PeopleofSuperintelligence

Lab leader

David Orr

Also known as Dave Orr

David Orr leads Anthropic’s Safeguards team, which works to prevent misuse of Claude and protect its users. At Google Research, he wrote posts announcing releases for entity linking and relation extraction before joining Google DeepMind in August 2023 to build a technical alignment team. He coauthored 2025 research on chain-of-thought monitoring for AI safety. He studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford with a concentration in AI and chaired the David and Lucile Packard Foundation board from 2018 to 2022, helping shape its refreshed mission, vision, and values.

Now at
Anthropic
Works
1
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026. Citations and h-index are hidden because this OpenAlex record may be incomplete or mix in other authors.

Timeline

  1. By 2005

    Studying Symbolic Systems

    As a member of Stanford's class of 2005, he studies Symbolic Systems with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence.

  2. March 2013

    The Wikilinks Corpus

    In March 2013, Dave Orr writes a Google Research announcement of the Wikilinks Corpus, which contains 40 million disambiguated mentions across more than 10 million web pages.

  3. April 2013

    A relation-extraction dataset

    In April 2013, Dave Orr writes a Google Research announcement of a human-judged Wikipedia dataset with examples for birthplace and educational relations, for training or evaluating relation-extraction systems.

  4. 2018–2022

    Chairing the Packard Foundation

    From 2018 to 2022, he serves as chair of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation board and helps shape its refreshed mission, vision, and values. In February 2022, he and Nancy Lindborg share the updated framework.

  5. August 2023

    Building a technical alignment team

    In August 2023, he joins Google DeepMind to help set up a technical alignment team in the Bay Area.

  6. July 2025

    Monitoring AI reasoning

    In July 2025, he coauthors a paper that describes chain-of-thought monitoring as an imperfect but promising opportunity for AI safety.

  7. As of October 2026

    Leading Anthropic Safeguards

    As of October 2026, he is Head of Safeguards at Anthropic, where he leads work to prevent misuse of Claude and keep users safe.

Career

  1. NowAnthropicHead of Safeguards
  2. From 2023Google DeepMind
  3. 2018–2022David and Lucile Packard FoundationChair of the board
  4. 2013Google Research

Education

  1. 2005Stanford UniversitySymbolic Systems student

From the biography.

  1. The median h-index is 53 at universities and 19 at frontier AI labsIncludes David Orr. The median h-index is 53 at universities and 19 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, citations and moves to estimate how universities and frontier labs contribute to AI research.
  2. Google alumni founded or led 87 other organizations, the most among the labs we compareIncludes David Orr. We trace 212 organizations founded or led by AI lab alumni, and 223 career moves between the labs.
  3. Of 462 people shaping AI who worked at Google, 190 work there nowIncludes David Orr. Our estimates of where former Google and Google DeepMind people work now, including moves within Google.
  4. 13 of 79 people shaping AI with a former OpenAI role now work at AnthropicIncludes Anthropic. Our estimates of where OpenAI recruits came from and where people with former OpenAI roles work now.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of David Orr yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Hands Up Gesture Wins Symbol of the Year Vote in 2014 symsys.stanford.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. SAFE Annual Meeting 2026 aisafety.stanford.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Learning from Big Data: 40 Million Entities in Context research.google. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. 50,000 Lessons on How to Read: a Relation Extraction Corpus research.google. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Officers Archives • The David and Lucile Packard Foundation packard.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Sharing our New Vision, Mission, and Updated Values packard.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. New role: AGI Alignment research mistaketheory.substack.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. Chain of Thought Monitorability: A New and Fragile Opportunity for AI Safety arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.