Dan Hendrycks, the researcher behind the nonprofit Middle for AI Security, has lots on his plate. Along with growing benchmarks and main public advocacy, the machine studying professional additionally serves as a security advisor to firms like xAI and Scale AI—a task that has stored him notably busy in latest months.
It’s not a profitable gig on the floor. Hendrycks earns simply $1 a 12 months for his advisory work with Elon Musk’s xAI, which he joined in 2023, and $12 yearly from knowledge annotation agency Scale AI, which he started advising final 12 months. Musk’s xAI, for instance, just lately confronted controversy after its Grok chatbot generated antisemitic remarks earlier this 12 months.
Such incidents, Hendrycks mentioned, can typically result in significant enhancements in A.I. programs. Talking at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 in San Francisco yesterday (Oct. 27), he famous that, after the antisemitic incident, xAI started implementing extra checks and time delays earlier than releasing updates. “I feel that’s a really constructive growth in view of the occasion,” he mentioned.
A lot of Hendryck’s advisory work includes assessing and mitigating dangers—from bioweapons to cyber threats—and guaranteeing A.I. programs stay beneath particular hazard thresholds. “The target afterwards is to repeatedly attempt to drive down that threshold to make it increasingly more strict in order that there’s much less and fewer of those dangers,” he defined.
Measuring political bias is one other key focus of his work with xAI and Scale AI. This includes monitoring issues like “covert activism” by analyzing whether or not a system presents details in a very constructive or unfavorable gentle. A chatbot that solely generates glowing statements for a politician and solely affords unfavorable info on a determine of the opposing social gathering, for instance, can be a chief instance. “In the event you goal that, optimize in opposition to that, then you definately get a system that’s considerably extra politically concerned,” mentioned Hendrycks. Musk, too, has emphasised political neutrality as a key aim of Grok, branding it a much less “woke” various to opponents.
What’s it prefer to work with Elon Musk?
Serving as an xAI advisor means Hendrycks spends lots of time with Musk. “I feel he’s a really gratifying individual to work with,” he mentioned. “There’s lots to do, and he acknowledges that.”
Hendrycks additionally described Musk as unusually targeted on A.I. security in comparison with his friends, citing his assist for California’s SB-1047—a invoice that sought to ascertain security requirements for superior A.I. programs. “No different A.I. firms formally supported that invoice, and that’s as a result of he takes this far more critically,” Hendrycks mentioned, including that Musk’s independence permits him to take public stances with out worrying about “sucking as much as” buyers.
SB-1047, which Hendrycks helped craft, was finally vetoed final 12 months by California Governor Gavin Newsom. Hendrycks attributed the failure to pushback from Silicon Valley, describing it as a “public security vs. company energy sort of dynamic.” Newsom later signed a much less sweeping A.I. invoice into regulation this previous September.
Musk isn’t the one distinguished tech determine Hendrycks has collaborated with. Earlier this 12 months, he co-authored a paper with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, urging the U.S. to proceed cautiously with superior A.I. growth. The paper warned that an unchecked A.I. race may result in a state of affairs akin to nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which they dubbed “Mutual Assured A.I. Malfunction (MAIM),” whereas additionally highlighting dangers reminiscent of rogue bioweapon creation and cyberattacks.
These points stay high of thoughts for Hendrycks. He mentioned he’s notably involved about how cyberattacks may goal essential however outdated infrastructure—from power grids and hospitals to airports and monetary programs. A lot of this infrastructure hasn’t had “software program updates in a long time, and the individuals who made the software program are out of enterprise,” he warned. “These are sitting geese.”
