I am a Research Fellow at GovAI (the Centre for the Governance of AI). I work on threat modelling, with a particular focus on cyber and CBRN misuse risk.
Previously, I worked at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. From 2018 to 2020, I worked closely with Toby Ord on his book The Precipice. In 2022, I wrote Future Matters, a newsletter about existential risk and the long-term future, with Pablo Stafforini. From 2018 to 2021, I wrote about AI governance for Jack Clark’s weekly newsletter, Import AI. Before all this, I was an equities analyst, researching cement companies.
Selected public writing
- Could AI Enable Catastrophic Cyberattacks on the US Power Grid? (2026)
GovAI report - Tort law and frontier AI governance (2024)
Lawfare | w/ Markus Anderljung and Ketan Ramakrishnan - How Vulnerable is the World? (2021)
Aeon | w/ Nick Bostrom
Contact
Personal: mattvdm@nullgmail.com
Work: matthew.vandermerwe@nullgovernance.ai