin . 2018-10-03 . A Baseline for Detecting Misclassified and Out-of-Distribution Examples in Neural Networks . International Conference on Learning Representations 2017. 1610.02136 .
• Hendrycks . Dan . Mazeika . Mantas . Dietterich . Thomas . 2019-01-28 . Deep Anomaly Detection with Outlier Exposure . International Conference on Learning Representations 2019. 1812.04606 .
• Hendrycks . Dan . Mazeika . Mantas . Zou . Andy . What Would Jiminy Cricket Do? Towards Agents That Behave Morally. Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems 2021. 2021-10-25 . 2110.13136 .

Notes and References

1. News: Scharfenberg . David . July 6, 2023 . Dan Hendrycks wants to save us from an AI catastrophe. He's not sure he'll succeed. . The Boston Globe . subscription . https://archive.today/20230708182452/https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/06/opinion/ai-safety-human-extinction-dan-hendrycks-cais/ . July 8, 2023 . live.
2. News: Castaldo . Joe . June 23, 2023 . 'I hope I'm wrong': Why some experts see doom in AI . The Globe and Mail.
3. Web site: Dan Hendrycks . 2023-04-14 . people.eecs.berkeley.edu.
4. Web site: Nvidia moves into A.I. services and ChatGPT can now use your credit card . 2023-04-13 . Fortune . en.
5. Web site: March 2022 . Request for Information to the Update of the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan: Responses . National Artificial Intelligence Initiative.
6. Hendrycks . Dan . Mazeika . Mantas . 2022-06-13 . X-Risk Analysis for AI Research . cs.CY . 2206.05862v7 . en.
7. Web site: Gendron . Will . An AI safety expert outlined a range of speculative doomsday scenarios, from weaponization to power-seeking behavior . 2023-05-07 . Business Insider . en-US.
8. Hendrycks . Dan . 2023-03-28 . Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans . cs.CY . 2303.16200 .
9. Web site: Colton . Emma . 2023-04-03 . AI could go 'Terminator,' gain upper hand over humans in Darwinian rules of evolution, report warns . 2023-04-14 . Fox News . en-US.
10. News: Klein . Ezra . 2023-04-07 . Why A.I. Might Not Take Your Job or Supercharge the Economy . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-04-14 .
11. Hendrycks . Dan . Mazeika . Mantas . Woodside . Thomas . 2023 . An Overview of Catastrophic AI Risks . cs.CY . 2306.12001.
12. News: Scharfenberg . David . July 6, 2023 . Dan Hendrycks wants to save us from an AI catastrophe. He's not sure he'll succeed. . . July 10, 2023.
13. Henshall . Will . September 7, 2023 . Time 100 AI: Dan Hendrycks . Time.
14. Web site: Lovely . Garrison . January 22, 2024 . Can Humanity Survive AI? . Jacobin.
15. Web site: AI Safety, Ethics, and Society Textbook . www.aisafetybook.com . 9 May 2024.