Now

Hi, I’m Dan MacKinlay. This is my now page, in a constellation of now pages.

I’m employed at CSIRO in several capacities:

• I am in the Impossible without you experimental capacity building program as part Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Future Science Platform.

• I build methods for hybrid machine learning methods for physical sciences

• Working on AI safety as my critical risk project.

  • Currently participating, in a small capacity, in spinning up Melbourne AI Safety hub with such luminaries as Liam Carroll, Dan Murfet, Alexander K Saeri, and many other colleagues whose homepages I have not yet linked.

• Involved in negotiating the ongoing job cuts in CSIRO (e.g.) as a delegate of the CSIRO Staff Association in the context of (in both real $ and proportion-of-GDP terms) massive funding cuts

• My contract is winding up soon, so I am actively looking for jobs and/or funding, ideally in AI safety.

For all of the above, I maintain a separate aspirational reading and writing worklist.

I’ve moved to Melbourne as part of my cohousing project (Ouroboros is the housing group, feel free to skill share with us) and my new explicit extrovert’s commitment to group projects in general. I am trying to build out a gig space in our shopfront, but it’s hard when the collective is small and time is short.

Musically, I’m still DJing, but not professionally any longer. I’ll upload some new mixes if I can work out which old mixes to delete. I don’t have much time for music production at the moment, but our Lotekno EPs are gradually coming out.

My current research methods of interest are causal agency and physically informed diffusion in machine learning.

I’m also unable to stop philosophising, as an ML researcher, on various themes in epistemology and ethics.

If you want more details about research stuff specifically, check my currently reading and writing list.

Yes, I am up for collaborations.