People & collaboration

Eric Choi founded Empirical Institute to investigate a fundamental question in AI safety: Can we build safer AI not only by constraining it, but by changing how it learns?

His work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, psychology, behavioral science, and entrepreneurship. Agnostic Ally grew from his interest in applying ideas from human development and learning to AI alignment—not by assuming AI thinks or feels like a person, but by measuring whether different environments produce different outcomes.

“We don't have to know whether an AI can feel in order to ask whether the way we train it changes what it becomes.”

Former mathematics teacher bringing a mathematical and strategic perspective to the institute’s research into artificial-agent behavior. His work focuses on applying game theory, adversarial systems modeling, and mathematical reasoning to AI and cybersecurity, including how intelligent agents behave under competition, cooperation, uncertainty, conflicting incentives, and adversarial pressure.

At Empirical Institute, this perspective supports the design of developmental games, multi-agent environments, adversarial experiments, and quantitative frameworks for measuring behavioral change.