Arb Research

Our consulting work spans forecasting, machine learning, theory, and policy. We do original research, evidence gathering, and large-ish data pipelines.

Our clients include Stripe, SCSP, LawZero, the European Commission, Coefficient Giving, Schmidt Futures, Renaissance Philanthropy, the Mercatus Center, and the Institute for Progress.

Express interest at hi@arbresearch.com
- or get updates on Twitter or RSS.

Current Work

This year, we’re investigating AI generalisation and helping birth a couple of research fields. We also run workshops on what’s going on in AI.

News

Oct 2026 Cheatsheet: looking for inexplicable AI reward hacking
Jun 2026 Paper with Bengio on scientist AI
Apr 2026 Arb and Erdős
Apr 2026 Juriscription: finding missing medicines
Mar 2026 Pathways to Progress appearance

Past Work

The Scaling Era, hardback — A major trade book on current AI

First page of Steering Language Models With Activation Engineering — Experiment design for new ML methods

First page of AI–AI bias in PNAS — Technical writing for new ML methods

First page of Safety from Honesty in a Disinterested AI Predictor — A mathematical theory of honest AI training

First page of Questionable practices in machine learning — Diagnosing unscientific practices in AI evals

First page of Soft Contamination Means Benchmarks Test Shallow Generalization — How much of AI performance is local generalisation?

Frontier of the Year 2025 website — Annotating scientific breakthroughs of our time

Cover of Ranking candidate trial locations — Location scouting for clinical trials

Shallow Review of Technical AI Safety website — Condensing all AI safety research

First page of Ten Hard Problems in Artificial Intelligence — Synthesis and strategy in ten fields at once

Cover of Generative Biology On The Way — Reviewing recent progress in generative biology

Cover of Comparing Top Forecasters to Domain Experts — Reviewing the evidence for generalist forecasters

Can Policymakers Trust Forecasters? on the IFP website — Implementation issues for forecasting in policy

Cover of The Return to Top Schools — Reviewing the economics of elite education

The Track Record of Futurists Seems Fine on Cold Takes — Evaluating the forecasting work of Isaac Asimov