About
Hi! I'm an Assistant Professor at MIT with appointments in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), the Sloan School of Management, and the Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) in the MIT Media Lab. My research focuses on large language models (LLMs), AI safety, AI governance, and the societal impacts of AI. Previously, I was a Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, where I worked on post-training and safety for the Gemini models.
Before that, I was a Computer Science PhD student at MIT, working with Alex "Sandy" Pentland at the MIT Media Lab. I also hold a bachelor's and master's degree in physics from TU Delft, where I worked on quantum computing at QuTech and IBM Quantum.
Lab
We work on AI alignment, AI governance and oversight, and AI for collective decision-making and epistemics. I work with students and postdocs across EECS, IDSS, and Sloan IT, and we all sit together in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. If you'd like to work with us, I'd encourage you to apply to those programs and reach out via [last name] [at] mit [dot] edu. Please put "[application]" in the subject line.
Postdocs
PhD Students
Elinor Poole-Dayan (co-advised with
Mitchell Gordon and
Jacob Andreas)
Haiwen Li
Prerna Ravi (co-advised with Hal Abelson)
Robin Na (co-advised with Abdullah Almaatouq)
Sulekha Kishore
Haiwen Li
Prerna Ravi (co-advised with Hal Abelson)
Robin Na (co-advised with Abdullah Almaatouq)
Sulekha Kishore
Masters Students
Our work is funded by the Cooperative AI Foundation, the Future of Life Foundation, the Foresight Institute, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, and Galen Hines-Pierce.
Policy
I care a lot about making the transition to a post-AGI world go well, and I think policy work is a big part of that. I co-led the National AI "Delta" Plan, written at the request of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, and I co-wrote Europe 2031 (audio version), a scenario about what getting AI wrong could mean for Europe. It has been read by over a million people and was covered by the Economist, the Guardian, Bloomberg, and the New York Times, as well as many national media outlets across Europe.
Publications
Most recent publications on Google Scholar.
‡ indicates equal contribution.
2026
Xiaoyang Cao, Siddarth Srinivasan, Michiel A. Bakker
arXiv preprint. 2026.
Elinor Poole-Dayan, Jillian Fisher, Atoosa Kasirzadeh, Jacob Andreas, Mitchell Gordon, Michiel A. Bakker
arXiv preprint. 2026.
Anand V. Shah, Tobin South, Talfan Evans, Hannah Rose Kirk, Jiaxin Pei, Andrew Trask, E. Glen Weyl, Michiel A. Bakker
ICML'26: Forty-third International Conference on Machine Learning, Position Paper Track. 2026.
Zeyuan Li, Lukas Petersson, Alessandro Acquisti, Michiel A. Bakker
arXiv preprint. 2026.
Joshua C. Yang, Maurice Flechtner, Damian Dailisan, Michiel A. Bakker
arXiv preprint. 2026.
Suyash Fulay‡, Prerna Ravi‡, Emily Kubin, Shrestha Mohanty, Michiel A. Bakker, Deb Roy
arXiv preprint. 2026.
Shu Yang, Shenzhe Zhu, Hao Zhu, José Ramón Enríquez, Di Wang, Alex Pentland, Michiel A. Bakker, Jiaxin Pei
arXiv preprint. 2026.
Grace Liu, Brian Christian, Tsvetomira Dumbalska, Michiel A. Bakker, Rachit Dubey
arXiv preprint. 2026.
Haiwen Li, Michiel A. Bakker
arXiv preprint. 2026.
Michelle Vaccaro, Jaeyoon Song, Abdullah Almaatouq, Michiel A. Bakker
arXiv preprint. 2026.
Prerna Ravi, Om Gokhale, Suyash Fulay, Eugene Yi, Deb Roy, Michiel A. Bakker
arXiv preprint. 2026.
From Delegates to Trustees: How Optimizing for Long-Term Interests Shapes Bias and Alignment in LLMs
Suyash Fulay, Jocelyn Zhu, Michiel A. Bakker
EACL'26: Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics. 2026.
Elinor Poole-Dayan, Jiayi Wu, Taylor Sorensen, Jiaxin Pei, Michiel A. Bakker
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). 2026.
Xiaoyang Cao, Zelai Xu, Mo Guang, Kaiwen Long, Michiel A. Bakker, Yu Wang, Chao Yu
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). 2026.
