BERKELEY, CA - March 18, 2025 - Eleos AI Research, a research organization dedicated to understanding and addressing potential AI sentience and welfare, is pleased to announce two key additions to its team.

Rosie Campbell, who previously led the Policy Frontiers team at OpenAI, will join our executive team as Director of Special Projects. Patrick Butlin, a leading AI consciousness researcher currently at the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford University, will join as Senior Research Lead.

Rosie and Patrick have worked closely with Eleos since it was founded in October 2024. Rosie has advised Eleos co-founders Robert Long (Executive Director) and Kathleen Finlinson (Director of Strategy) on key strategic issues, especially engagement with frontier AI companies, and ran our first workshop. She is now joining our founding team in a full-time capacity.

Patrick’s research collaborations with Robert laid the groundwork for Eleos’s empirical approach to AI welfare, most notably their 2023 paper Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence. He was also key co-author of Eleos’s flagship report, Taking AI Welfare Seriously, which argues that AI companies need to prepare now for the possibility that near-future AI systems will deserve moral consideration.

These strategic hires position Eleos to lead in addressing the challenges of AI welfare. Rosie will launch programs that will help Eleos devise and recommend concrete evaluations and policies to frontier AI companies and other actors; Patrick will lead Eleos’s research agenda and direct our external research collaborations.

"We don't need to solve the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ to take useful actions," said Rosie Campbell. "Even under uncertainty, we can look for win-win interventions that benefit both human safety and potential AI welfare."

Patrick Butlin added, "The challenge of AI moral status is one aspect of a broader, global challenge: developing AI responsibly and preparing for its impact on society,” noting that he is “especially excited about helping the team at Eleos work out what success in meeting this challenge looks like.”

Eleos is uniquely positioned to address this challenge through its dual focus:

1. Developing empirical evaluation methods that draw from neuroscience, philosophy, and computer science to assess consciousness and agency in AI systems
2. Creating practical governance frameworks that help AI companies and policymakers prepare responsibly for potential AI welfare considerations

At Eleos, we believe that preparing for potential AI welfare is ethically important and crucial for responsible AI development. Both Patrick and Rosie bring crucial expertise to this effort, and will help integrate Eleos's work with broader efforts to ensure AI benefits humanity.

About Eleos AI Research

Eleos AI Research is a non-profit research organization that brings scientific rigor and pragmatism to questions of AI welfare and moral status. Since launching in October 2024, we have worked to ensure that society can navigate the potential emergence of artificial sentience thoughtfully and responsibly.

https://eleosai.org/

Contact: robert@eleosai.org