
The Curve
October 3-5, 2025 | Berkeley, CA
A conference where thinkers, builders, and leaders grapple with AI's biggest questions.
Our purpose
"It felt like an event where history was happening." — Kevin Roose, New York Times
How can we achieve the best outcomes from advanced AI?
This touches on every aspect of technology and society. Which applications best contribute to human agency and flourishing, and how can we foster them? Which applications will be most disruptive, and what can we do about that? How might AI concentrate or distribute power? How rapidly will AI be adopted in different sectors, and what does that mean for unemployment, growth, and national security? When, if ever, should we expect superintelligence?
No single field has all the answers. No single group is positioned to steer toward the best outcomes. We are all proverbial blind men, attending to our part of the elephant. The Curve is a 2.5-day tour of this enormous creature – an opportunity to share knowledge, explore disagreements, build bridges, and make progress towards solutions.

The people
"Super high quality attendees. It did not feel like an awkward Thanksgiving, but a good faith meeting of the minds." — Nathan Labenz, Cognitive Revolution
The participants, selected by invitation only, are curated to represent a mixture of views, areas of expertise, and spheres of influence. Attendees will include:
- Researchers, engineers, and executives at the leading AI labs
- Policy researchers, advocates, and government officials
- Startup founders and operators
- Journalists and bloggers
- Academics and independent researchers
- Grantmakers and VCs
What will they all have in common? They expect AI to be a transformative technology, are working to shape its trajectory, are exceptional at what they do, and engage constructively.

The experience
"So many conferences are thoughtlessly designed or run. This was such a remarkable exception." — Misha Glouberman, Consultant
We design the event to prioritize small group and one-on-one conversations. You're encouraged to skip sessions during the day in favor of talking with your fellow attendees – supported by a thoughtfully designed roster to help you find people to connect with. The venue is set up around conversation nooks, and we’ll keep it open late into the night to accommodate those long, winding, fruitful discussions.
Sessions skew toward interactive workshops, debates, and fireside chats, which dive into topics you won’t find discussed elsewhere, and most talks segue into an office hour for deeper engagement with the speaker. We will also have a dedicated track of talks under Chatham House rules, giving speakers the opportunity to go beyond their public positions.


Speakers

Joshua Achiam
OpenAI
Head of Mission Alignment

Joe Allen
War Room
Author of Dark Aeon

Roy Bahat
Bloomberg Beta
Head

Dean Ball
Foundation for American Innovation
Former White House OSTP

Ian Bassin
Protect Democracy
Co-founder & Executive Director

Yoshua Bengio
University of Montreal
Professor, Turing Award Laureate

Annette Bernhardt
UC Berkeley Labor Center
Director, Technology & Work Program

Lukas Biewald
Weights & Biases
Co-founder & CEO

Catherine Bracy
TechEquity
Founder & CEO

Ben Buchanan
Johns Hopkins University
Former White House Special Advisor on AI

Brad Carson
Americans for Responsible Innovation
Former Congressman

James Cham
Bloomberg Beta
Partner

Ronnie Chatterji
OpenAI
Chief Economist

Aparna Chennapragada
Microsoft
Chief Product Officer, Experiences and Devices

Ted Chiang
Author
Stories of Your Life and Others, Exhalation

Neil Chilson
Abundance Institute
Head of AI Policy

Jack Clark
Anthropic
Co-founder & Head of Policy

Jason Clinton
Anthropic
Chief Information Security Officer

Greg Corrado
Distinguished Scientist

Allan Dafoe
Google DeepMind
Director

Helena Fu
US Department of Energy
Director, Office of Critical and Emerging Technologies

Alexandra Reeve Givens
Center for Democracy and Technology
President & CEO

Keerthana Gopalakrishnan
Google DeepMind
Research Scientist

Joseph Gordon-Levitt
AI Futures Project
Co-founder & Executive Director

Sam Hammond
Foundation for American Innovation
Chief Economist

Zoë Hitzig
OpenAI
Research Scientist

Jedidah Isler
Federation of American Scientists
Chief Science Officer

Chad Jones
Stanford GSB
Professor of Economics

Sayash Kapoor
Princeton
Co-author of AI as Normal Technology

Divyansh Kaushik
Beacon Global Strategies
Vice President

Saif Khan
Institute for Progress
Distinguished Technology Fellow

Klon Kitchen
Beacon Global Strategies
Managing Director

Daniel Kokotajlo
AI Futures Project
Co-author of AI 2027

Andy Konwinski
Laude
Co-founder of Databricks, Perplexity

Mike Kubzansky
Omidyar Network
CEO

Jason Kwon
OpenAI
Chief Strategy Officer

Nathan Lambert
Allen Institute for AI
Senior Research Scientist

Timothy Lee
Understanding AI
Writer

Gary Marcus
NYU
Professor

Tim O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media
Founder & CEO

Dylan Patel
SemiAnalysis
Founder & CEO

Geoff Ralston
Safe AI Fund
Former President of YC

Alex Rives
EvolutionaryScale
Chief Scientist

Sam Rodriques
FutureHouse
Co-founder & CEO

Joshua Rothman
The New Yorker
Ideas Editor & Writer

Kyla Scanlon
Bread
Founder, Author of "In this Economy?"

Divya Siddarth
Collective Intelligence Project
Co-founder & Executive Director

Audrey Tang
Taiwan
Cyber Ambassador, 1st Digital Minister

Helen Toner
Center for Security and Emerging Technology
Director of Strategy

Randi Weingarten
AFT
President
