My name is Gabriel Wu. I am an AI alignment researcher at OpenAI. I was previously an undergrad at Harvard, where I directed the AI Safety Student Team.

My interests include:

  • AI safety: how do we make sure that advanced AI systems do what we want, even when they’re smarter than us?
  • theoretical computer science
  • competitive programming
  • amateur philosophy (consciousness, metaphysics, and morality)

I also enjoy board games, geography trivia, and long-distance running.

The title of this blog is a reference to the Law of the Excluded Middle, which states \(P \vee \neg P\) for any proposition \(P\). Any “proof by contradiction” implicitly invokes this law. In the words of David Hilbert, a mathematician’s dependency on the Law of the Excluded Middle is as akin to “the boxer’s use of his fists”. Yet, a competing branch of ideology called intuitionism denies this axiom, believing it to be philosophically unjustified (how can you assume that everything is either true or false from the get-go?). Personally, I enjoy the use of my fists, but I am occasionally sympathetic to the intuitionist view.