Hi! My name is Gabriel Wu. I’m currently an AI alignment researcher at OpenAI. Previously, I directed the AI Safety Student Team at Harvard.

My interests include:

  • AI safety: how do we make sure that AI systems do what we want, even when they’re smarter than us? (which they soon will be)
  • theoretical computer science
  • competitive programming
  • amateur philosophy (consciousness, metaphysics, ethics)

I also enjoy board games, crosswords, geography trivia, and long-distance running.

The title of this blog is a reference to the Law of the Excluded Middle, which states \(P \vee \neg P\) for any proposition \(P\). Any “proof by contradiction” implicitly invokes the LEM. However, there is a branch of logic called intuitionism that denies this axiom (how can you just assume that everything is either true or false from the get-go?). I personally don’t know anyone who actually thinks the LEM is invalid, but it’s a fun to see how far you can get in math without it.