Dr Toby Ord

Senior Researcher

Toby Ord is a Senior Researcher at the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative and serves on the board of the Centre for the Governance of AI. His work focuses on the big picture questions facing humanity. What are the most important issues of our time? How can we best address them?

Dr Ord's earlier work explored the ethics of global health and global poverty, demonstrating that aid has been highly successful on average and has the potential to be even more successful were we to improve our priority setting. This led him to found an international society called Giving What We Can, whose 8,000 members have donated more than $300 million to the most effective charities helping to improve the world. He also co-founded the wider effective altruism movement, encouraging thousands of people to use reason and evidence to help others as much as possible.

His current research is on the long-term future of humanity, and the risks which threaten to destroy our entire potential. His book, The Precipice, explores these topics and concludes that safeguarding our future is among the most pressing and neglected issues we face. A special focus is Artificial Intelligence and how the world can best balance the risks it poses with the tremendous benefits it may unlock.

Toby has advised the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the OECD, and the UK Prime Minister’s Office. His work has been featured hundreds of times in the national and international media.