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Oscar Gilg

I work on empirical AI welfare research at MATS 9.0, mentored by Patrick Butlin.

Oscar Gilg

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Bio

I studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Oxford, graduating in 2023 with a First-Class degree and Master's Distinction. Reading Dennett's Consciousness Explained and From Bacteria to Bach and Back got me interested in philosophy of mind, and in my final-year dissertation I tried to operationalise properties of consciousness and described how they could arise in a hierarchical generative model.

After Oxford I spent two months in Bochum working with François Kammerer on formalising illusionist theories of consciousness, then joined Optiver in Amsterdam as a quantitative trader. I spent over a year on a 6-trader equities desk; trading taught me to test hypotheses fast and make decisions under uncertainty.

I had first read Bostrom's Superintelligence as a teenager and dismissed the timelines as too aggressive. When o3 was released that intuition flipped: I left Optiver and applied to MATS, where I now do empirical AI welfare research with six-month extension funding.

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