Professor Anthony Aguirre
Anthony Aguirre, Ph.D. is Professor of Physics and the Faggin Presidential Chair for the Physics of Information at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Executive Director of the Future of Life Institute, with over 25 years of experience in theoretical cosmology and foundations of physics.He is also Cofounder and President of the Foundational Questions Institute and Cofounder of Metaculus, a prediction platform that aggregates forecasts about scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs.Read Thinking really big and Is the evidence for ‘alien’ universes all around us?.
Anthony specializes in the study of cosmological inflation and eternal inflation, the idea that inflation goes on forever in some regions of the universe, and what it may mean for the ultimate beginning of the universe and time.Since cofounding the Future of Life Institute in May 2014 with MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark and Skype cofounder and our board member Jaan Tallinn, Anthony has led efforts to ensure that transformative technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, benefit humanity while mitigating existential risks.At Metaculus, which he cofounded in 2015 with Greg Laughlin and Max Wainwright, the platform has reached over 1,000,000 individual predictions and was restructured as a public-benefit corporation in 2022. Read Eternal Inflation, Past and Future and We must not build AI to replace humans.
His research has focused on various topics in theoretical physics, including the early universe, inflation, the foundations of quantum mechanics, the foundations of statistical mechanics, gravity physics, first stars, the intergalactic medium, galaxy formation, and black holes.Through FLI, Anthony has organized major conferences bringing together AI researchers from academia and industry, including The Future of AI: Opportunities and Challenges conference in Puerto Rico in 2015, where FLI circulated an open letter on AI safety subsequently signed by Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and many artificial intelligence researchers.
As President of the Future of Life Foundation, he works on sourcing and developing ambitious ideas to build a future, grounded in realistic scenarios for AI and other technological development. Read A Status Report on the Observability of Cosmic Bubble Collisions.
In 2019, Anthony published his book Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality, which uses Zen-inspired stories as entry points into the deepest mysteries of modern physics.The book explores deep questions about the nature of reality, using an approach inspired by Zen koans to take readers on a thought-provoking tour of the cosmos and the core ideas of modern physics.
Anthony has appeared in numerous science documentaries, including the PBS series Closer to Truth, the Horizon episode How Big is the Universe?, the National Geographic Channel’s Naked Science series episode Living in a Parallel Universe, and Netflix’s documentary A Trip to Infinity in 2022, where he discussed the mathematical implications of infinity. Read The Crowd Sees Tomorrow Coming. Listen to Cosmology, Zen, Entropy, and Information on Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast.
Founded in 2006 with Max Tegmark, the Foundational Questions Institute has awarded over $29 million in grants to researchers around the globe to work on issues ranging from the origin of the arrow of time in quantum gravity to the nature of consciousness. FQXi supports research that is foundational, with potentially significant and broad implications for understanding the deep or “ultimate” nature of reality, and unconventional, enabling research that, because of its speculative, non-mainstream, or high-risk nature, would otherwise go unperformed due to lack of funding. Read Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) – InfluenceWatch.
With Metaculus, Anthony created a system where the platform’s aggregated predictions, on average, outperform the median of the community’s predictions when evaluated using the Brier or Log scoring rules, providing probabilities for events that allow policymakers, inventors, and others to prepare for both likely and unlikely outcomes. Read Metaculus is hiring – EA Forum. Watch Physicist Anthony Aguirre Goes Deep in ‘Cosmological Koans’ Book.
Anthony earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University in 2000 with his dissertation Intergalactic dust and metals in cosmology, focusing on cosmological inflation and the early universe.After his doctorate, he spent three years as a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 2000 to 2003, before joining the UCSC faculty in 2003.He earned his Master’s Degree in Astronomy from Harvard University in 1998 and his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics-Physics from Brown University in 1995. Read Born in an Infinite Universe: A Cosmological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
Anthony serves on numerous boards and advisory positions. Between 2005 and the present, he has held the Faggin Family Presidential Chair for the Physics of Information at UC Santa Cruz.Through FLI, Anthony has been instrumental in funding the first technical AI safety research grants in 2015 and has worked to bring together academics, nonprofit organizations, industry leaders, and policymakers to address AI safety challenges.
In March 2023, FLI published the influential Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter calling on major AI developers to agree on a verifiable six-month pause of systems “more powerful than GPT-4” to institute a framework for ensuring safety. Read Digital Media Accelerator and Keep The Future Human: Why and How We Should Close the Gates to AGI and Superintelligence.
Anthony’s work has inspired students to pursue alternative career paths that can have a significant impact, including his graduate student Amita Kuttner, who became a parliamentary candidate for the Canadian Green Party, working on AI policy, fossil fuel regulation, and autonomous weaponry.
His research portfolio includes over 60 peer-reviewed publications with nearly 3,000 citations, covering topics from simulating bubble collision spacetimes to the observability of cosmic bubble collisions and the nature of eternal inflation. He has received recognition for his science communication efforts, regularly appearing as a keynote speaker at major conferences and contributing to public understanding of complex cosmological concepts.
Born on July 23, 1973, Anthony continues to reside in Santa Cruz, California, where he maintains his research program at UC Santa Cruz while leading multiple international organizations focused on ensuring a positive future for humanity.
Read How generic is eternal inflation?, Where Did It All Come From?, On making predictions in a multiverse: conundrums, dangers, and coincidences, Dark Matter in Cosmology, and Alternatives to Dark Matter (?).
Read How Did the IGM Become Enriched?, Surviving the crash: assessing the aftermath of cosmic bubble collisions, Dark Stars: Dark Matter in the First Stars leads to a New Phase of Stellar Evolution, and Towards observable signatures of other bubble universes II: Exact solutions for thin-wall bubble collisions.
Visit his LinkedIn profile, Wikipedia profile, Personal Homepage, UC Santa Cruz Faculty Page, Future of Life Institute profile, Siliconflatirons profile, ResearchGate profile, and Google Scholar page. Follow him on X, Metaculus, and ResearchGate.