Alan Chan

Research Fellow at GovAI

I am a Research Fellow at GovAI. I work on a variety of topics in AI policy including AI agents, transparency, and other topics in technical AI governance.

I completed my PhD at Mila, advised by Nicolas Le Roux and David Krueger. Previously at Amii + UAlberta, I was a MSc student with Martha White.

I am based in London.

Education

PhD in Computer Science 2024
Université de Montréal
MSc in Computing Science 2020
University of Alberta
BSc in Mathematics 2018
University of Alberta

Selected Work

What If Automating AI R&D Triggers an Intelligence Explosion? CASPSeptember 2026
Alan Chan, Christoph Winter, Andrew Barto, Jakub Pachocki, Geoffrey Hinton, Eric Horvitz, Yoshua Bengio, Dawn Song, Jack Clark, Hilary Greaves, Anton Korinek, Samuel Hammond, Thore Graepel, Ben Bariach, Philip H. S. Torr, Sheila A. McIlraith, Jeff Clune, Sam Manning, Girish Sastry, Tom Davidson, Daniel Eth, Sören Mindermann
How Do We Deal with Rogue AIs on the Internet? SubstackSeptember 2026
Alan Chan
AI Verification Research Should Focus More on Frontier Safety Frameworks SubstackSeptember 2026
Alan Chan
Components of a Frontier AI Slowdown SubstackJune 2026
Alan Chan
AIs as Whistleblowers SubstackMay 2026
Alan Chan
Measuring AI R&D Automation arXivMarch 2026
Alan Chan*, Ranay Padarath*, Joe Kwon*, Hilary Greaves, Markus Anderljung
Transparency into Model Spec Adherence Substack and GovAIFebruary 2026
Alan Chan
How Could Formal Verification Help with Cyber Resilience? SubstackFebruary 2026
Alan Chan
Permission Manifests for Web Agents arXivDecember 2025
Samuele Marro, Alan Chan, Xinxing Ren, Lewis Hammond, Jesse Wright, Gurjyot Wanga, Tiziano Piccardi, Nuno Campos, Tobin South, Jialin Yu, Sunando Sengupta, Eric Sommerlade, Alex Pentland, Philip Torr, Jiaxin Pei
AI Agents Find $4.6M in Blockchain Smart Contract Exploits AnthropicDecember 2025
Winnie Xiao*, Cole Killian*, Henry Sleight, Alan Chan, Nicholas Carlini, Alwin Peng
Labeling of AI Agent Activity in Article 50 of the EU AI Act GovAINovember 2025
Alan Chan
Incident Analysis for AI Agents AIESAugust 2025
Carson Ezell, Xavier Roberts-Gaal, Alan Chan
What Role Should Governments Play in Providing AI Agent Infrastructure? GovAIJuly 2025
Alan Chan
Multi-Agent Risks from Advanced AI Cooperative AI FoundationFebruary 2025
Lewis Hammond, Alan Chan, Jesse Clifton, Jason Hoelscher-Obermaier, Akbir Khan, Euan McLean, Chandler Smith et al.
Infrastructure for AI Agents TMLRJanuary 2025
Alan Chan, Kevin Wei, Sihao Huang, Nitarshan Rajkumar, Elija Perrier, Seth Lazar, Gillian K. Hadfield, Markus Anderljung
Authenticated Delegation and Authorized AI Agents ICMLJanuary 2025
Tobin South, Samuele Marro, Thomas Hardjono, Robert Mahari, Cedric Deslandes Whitney, Dazza Greenwood, Alan Chan, Alex Pentland
IDs for AI Systems arXivJune 2024
Alan Chan, Noam Kolt, Peter Wills, Usman Anwar, Christian Schroeder de Witt, Nitarshan Rajkumar, Lewis Hammond, David Krueger, Lennart Heim, Markus Anderljung
Evaluating Predictions of Model Behaviour GovAIApril 2024
Alan Chan
Visibility into AI Agents FAccTJanuary 2024
Alan Chan, Carson Ezell, Max Kaufmann, Kevin Wei, Lewis Hammond, Herbie Bradley, Emma Bluemke, Nitarshan Rajkumar, David Krueger, Noam Kolt, Lennart Heim, Markus Anderljung

Get in Touch

If you think I might be able to tell you useful things, please email me with a suggested agenda: alan.chan@governance.ai