About Me

Hi, I'm Ben Cravens. I was born and grew up in beautiful Aotearoa, New Zealand. My parents are from the states, so I consider myself a Kiwi-American.

I first started reading about AI online back in 2014, when I discovered the rationalist blogosphere. I became convinced that the fundamental question of our time would be adapting our society to technological change. I took a bit of a detour at uni, studying a bunch of stuff to get different angles on this question, such as philosophy, math, history, computer science, etc. I finally graduated with an honors degree in physics.

For my day job I have now been working for a while as a Machine Learning engineer for a local tech company. I'm also studying part time a masters in AI.

I'm interested in AI governance. I'm more concerned about the "mundane" impacts of AI, such as unemployment and human misuse, than "existential risk" from superintelligence, although I am aware of these arguments and put some credence in them. Unlike many people in this space, I primarily consider myself a Christian, not a rationalist or effective altruist. I'm interested in building a future where humans are empowered by AI, and I believe good governance is the path to doing this.

In terms of my writing process, I do not generate my writing using AI. I do get feedback using Claude, in the form of spelling correction, noticing phrases that could be written more cleanly, and double checking for factuality. But every word is typed and read by me, and I manually source all arguments.

In my spare time, I enjoy staying active through weightlifting, running and climbing. I relax by reading, watching movies and TV, staying social, and going to church. And recently I've been getting into home improvement and maintaining the garden.