The Curve
October 3-5, 2025 | SF & Berkeley
A conference where thinkers, builders, and leaders grapple with AI's biggest questions.
Our purpose
We aim to foster productive dialogue among a diverse set of experts about the most consequential questions about AI's future.
Topics we'll cover include: How can we unlock the benefits of AI for scientific discovery? How might AI concentrate or distribute power? Does AI pose catastrophic or existential risks? How quickly will AI development progress? What impact will AI have on the job market and economic growth? What implications does AI have for national security and global balance of power? And of course: What should we do about it?
No single group has all the answers or execution power to make the best of transformative AI. The Curve creates a space for the people creating and steering this technology to share knowledge, explore disagreements, and coordinate on strategy.
Who will be there
The Curve is invite-only.
All admitted guests are selected for being exceptional at what they do, bought into the idea that AI will have an enormous impact, are actively working to shape its trajectory, and contribute to discourse in good-faith.
We curate the group carefully to represent a mixture of views (on things like timing, risks, benefits, governance approaches, and priorities), and a mixture of disciplines (including machine learning, politics, and economics). Participants will include technical and governance thinkers from frontier AI labs, policy advocates, government staffers, safety researchers, startup founders, VCs, academics, public intellectuals, and journalists.
The experience
We prioritize small group and one-on-one conversations, and design our event accordingly. You're encouraged to skip sessions during the day in favor of talking with your fellow attendees, and the venue will stay open late into the night to accommodate those long, winding, fruitful discussions. The venue is set up around conversation nooks, there will be sessions that help you meet and get to know new people, and there will be infrastructure that makes it easy for you to learn about and meet up with other attendees.
The content we do host is skewed toward interactive workshops, office hours, debates, and fireside chats, rather than straight talks or large panels. We will also have a dedicated track of talks under Chatham House rules, which gives speakers the opportunity to go beyond their public positions.
About The Curve 2024
A sample of last year's speakers
Jack Clark
Anthropic
Sayash Kapoor
AI Snake Oil, Princeton
Dean Ball
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Ajeya Cotra
Open Philanthropy
Sam Hammond
Foundation for American Innovation
Dawn Song
UC Berkeley
Erik Brynjolfsson
Stanford HAI
Anton Troynikov
Chroma
What people said about it
"It felt like an event where history was happening."
— Kevin Roose
"Super high quality attendees. It did not feel like an awkward Thanksgiving, but a good faith meeting of the minds."
— Nathan Labenz
"So many conferences are thoughtlessly run or designed. This was such a remarkable exception."
— Misha Glouberman
"A great conference. I finally have some feel for what makes Berkeley special. It's through the looking glass. Subcultures within subcultures. The internet concretized."
— Sam Hammond
"I got to engage with extraordinary people who had interesting ideas across a variety of topics and a common interest in AI. Lovely."
— Ivan Bercovich
"The Curve led to some of the best conversations on AI policy I've ever had. Just overall one heck of a useful and fun conference."
— Dave Kasten
More writing about The Curve 2024:
- Dean Ball on what he learned from his liability debate with Gabe Weil
- Anton Troynikov on his experience playing in the AI 2027 Tabletop Exercise
- Nathan Labenz on what he learned from the conference
- Nathan Young on what he changed his mind about as a result of the conference
- Kevin Roose and Casey Newton talk about their experience on HardFork
