Iason Gabriel: how a philosopher at Google DeepMind is trying to make AI safe

In 2017, political philosopher Jason Gabriel joined Google DeepMind with a question that most technology companies prefer not to ask: what is artificial intelligence really — and what will happen when it becomes powerful enough?

The Path from Oxford to DeepMind

Jason Gabriel was 33 years old when a friend suggested he apply to DeepMind — Google's London division, where a significant portion of the company's AI research is concentrated. The proposal seemed far from obvious. Gabriel was a typical academic — passionate, but withdrawn into himself.

A Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, he taught courses in political theory and wrote articles about the blind spots of effective altruism and the moral contradictions of "yuppie ethics." The eldest son of a Greek management professor and a British documentary filmmaker, he divided his time between teaching and international development projects. In his spare time — Vipassana meditation and, according to his brother, "enthusiastic" rock climbing.

Between lectures, Gabriel managed to participate in UN crisis programs — in Sudan and Lebanon. This combination of academic theory and harsh field realities apparently shaped his professional temperament: to think about consequences before they occur.

An Ethicist Inside the Machine

At DeepMind, Gabriel took on something that had previously barely existed as a separate discipline: systematically analyzing what AI development could lead to — and building ethical frameworks before problems became irreversible. This is not philosophy for philosophy's sake. DeepMind is the laboratory that created AlphaGo and AlphaFold, systems that radically changed our understanding of machine capabilities. The question "what is AI really" here is not an abstract academic debate, but a working task.

"There's a deep mystery in what this thing actually is," as

Gabriel describes the nature of modern AI systems.

Among the areas he works on:

• Moral frameworks for autonomous decision-making systems
• Transparency and explainability of AI for society and regulators
• Geopolitical risks of the technological race between the US and China
• Engagement with civil society and legislative bodies
• Questions of identity for potentially conscious systems

Commercial Pressure and the Limits of Influence

As AI laboratories transform from research centers into commercial engines, the role of ethicists within them becomes increasingly ambiguous. Specialists like Gabriel participate in real internal discussions — about system design, about permissible data, about strict limitations. But they remain employees of companies that answer to shareholders and compete to keep up with OpenAI, Meta, and Chinese developers. This question — about the real, not merely declarative influence of ethicists within tech giants — becomes central as AI ceases to be a laboratory experiment and becomes infrastructure that shapes the lives of billions.

What It Means

The story of Jason Gabriel is an indicator: how seriously major AI companies treat ethics not at the level of press releases, but in the real culture of decision-making. If philosophers inside DeepMind can actually change something — that matters more than any technological breakthrough. If they can't — we should know it.

*Meta has been recognized as an extremist organization and is banned in the RF.