Team

Tobias Baumann has written about a variety of topics relating to how we can best reduce suffering in the long-term future on his website, with an emphasis on how to avoid worst-case outcomes (s-risks). He is the author of Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe, which outlines ways to steer the world away from s-risks and towards a brighter future.

Previously, Tobias worked as a quantitative trader at Jane Street Capital and pursued research at University College London on Cooperative Artificial Intelligence.

Brian Tomasik contributes to our research as an advisor. He is well-known for writing over 100 pieces about ethics, animal welfare, and far-future scenarios from a suffering-focused perspective on his main website, “Essays On Reducing Suffering“.

He previously worked at Microsoft as a data scientist and studied computer science, mathematics, and statistics at Swarthmore College.

Teo Ajantaival works on research projects for CRS, with an emphasis on the psychological questions related to suffering-focused views, and on reasons to be careful about the practical implications of abstract formalisms. He is interested in the empirical grounding of different theories of value and motivation.

Previously, he received degrees in psychology from the University of Helsinki, with minors in mathematics, analytic philosophy, cognitive science, statistics, and computer science. He is also a founding member and former board chair of the Finnish Association for Psychedelic Research.

Alistair Webster manages communications for the Center for Reducing Suffering. He has previously worked as a freelancer and marketing consultant, helping non-profits and charities increase their impact using digital marketing. Previous clients include international brands and organisations such as the University of Oxford. He is also a co-founder of Freelancing for Good.