David Veldran
David Veldran is a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, a Summer Fellow at the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy (IAPS), and a Researcher at the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS). His work sits at the intersection of moral philosophy and the governance of artificial intelligence, with a focus on the long-term opportunities and risks of AI and other emerging technologies.
Since June 2026, David has served as a Summer Fellow in Washington, DC as part of the 2026 AI Policy Fellowship cohort at IAPS, a nonpartisan think tank that produces policy research to address the implications of AI, from today’s most advanced models to potential AGI and superintelligence.
At OPIS, a think-and-do tank dedicated to a more compassionate world that advocates for making the prevention of intense suffering, in humans and animals alike, a primary ethical objective of institutional decision-making, he coauthored — with our Jonathan Leighton, the organization’s Executive Director — the 2026 working paper The Moral Blind Spot in AI Governance: Risks of Large-Scale Suffering, which argues that the risk of large-scale intense suffering is a moral blind spot that AI governance has largely overlooked.
David earned his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Princeton University in 2023 and began his doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh in 2024. He completed the AI Safety, Ethics, and Society course from the Center for AI Safety, a San Francisco-based nonprofit working to reduce societal-scale risks from AI, and the AGI Strategy course from BlueDot Impact, a nonprofit talent accelerator focused on beneficial AI, both in 2025.
Visit his LinkedIn profile.