Photo: "null0" / CC BY-SA 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Eliezer Yudkowsky is one of the rare figures who changed a global conversation without institutional credentials. An autodidact from Chicago, he founded the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, built the LessWrong community, and even wrote Harry Potter fan fiction as a vehicle for teaching rationality — an eccentric move that worked. I do not agree with every prediction he makes about artificial intelligence, and his doom-laden tone can be exhausting, but I respect that he was worrying about AI safety decades before it was fashionable. Whatever the future holds, the vocabulary we now use to argue about it owes a great deal to him.
Overview
Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky ( EL-ee-EH-zər yuud-KOW-skee; born September 11, 1979) is an American artificial intelligence researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics, known for popularizing ideas related to friendly artificial intelligence. He is the founder of and a research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Eliezer Yudkowsky
- Name (Japanese)
- エリーザー・ユドコウスキー
- Reading
- えりーざー・ゆどこうすきー
- Born
- September 11, 1979 (age 46)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Virgo / Goat
- Origin
- Chicago, Illinois, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- artificial intelligence researcher / blogger / writer / computer scientist
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Private
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
5. Works & records
| Category | Title | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notable work | Less Wrong | — | |
| Notable work | Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality | — |
6. Links
- Official sitehttps://www.yudkowsky.net/
- Xhttps://x.com/ESYudkowsky
- Wikipedia (Japanese)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer%20Yudkowsky
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7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-10
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.