John-Clark Levin will talk about his personal journey doing AI research over the last 15 years, and the breakthroughs he has seen unfold and what appears to be just over the horizon.
John-Clark is the Research Lead for Ray Kurzweil, who served as Google’s chief futurist from 2012-2025 and is the world’s foremost authority on the future of artificial intelligence. At Kurzweil Technologies, John-Clark conducts foresight about the emerging capabilities of AI, and especially the roadmap to artificial superintelligence. This work was featured in Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Nearer, which became an instant New York Timesbestseller last year. He is also the senior adviser for AI at Greenmantle, Sir Niall Ferguson’s macrostrategy advisory firm, and regularly advises governments, Fortune 500 corporations, and NGOs such as the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. For the past 12 years, John-Clark has studied AI and its impacts at Harvard and Cambridge, where his research spans both scientific and policy issues, including methods of keeping AI safe and aligned with human flourishing, risks of superintelligent AI empowering authoritarian regimes, and applications of AI to transform medicine and the life sciences. John-Clark has lectured at dozens of institutions including Georgetown University, RAND, and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk—and his commentary has appeared in numerous publications such as the Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, and MIT Technology Review. In personal pursuits, John-Clark constructs crossword puzzles for the New York Times, writes acclaimed humor for McSweeney’s, and performs stage magic as former president of the Cambridge University Magic Society.