Beth Goldberg, Diana Acosta-Navas, Michiel A. Bakker, Ian Beacock, Matt Botvinick, Prateek Buch, Renée DiResta, Nandika Donthi, Nathanael Fast, Ravi Iyer, Zaria Jalan, Andrew Konya, Grace Kwak Danciu, Hélène Landemore, Alice Marwick, Carl Miller, Aviv Ovadya, Emily Saltz, Lisa Schirch, Dalit Shalom, Divya Siddarth, Felix Sieker, Christopher Small, Jonathan Stray, Audrey Tang, Michael Henry Tessler, Amy Zhang
Collective Intelligence, 5(2). 2026.
Siddarth Srinivasan, Ezra Karger, Michiel Bakker, Yiling Chen
EC'26: Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation. 2026.
2025
Maximilian Negele, Daan Juijn, Afek Shamir, David Janků, Bengüsu Özcan, Lisa Soder, Lucia Velasco, Max Reddel, Michiel Bakker, Lorenzo Pacchiardi, Maksym Andriushchenko
RAND Corporation, RR-A4636-1. 2025.
Christopher Summerfield, Lisa P. Argyle, Michiel A. Bakker, Teddy Collins, Esin Durmus, Tyna Eloundou, Iason Gabriel, Deep Ganguli, Kobi Hackenburg, Gillian Hadfield, Luke Hewitt, Saffron Huang, Hélène Landemore, Nahema Marchal, Aviv Ovadya, Ariel Procaccia, Mathias Risse, Bruce Schneier, Elizabeth Seger, Divya Siddarth, Henrik Skaug Sætra, Michael Henry Tessler, Matthew Botvinick
Nature Human Behaviour, 9(12), 2420–2430. 2025.
Shenzhe Zhu, Shu Yang, Michiel A. Bakker, Alex Pentland, Jiaxin Pei
arXiv preprint. 2025.
Gheorghe Comanici, Eric Bieber, Mike Schaekermann, ..., Michiel A. Bakker, ... (3435 authors, ordered randomly)
arXiv preprint. 2025.
Haiwen Li, Soham De, Manon Revel, Andreas Haupt, Brad Miller, Keith Coleman, Jay Baxter, Martin Saveski, Michiel A. Bakker
Journal of Online Trust and Safety, 3(1). 2025.
Aviv Ovadya, Kyle Redman, Luke Thorburn, Quan Ze Chen, Oliver Smith, Flynn Devine, Andrew Konya, Smitha Milli, Manon Revel, Kevin Feng, Amy X Zhang, Bilva Chandra, Michiel A. Bakker, Atoosa Kasirzadeh
Forty-second International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). 2025.
Joe Edelman, Tan Zhi-Xuan, Ryan Lowe, Oliver Klingefjord, Vincent Wang-Mascianica, Matija Franklin, Ryan Othniel Kearns, Ellie Hain, Atrisha Sarkar, Michiel A. Bakker, Fazl Barez, David Duvenaud, Jakob Foerster, Iason Gabriel, Joseph Gubbels, Bryce Goodman, Andreas Haupt, Jobst Heitzig, Julian Jara-Ettinger, Atoosa Kasirzadeh, James Ravi Kirkpatrick, Andrew Koh, W. Bradley Knox, Philipp Koralus, Joel Lehman, Sydney Levine, Samuele Marro, Manon Revel, Toby Shorin, Morgan Sutherland, Michael Henry Tessler, Ivan Vendrov, James Wilken-Smith
Preprint. 2025.
Taylor Sorensen, Pushkar Mishra, Roma Patel, Michael Henry Tessler, Michiel Bakker, Georgina Evans, Iason Gabriel, Noah Goodman, Verena Rieser
EMNLP'25: Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. 2025.
Andrew Konya, Luke Thorburn, Wasim Almasri, Oded Adomi Leshem, Ariel D. Procaccia, Lisa Schirch, Michiel A. Bakker
FAccT'25: Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. 2025.
Edgar A. Duéñez-Guzmán, Ramona Comanescu, Yiran Mao, Kevin R. McKee, Ben Coppin, Suzanne Sadedin, Silvia Chiappa, Alexander S. Vezhnevets, Michiel A. Bakker, Yoram Bachrach, William Isaac, Karl Tuyls, Joel Z. Leibo
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 122(25), e2319933121. 2025.
Michael Henry Tessler, Georgina Evans, Michiel A. Bakker, Iason Gabriel, Sophie Bridgers, Rishub Jain, Raphael Koster, Verena Rieser, Anca Dragan, Matthew Botvinick, Christopher Summerfield
Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Freedoms, Knight First Amendment Institute. 2025.
