Callum Hinchcliffe

Karma: 70

Passionate about doing my best to help the world. I’m working on AI governance for catastrophic risk.

Feel free to reach out about anything, or just to say hi!

I have strong attention to detail and enjoy creating solid experiences for people. I’m especially interested in working in AI safety or governance, tech policy, security, or international relations. My skillset and experience includes operations, events, facilitation, HR, community management, and research. I am looking for roles that allow me to work as part of a team, in London or remotely in the same time zone.

I’ve been involved in Effective Altruism since 2015, including founding a society and working in movement building. Later, I quit my job as a digital consultant to work on AI governance. I’ve worked in a range of places and recently I have been running some field building programmes with Arcadia Impact.

Callum Hinchcliffe 6 Jul 2026 4:34 UTC
18 points
4 ∶ 0
on: most EAs should probably not be living in high cost-of-living (HCOL) areas most of the time
Shoutouts to the EA Impact Hubs!
“Impact Hubs are affordable, temporary coworking and coliving setups for EAs and impact-focused people. The idea is to make it easier to do focused work and build connections with other EAs without having to be in an expensive EA hub like London or SF.”

Callum Hinchcliffe 4 Jul 2026 4:46 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Announcing the Safe Pareto Improvements (SPI) Fundamentals Program
It’s pretty impressive to see an online course for an area with only ~2.5 FTEs working on it. This does seem like one way to get more people to work on it, so kudos to you!

Callum Hinchcliffe 4 Jul 2026 3:43 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: You Should Come to The AI Protest
I attended some PauseAI UK protests a year or two ago and wanted to share my worries and experience attending my first AI protests. I felt reluctant but was glad I went.
I was worried that attendees would be angry or radical or extreme, that it would be loud, and that nuanced communication would be sidelined in favour of emotional persuasiveness. Relatedly, a part of me was worried what others would think of me if they thought of me as ‘the kind of person that goes to protests’. And something about me fighting for proposals that I wasn’t myself sure about.
But it seemed like it would be impactful to attend and could be valuable for me. So I went, and I even made and brought a sign!
In actual fact, I was happy to meet other people that I thought were nuanced thinkers and whose work I respected. I enjoyed talking to like-minded people. I liked flyering and I was able to have fine-grained discussions with a range of passers by and other protesters.
It was at times loud or featured talking points that I felt simplified an issue in a way that I didn’t like, but overall it seemed like a good way to hang out on a Saturday and contribute to something important to me.

Callum Hinchcliffe 26 Jun 2026 9:11 UTC
7 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Possible mistake EAs are making and shout out to Pause AI UK
Thanks Michelle!
I’m very happy that PauseAI UK are doing this work and I’ve enjoyed attending their protests.
I have also been extremely impressed with ControlAI’s work. Similarly, they make it easy to contact your representative (in a range of countries). Myself and a bunch of my (non-EA) friends have contacted our MPs through ControlAI’s tool.
People can also use Microcommit to receive regular suggestions of very short advocacy activities, from ControlAI, PauseAI, and others.

Callum Hinchcliffe 7 Mar 2026 5:17 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Denkenberger🔸’s comment on: I underestimated AI capabilities (again)
More emotional reaction options could help other users to differentiate between well-thought-out responses and responses published while still in an emotional state. They could also be used to gauge the emotional state of the community.
This comment was written hastily without being carefully considered.

Callum Hinchcliffe 7 Sep 2025 22:23 UTC
10 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA Houses: Live or Stay with EAs Around The World
We’ve had a bunch of people stay with us over the years. It’s been very nice to meet people and to be able to offer them help. It’s been especially rewarding to help those who would find it difficult to stay in London otherwise. Finally, it’s great to help people meet other EAs and have a special experience when they visit London.

Callum Hinchcliffe 27 Jun 2025 22:50 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Why AI Safety Needs a Central Plan—And What It Might Look Like
As a step towards some kind of ‘centralized’ plan, BlueDot/Adam Jones just posted an overview of many different AI plans, grouped into categories.
Key paths, plans and strategies to AI safety success – June 19, 2025

Callum Hinchcliffe 10 Oct 2024 19:18 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Callum Hinchcliffe’s Quick takes
How does Animal Welfare/Global Health affect AI Safety? Very brief considerations.
I think someone might build super strong AI in the next few years, and this could affect most of the value of the future. If true, I think it implies that the majority of any value from an intervention or cause area comes from how it affects whether AI goes well. Even if that’s very slight and indirect. Relatedly, I think whether AI goes well depends on whether states will be able to coordinate.
How do Animal Welfare interventions affect whether AI goes well?
– I think the Moral Circle expansion is relevant.
– Helping reach climate targets seems relevant to help with international coordination.
– But I think that Animal Welfare interventions place a cost on society such as by raising the price of food and increasing pressure on our governments in high-income countries.
How do Global Health interventions affect whether AI goes well?
– I think that it reduces the pressure on governments in LMICs and gives them a safer society. This gives their Governments slightly more room to come to peaceful international agreements.
– But it may also enable more people to contribute to AI, whether that be AI capabilities development, chip manufacture (or AI safety/governance)
Overall, I slightly lean towards global health being better. Perhaps RP’s tools shed light on this. (I haven’t checked!)

Callum Hinchcliffe’s Quick takes

Callum Hinchcliffe10 Oct 2024 19:18 UTC

2 points

1 comment EA link

Callum Hinchcliffe 1 Oct 2024 13:12 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: M_Allcock’s comment on: EA Sheffield is restarting as a city group
Yes, very happy to hear about this! I’ve reached out to you on here @matthes

Callum Hinchcliffe 16 Oct 2023 8:49 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Assessing the Dangerousness of Malevolent Actors in AGI Governance: A Preliminary Exploration
Nice post!
Thank you! Since it’s (my) first post, it’s helpful to have some positive encouragement.
1. We actually intended not to give examples of those.
2. That’s useful feedback on the diagram, thanks.

Callum Hinchcliffe 14 Oct 2023 21:32 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Assessing the Dangerousness of Malevolent Actors in AGI Governance: A Preliminary Exploration
This was a great experience and I learnt a lot:
- Choosing a research topic is a whole research project in itself
- The writing phase takes much longer than the earlier phase of working out what to write (more than twice as long)
- Co-working on research with one other person is great. It’s very motivating and you learn a lot from each other. You have faster feedback loops and so can make a better outcome sooner.
- This kind of research-writing-co-working is very mentally tiring (at first I couldn’t do more than 4hrs per day)
We really wanted to complete the project in a tight timeframe. I actually posted this 2 weeks after we finished because it was the first chance I had.
Some reflections:
I think that the amount of time we set aside was too short for us, and we could still have made worthwhile improvements with more time to reflect, such as:
- Choosing an easier topic for our first research project
- Doing more further reading
- I think the section on Risk-conducive preferences (RCPs) is not important enough to warrant the amount of words it is taking up
- Many sentences could be re-written to improve the wording, and I don’t think ‘Factors of malevolent actors’ is a very good heading.
(I’ll come back and reply to this comment with more of my own reflections if I think of more and get more time in the next day or two) (edit: formatting)

Assessing the Dangerousness of Malevolent Actors in AGI Governance: A Preliminary Exploration

Callum Hinchcliffe14 Oct 2023 21:18 UTC

28 points

4 comments9 min readEA link

Callum Hinchcliffe 4 Sep 2023 16:33 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Long-Term Future Fund Ask Us Anything (September 2023)
Can applicants update their application after submitting?
This was an extremely useful feature of Lightspeed Grants, because the strength of my application significantly improved every couple of weeks.
If it’s not a built-in feature, can applicants link to a google doc?
Thank you answering our questions!

Callum Hinchcliffe

Cal­lum Hinch­cliffe’s Quick takes

Assess­ing the Danger­ous­ness of Malev­olent Ac­tors in AGI Gover­nance: A Pre­limi­nary Exploration

Callum Hinchcliffe’s Quick takes

Assessing the Dangerousness of Malevolent Actors in AGI Governance: A Preliminary Exploration