PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Connor Leahy

Connor Leahy is an AI researcher whose work spans open language models, technical AI safety, and AI policy. He co-founded EleutherAI in 2020, co-authored The Pile in 2021, and co-authored GPT-NeoX-20B in 2022. In March 2022, he co-founded Conjecture to work on control of advanced AI, and he signed a 2023 letter calling for a pause on training systems more powerful than GPT-4. In February 2024, he described control as a technical subproblem of AI alignment. As of October 2026, he is the US Executive Director of ControlAI, where he works on policy responses to risks from superintelligent AI.

Now at
ControlAI
Works
9
Citations
1,286
h-index
5
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2020

    Building EleutherAI

    In 2020, he co-founds EleutherAI with Sid Black; the volunteer-led group sets out to build an open-source alternative to GPT-3.

  2. 2021

    The Pile dataset

    In 2021, he co-authors The Pile, an 825 GiB English text corpus designed for training large-scale language models.

  3. March 2022

    Co-founding Conjecture

    In March 2022, he co-founds Conjecture with Sid Black and Gabriel Alfour to address the control problem in advanced AI.

  4. 2022

    The GPT-NeoX-20B model

    In 2022, he co-authors a paper introducing GPT-NeoX-20B, a 20-billion-parameter language model trained on The Pile; the paper lists him among its alignment-implications contributors.

  5. 2023

    A six-month pause letter

    In 2023, he signs a letter calling for a six-month pause in training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

  6. February 2024

    Defining AI control

    In February 2024, he describes control as a technical subproblem of AI alignment: building AI systems whose capabilities can be known and directed.

  7. As of October 2026

    Leading ControlAI

    As of October 2026, he is the US Executive Director of ControlAI, where his work focuses on policy solutions to risks from superintelligent AI.

Career

  1. NowControlAIUS Executive Director
  2. From 2022ConjectureCo-founder
  3. From 2020EleutherAICo-founder

From the biography.

Most-cited works

  1. The Pile: An 800GB Dataset of Diverse Text for Language Modeling2020 · 465 citations
  2. GPT-NeoX-20B: An Open-Source Autoregressive Language Model2022 · 404 citations
  3. Interpreting Neural Networks through the Polytope Lens2022 · 5 citations
  4. The Risks from Artificial Superintelligence, and What to Do About Them2025 · Springer eBooks · 0 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 47% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

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  1. Episode 3: When hackers take on AI: Sci-fi – or the future? opensource.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Conjecture conjecture.dev. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. The Pile: An 800GB Dataset of Diverse Text for Language Modeling arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. GPT-NeoX-20B: An Open-Source Autoregressive Language Model arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Tech CEO warns AI risks 'human extinction' as experts rally behind six-month pause foxnews.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Conjecture: 2 Years conjecture.dev. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. Connor Leahy | ControlAI controlai.org. Checked 19 October 2026.