Richard Mallah

Timeline

1. By 2010

   Risk systems at BlackRock

   He heads enterprise risk management systems development at BlackRock during the Financial Crisis and holds a degree in Intelligent Systems from Columbia University. From 2010, he focuses on advanced AI safety, with a sense of urgency about societal risks from AGI.

2. 2014–2022

   Director of AI Projects at FLI

   He joins the Future of Life Institute in 2014 and serves as its Director of AI Projects until 2022.

3. December 2015

   IEEE ethics initiative founding team

   In December 2015, he joins the founding team of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and goes on to serve on its Executive Committee. He chairs its committees on AGI and on lethal autonomous weapons.

4. 2017

   FLI reports and Cambridge Semantics

   In 2017, he coauthors the FLI report "Recent Progress in AI and Efforts to Ensure its Safety" with Anthony Aguirre, Max Tegmark, Ariel Conn and Victoria Krakovna. He is the lead author of FLI's Landscape of Technical AI Safety Research. At Cambridge Semantics, he is Director of Advanced Analytics and heads R&D in AI, including knowledge representation, computational linguistics and deep learning.

5. 2021

   Consortium on the Landscape of AI Safety

   In 2021, he is founding Executive Director of the Consortium on the Landscape of AI Safety, drafted for the role because of his AI safety landscaping and synthesis work at FLI. He is on the organizing committee of the 2021 SafeAI workshop at AAAI and co-chairs the recurring SafeAI and AISafety workshops at AAAI and IJCAI.

6. November 2022

   Founding CARMA

   In November 2022, he founds the Center for AI Risk Management & Alignment (CARMA), a research and policy think tank on risks from transformative AI, and serves as its Executive Director. His earlier work includes co-leading the Fairness, Auditing, Transparency, and Externalities of AI Center of Excellence at the management consultancy Keystone Strategy.

7. 2025–2026

   Papers on AI risk management

   In April 2025, he coauthors "Adapting Probabilistic Risk Assessment for AI" with Anna Katariina Wisakanto, Joe Rogero and Avyay M. Casheekar, a framework that adapts probabilistic risk assessment from high-reliability industries such as nuclear power and aerospace to advanced AI. In February 2026, he is one of the authors of the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative paper "Open Problems in Frontier AI Risk Management", which maps unresolved problems at each stage of the risk management process.

8. As of October 2026

   Executive Director of CARMA

   He is Executive Director and founder of CARMA, where he directs projects in risk assessment, policy strategy and technical safety. He also serves part-time as Principal AI Safety Strategist at the Future of Life Institute.