Seth Lazar is a leading voice in the moral and political philosophy of artificial intelligence, bridging traditional philosophical ethics with contemporary technological challenges.

Lazar’s research spans multiple domains and disciplines, ranging from his foundational work in the ethics of war and risk to his current work at the frontiers of philosophy, public policy, and the AI transition.  

Lazar’s research group, the Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory (MINT) Lab, works on AI safety, governance, and resilience. Projects range from evaluating and enhancing LLM moral reasoning, to practical proposals for governing AI agents, to rethinking fundamental moral and political theories and institutions for the age of powerful AI. His book The Algorithmic City: Power, Justice and AI, based on his 2023 Tanner Lecture on AI and Human Values at Stanford University, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2026. 

Lazar is a nonresident scholar of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a distinguished research fellow at the University of Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins University, he was professor of philosophy at the Australian National University, and a visiting faculty researcher at Google DeepMind. He holds a DPhil, MPhil, and BA (Hons) from the University of Oxford. His research has been supported by organizations including the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, AI2050, Google, OpenAI and the Australian Research Council.