Hauke Hillebrandt

Researcher working on AI governance, economic growth and effective philanthropy. 2026 Seasonal Fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and CEO of the Center for Applied Utilitarianism (Let's Fund). Previously at the Center for Global Development, the Centre for Effective Altruism in Oxford and Harvard's Moral Cognition Lab; PhD in cognitive neuroscience, UCL.

Selected work

GDP per capita in 2050May 2024
Critique of OpenPhil's macroeconomic policy advocacyMar 2022
Growth and the Case Against Randomista DevelopmentEA Forum (2020). 1st prize in the Effective Altruism Decade Review.
Let's Fund: Clean EnergyThis report helped crowdfund $1M+ for the Center for Clean Energy Innovation (2019).
Let's Fund: Better ScienceThis report helped crowdfund $75k+ for Prof Chambers to advocate for Registered Reports (2018).
Impact InvestingFounders Pledge research report (2018), covered in Vox.
Commitment to Development IndexMethodology of CGD's Commitment to Development Index (2018).
Effective connectivity during animacy perceptionScientific Reports (2014), with Karl Friston & Sarah-Jayne Blakemore.
Risk Of Great Power ConflictNov 2025 · Inkhaven
What's going on in the world? What's gonna happen?Nov 2025 · Inkhaven
The Russia Ukraine war is a proxy war of China vs. the WestNov 2025 · Inkhaven

