CEOInterviews.AI
Start App
Try: AI strategy tariffs earnings guidance layoffs interest rates growth

David Duvenaud

Associate Professor of Computer Science; formerly Team Lead, Anthropic, University of Toronto

Search every verified David Duvenaud interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. On September 8, 2026, David Duvenaud participated in a public conversation with Jacob Tsimerman at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, following Tsimerman's receipt of the 2026 Fields Medal. During the discussion, Duvenaud described AI as one of the biggest challenges in the world today and argued that it should be considered a mathematical problem rather than purely an engineering one, saying that theory has a role to play in addressing it. Duvenaud also discussed efforts to expand academic engagement with AI safety, mentioning plans to bring 100 mathematicians together in one building to focus on the issue. He suggested that universities could take pragmatic steps such as creating AI safety departments by renaming existing units, and noted that he had spoken with many people who were worried about AI safety and wanted to contribute their skills. The conversation covered the future of mathematics in an era of capable AI and the questions drawing mathematicians toward AI safety research.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I think it's not controversial to say that AI is one of the biggest challenges in our world today. But I think what's more controversial is to think of AI as a mathematical problem. I think it's often thought of as an engineering problem. People think that theory doesn't really have a part to play. You know, theory is plying the sky and AI is concrete engineering. You code stuff up, you tune some parameters, you do a”

“The thing that I'm worried about is starvation. Like whether like us all feeling like we don't have meaningful jobs or whatever. Like that's not a serious problem in my point of view compared to literally not being able to eat enough or maybe like being forced to be uploaded so that you have a much smaller footprint, but then also on like very unfavorable terms so that you don't get to choose when you run and maybe y”

“I think a lot of people gestured towards this when they said, 'Oh, I'm worried about concentration of power or I'm worried about not being the most competitive species on Earth.' Um, very intuitive arguments about, hey, we're not going to be on top because we're not going to be competitive. And then I think the there was sort of this sophisticated or at least response to this which was no, it'll be fine because we'll”

“I guess I'll say I think there do exist species or future like descendants or whatever that I would be happy endorsing be like okay great good future. Like for instance my own kids like if if we had no AI and like my kids just like you know contributed to this civilization as normal and all ours did. they'd be like, 'Okay, I'm in a diet of old age.' And I mean, I'm not exactly okay with it, but I'm like, 'That's that”

“I think a lot of people gestured towards this when they said, 'Oh, I'm worried about concentration of power or I'm worried about not being the most competitive species on Earth.' Um, like very intuitive arguments about, 'Hey, we're not going to be on top because we're not going to be competitive.' Uh, and then I think the there were sort of the sophisticated or at least response to this, which was no, it'll be fine b”

“I think the answer is in principle they might be able to, but there's a really hard problem of deploying them. So one concrete question that I always asked when I was on the topic is like we'd have these exercises of like okay how are we going to mess up if we all did the wrong thing, why would it have been the case, and one thing I was always saying is like so we're building this aligned AGI, I think at some point t”

Other executives at University of Toronto

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →