Hello! I’m Xudong Shen (沈旭东). Friends also call me Oliver. I’m finishing my Ph.D. at the National University of Singapore, advised by Professor Mohan Kankanhalli. My research has focused on the technical social alignment of AI, particularly in fairness, and AI governance. I actively contribute to open-community projects, such as inverse scaling, BIG-bench, and natural language instructions. I also organize the algorithm, law, and policy working group at EAAMO bridges (formerly MD4SG).

My long-term goal is to address catastrophic AI risks, specifically the social risks associated with AGI and superhuman AI. These risks are theorized to arise with more advanced AI that surpasses certain thresholds of capability, yet it is striking how some have already shown signs of reality in today’s AI systems, such as sycophancy, situational awareness, and reward hacking. Current safety and alignment methodologies are not well-equipped to address these risks for future superhuman AI. I am actively seeking opportunities (1) to do grounded work on catastrophic AI risks on actual AI systems and (2) to develop technical methods that are more likely to be effective for superhuman AI. Please do get in touch if you share the same interest or know of any opportunities. I truly appreciate it.

From 2022 to 2023, I interned at Sea AI Lab in Singapore, working with Chao Du and Tianyu Pang. From 2015 to 2019, I was an undergraduate at Zhejiang University, China, majoring in Naval Architect and Ocean Engineering. During this period, I explored topics such as computational fluid dynamics, satellite imaging, and policy research. My cv is here.

If you are interested, I’ve written something more about myself…