Writing

2026
Oct 18What Twitter says about Gemini 4 Argon
Jul 8A game theoretic model of intraself cooperationNotes
Jun 8Vicious cycle effects should undermine belief in free willNotes
May 18Don't torture your innieNotes
May 11don't act as if it's oh-s0-overdeterminedNotes
May 4What I learned from making a fireSubstack
Apr 27On the nature of consciousnessNotes
Apr 20Claude Maxxing @ HomeInkhaven
Apr 5Optimal timing for large-scale inference tasksInkhaven
Mar 29Optimal hydration recipesInkhaven
Mar 22Carbon impact markets would be better than current carbon marketsInkhaven
Mar 15Diversifying AI ownershipInkhaven
Mar 8AI Companies Are Quietly Watering Down Their Safety CommitmentsInkhaven
Mar 1AI-augmented threat modellingInkhaven
Feb 23WaClaudeInkhaven
Feb 15EAs should donate via ManifundInkhaven
Feb 8On recent AI progressInkhaven
Feb 1Spillback growth: How much does frontier growth depend on catch-up growth?Inkhaven
Jan 25Registered Reports and Trinity review to lower risks from basic researchInkhaven
Jan 18PASTA AL DENTE? Process for Automating Scientific and Technological Advancement: An Almost Developed End-to-End solutionsInkhaven
Jan 11Using VIX options to hedge against tail risksInkhaven
Jan 4Listicle of biases with regards to timelines and AI risks (updated)Inkhaven
2025
Dec 21The Pretty Efficient Everything HypothesisInkhaven
Dec 14How to become more conservativeInkhaven
Dec 7You can just not do thingsInkhaven
Nov 30Non-ironInkhaven
Nov 29On Eurocope: Europeans ‘Life Goals of Dead People’ are due to lack of growthInkhaven
Nov 28International agreements to spend a fixed percentage of GDP on aid, military, scienceInkhaven
Nov 27The ITN-framework maps onto cognitive biasesInkhaven
Nov 26Key world events of the past decadeInkhaven
Nov 25Did Deep Learning Recommender Systems cause the overreaction to Covid?Inkhaven
Nov 24Moravec's law: AI will come faster than you think, even if you take into account Moravec's lawInkhaven
Nov 23Is This Data Eroding Your Belief in Free Will?Inkhaven
Nov 22Alcoholism as metabolic disorderInkhaven
Nov 21Can't we just disrupt housing with mobile homes?Inkhaven
Nov 20Moral Shocks: Natural Experiments On ValuesInkhaven
Nov 19Small brains can do a lotInkhaven
Nov 18Human-level cognition uses surprisingly little computeInkhaven
Nov 17Sadly, podcasts: Phone calls have gotten worse but might make a comebackInkhaven
Nov 16Causes of the industrial revolutionInkhaven
Nov 15Which economist had the biggest impact?Inkhaven
Nov 14Some analogies between fiscal and monetary policy, humanitarian aid and development finance, and charity and impact investingInkhaven
Nov 13The 'Efficient Public Sector Hypothesis’Inkhaven
Nov 12Technical writing tipsInkhaven
Nov 11Risk Of Great Power ConflictInkhaven
Nov 10Is China preparing for war?Inkhaven
Nov 9What's going on in the world? What's gonna happen?Inkhaven
Nov 8China Shadow war vs the WestInkhaven
Nov 7Russia’s Shadow War vs the WestInkhaven
Nov 6The Russia Ukraine war is a proxy war of China vs. the WestInkhaven
Nov 5Claims about AI’s impact from weak to strongInkhaven
Nov 4Is AI scaling hitting diminishing returns?Inkhaven
Nov 3RLHF: just say no?Inkhaven
Nov 3Against SubjectivismSubstack
Nov 2Contra Parfit’s ‘Against Egoism’Summaries
Jun 24Try o3-pro in ChatGPT for $1Substack
2024
May 6GDP per capita in 2050
Apr 22Should we break up Google DeepMind?
Apr 4Let's Fund: Impact of our $1M crowdfunded grant to the Center for Clean Energy InnovationSubstack
Feb 8feel-good productivity summarySummaries
Jan 22Let's Fund: Clean Energy—Grant evaluation
2023
Aug 4When training AI, we should escalate the frequency capability tests
Jul 2How to speed up your computerProductivity
Feb 26Let's Fund: What was the impact of your donation?Substack
Feb 20Let's Fund: Better Science impact evaluation
Feb 13List of summariesSummaries
Feb 8'Most important Century Hypothesis' summarySummaries
Jan 31Why micracles are very unlikely
Jan 20AI might help you to talk to your older self soonSubstack
2022
Dec 2My opinionated summary of a recent Bloomberg SBF interview / articleSummaries
Jul 12Common law is better than civil law
May 6Optimal non-profit compensation (in Effective Altruism)
May 1Behavioral therapy: how to fix sleep, lose weight, and beat procrastination & burnoutProductivity
Mar 24Critique of OpenPhil's macroeconomic policy advocacy
Mar 14Big life decisionsProductivity
Mar 5Software I useProductivity
Feb 20Bostrom's 'Future of Humanity' papersSummaries
Jan 25Rural to urban migration
2021
Nov 15EA in a nutshell, in a nutshellSummaries
Jul 27How to reduce populismSubstack
Jul 26An evaluation of Mind Ease, an anti-anxiety appSubstack
Jul 23Mind Ease Mental Health app Impact Evaluation
Jul 7Structure of a philosophical essay (MumfordMethod)Productivity
Jun 23Summary - G. Polya - How to Solve ItSummaries
Apr 13Developmental Cognitive Neuroepidemiology
Mar 21Summary of "You and Your Research"Summaries
2020
Jun 15Decreasing populism, improving democracy, evidence-based policy, and rationality: Shallow Cause Area Investigation
Apr 23Ideas for UK ARPA science funding proposals
Jan 22Let's Fund Living Review
2019
Nov 14Appendices to Growth and the case against randomistas
Oct 2Global development interventions are generally more effective than climate change interventions
Sep 24Gates critique
Mar 25Corporate GCRs
2018
Oct 24Potential priority areas within cognitive sciences (psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind)
Feb 18A generalized strategy of ‘mission hedging’: investing in 'bad' to do more good
Jan 2169 things that might be pretty effective to fund

Projects

Diversifying AI Ownership
Part I of the working paper as a long-form essay site, with a companion note on Bostrom's Open Global Investment model.
AI Policy Forecasting Questions
Auto-generated forecasting questions on AI policy, distilled from academic papers.
Oh Shit, GenAI
Every comment from the Hacker News 'oh shit moment with GenAI' thread, distilled to one line each.
Oh Shit, GenAI — Fable 5 edition
The same thread, re-distilled by Claude Fable 5.
Wait
A chain-of-thought story, visualized.
Let's Fund
Crowdfunding high-risk, high-reward research and advocacy. Raised $1M+ for clean energy innovation and better science.