PERSON
Iason Gabriel
Senior staff research scientist at Google DeepMind and author of the 2022 paper "Toward a Theory of Justice for Artificial Intelligence" — the most systematic application of Rawlsian framework to AI governance in the contemporary literature.
Iason Gabriel has been the most influential figure in translating Rawlsian political philosophy into AI governance. His 2022 paper in Daedalus argued that the basic structure of society should be understood as a composite of sociotechnical systems, that AI deployment is increasingly part of that basic structure, and that the egalitarian norms of Rawlsian justice therefore apply to AI development and deployment. Gabriel's work is distinguished by its methodological seriousness: rather than treating Rawls as a source of useful maxims to be sprinkled onto AI ethics discourse, he engages with the framework rigorously and draws out its genuine implications. His key contribution is the reframing of AI ethics from a question about internal properties of models to a question about the institutional arrangements within which models operate.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Gabriel's career has bridged political philosophy and AI research. After training in philosophy, he joined Google DeepMind as a research scientist focused on AI ethics