Helen Toner
Executive Director, CSET Georgetown
About
Helen Toner is an Australian AI policy researcher and Executive Director of Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), where she was part of the founding team and previously served as director of strategy and foundational research grants. Before CSET she researched AI policy and strategy at Open Philanthropy and spent nine months in Beijing as a research affiliate of Oxford's Centre for the Governance of AI. From 2021 to 2023 she served on the board of OpenAI, where she was one of the members who voted to remove CEO Sam Altman in November 2023 — an episode that made her one of the most closely watched voices on AI governance. She writes 'Rising Tide,' a Substack on where AI capabilities are headed and what policy can do about it, and was named to TIME's 100 most influential people in AI in 2024.
Key Contributions
- Helped build CSET from its founding team into a leading think tank on AI, security, and emerging technology, becoming Executive Director in 2025
- Served on OpenAI's board of directors (2021–2023), one of the members who voted to remove CEO Sam Altman in November 2023
- Co-authored 'Decoding Intentions: Artificial Intelligence and Costly Signals' (2023) on how governments and AI labs credibly signal their intentions
- Testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on AI oversight, arguing regulation is possible even when the technology is hard to predict
- Writes 'Rising Tide,' a widely read Substack on AI progress and policy; named to TIME's 100 most influential people in AI (2024)
Videos & Interviews
How to Govern AI — Even If It's Hard to Predict | Helen Toner | TED
At TED2024, Toner argues that our incomplete understanding of how AI systems work shouldn't paralyze governance: we can set smart policy now — measurement, disclosure, incident reporting — even while the technology's trajectory remains hard to predict.
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The A.I.s Are Already Out of Control | The Ezra Klein Show
A conversation with Ezra Klein about AI agents beginning to act autonomously in the world — and what it means for oversight when systems slip beyond the boundaries their makers intended. Toner brings her CSET and OpenAI-board perspective to the question of what governance can still do.
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