My prior research examined the liberal peace, the role of reputation and honor as motives for war, and the role of technology in shaping history. I also developed statistical methods for more credible and transparent causal inference in social science, for which I won the Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Open Social Science.
I previously worked at Yale University, as Assistant Professor of Political Science. I received my MA in Economics and PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley, have been a Research Fellow at Uppsala University, and am on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Peace Research. I regularly gives talks to researchers and policy makers. For more information see: governance.ai and allandafoe.com.
- "AI Governance: A Research Agenda." 2018. Governance of AI Report. https://fhi.ox.ac.uk/govaiagenda
- "Public Policy and Superintelligent AI: A Vector Field Approach." Nick Bostrom, Allan Dafoe, and Carrick Flynn. in S. Matthew Liao ed. Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press. (pdf)
- "The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation." Miles Brundage, Shahar Avin, ..., Allan Dafoe, ..., Dario Amodei. 2018. https://maliciousaireport.com
- "When will AI exceed human performance? Evidence from AI experts." Katja Grace, John Salvatier, Allan Dafoe, Baobao Zhang, Owain Evans. (arXiv) (Media: #16 in Altmetric most discussed articles of 2017, BBC, Newsweek, NewScientist, Tech Review, ZDNet, Musk, Slate Star Codex, The Economist,...)
- Syllabus for Yale seminar "Global Politics of AI", 2017
- Evidence submitted to Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence (pdf). 2017. w/ Miles Brundage, on behalf of Future of Humanity Institute.
- "Yes, We Are Worried About the Existential Risk of Artificial Intelligence." MIT Technology Review. November 2, 2016. Allan Dafoe and Stuart Russell. (link, replication files)
I study the global politics of artificial intelligence. My goal is to gain insight and provide policy advice to help guide the development of AI for the common good. I believe the governance of AI is the most important global issue of the century.