creators

Helen Toner - Executive Director of Georgetown's CSET

Helen Toner runs Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, sat on OpenAI's board until November 2023, and writes on AI governance.

Helen Toner is an Australian AI policy researcher and Executive Director of Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), which she joined at its founding in 2019. CSET named her interim executive director with effect from 2 September 2025, succeeding Dewey Murdick; its staff page now drops the "interim". She was previously CSET's director of strategy and foundational research grants and a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy, and studied China's AI ecosystem in Beijing as a research affiliate of Oxford's Centre for the Governance of AI. She holds a BSc in chemical engineering and a diploma in languages from the University of Melbourne and an MA in security studies from Georgetown. Toner joined OpenAI's board of directors on 8 September 2021; Wikipedia records that she was invited by Holden Karnofsky to take his seat, which OpenAI's own announcement does not state. In mid-November 2023 she was one of four directors who voted to remove chief executive Sam Altman; she left the board under the settlement that reinstated him. Her writing and testimony deal with AI governance, U.S.-China competition and how policymakers can track progress in AI capabilities. She also writes Rising Tide, a Substack with more than 8,000 subscribers. TIME named her to its 100 most influential people in AI in 2024.

Specialization

AI policy, AI governance, U.S.-China technology competition, national security

Country

United States