Soham De, Michiel A. Bakker, Jay Baxter, Martin Saveski
WWW'25: Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2025, 3751–3761. 2025.
2024
Michael Henry Tessler‡, Michiel A. Bakker‡, Daniel Jarrett, Hannah Sheahan, Martin J. Chadwick, Raphael Koster, Georgina Evans, Lucy Campbell-Gillingham, Tantum Collins, David C. Parkes, Matthew Botvinick, Christopher Summerfield
Science, 386(6719), eadq2852. 2024.
Jason W. Burton, Ezequiel Lopez-Lopez, Shahar Hechtlinger, Zoe Rahwan, Samuel Aeschbach, Michiel A. Bakker, Joshua A. Becker, Aleks Berditchevskaia, Julian Berger, Levin Brinkmann, Lucie Flek, Stefan M. Herzog, Saffron Huang, Sayash Kapoor, Arvind Narayanan, Anne-Marie Nussberger, Taha Yasseri, Pietro Nickl, Abdullah Almaatouq, Ulrike Hahn, Ralf H. J. M. Kurvers, Susan Leavy, Iyad Rahwan, Divya Siddarth, Alice Siu, Anita W. Woolley, Dirk U. Wulff, Ralph Hertwig
Nature Human Behaviour, 8(9), 1643–1655. 2024.
2023
Daniel Jarrett, Miruna Pislar, Michiel A. Bakker, Michael Henry Tessler, Raphael Koster, Jan Balaguer, Romuald Elie, Christopher Summerfield, Andrea Tacchetti
NeurIPS'23 Workshop on Foundation Models for Decision Making. 2023.
Kevin R. McKee, Andrea Tacchetti, Michiel A. Bakker, Jan Balaguer, Lucy Campbell-Gillingham, Richard Everett, Matthew M. Botvinick
Nature Human Behaviour, 7(10), 1787–1796. 2023.
2022
Michiel A. Bakker‡, Martin J. Chadwick‡, Hannah R. Sheahan‡, Michael Henry Tessler, Lucy Campbell-Gillingham, Jan Balaguer, Nat McAleese, Amelia Glaese, John Aslanides, Matthew M. Botvinick, Christopher Summerfield
NeurIPS'22: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. 2022.
Alberto Aleta, David Martín-Corral, Michiel A. Bakker, Ana Pastore y Piontti, Marco Ajelli, Maria Litvinova, Matteo Chinazzi, Natalie E. Dean, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Ira M. Longini Jr, Alex Pentland, Alessandro Vespignani, Yamir Moreno, Esteban Moro
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 119(26), e2112182119. 2022.
2021
Michiel A. Bakker‡, Richard Everett‡, Laura Weidinger, Iason Gabriel, William S. Isaac, Joel Z. Leibo, Edward Hughes
AAMAS'21: Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. 2021.
Michiel A. Bakker, Duy Patrick Tu, Krishna P. Gummadi, Alex Pentland, Kush R. Varshney, Adrian Weller
AIES'21: Fourth AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society. 2021.
2020
Alejandro Noriega-Campero, Bernardo Garcia-Bulle, Luis Fernando Cantu, Michiel A. Bakker, Luis Tejerina, Alex Pentland
FAT*'20: ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. 2020.
Alex Berke, Michiel A. Bakker, Praneeth Vepakomma, Kent Larson, Alex Pentland
arXiv preprint. 2020.
2019
Kevin Z. Hu, Neil Gaikwad, Madelon Hulsebos, Michiel A. Bakker, Emanuel Zgraggen, César A Hidalgo, Tim Kraska, Guoliang Li, Arvind Satyanarayan, Cagatay Demiralp
CHI'19: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2019.
Madelon Hulsebos‡, Kevin Z. Hu‡, Michiel A. Bakker, Emanuel Zgraggen, Arvind Satyanarayan, Tim Kraska, Çagatay Demiralp, César A. Hidalgo
KDD'19: Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. 2019.
Kevin Z. Hu, Michiel A. Bakker, Stephen Li, Tim Kraska, César A. Hidalgo
CHI'19: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2019.
Mohamed H. Abobeih, Joe Randall, Conor E. Bradley, Hans P. Bartling, Michiel A. Bakker, Maarten J. Degen, Matthew Markham, Daniel J. Twitchen, Tim H. Taminiau
Nature, 576(7787), 411–415. 2019.
Conor E. Bradley, Joe Randall, Mohamed H. Abobeih, Remon C. Berrevoets, Maarten J. Degen, Michiel A. Bakker, Matthew Markham, Daniel J. Twitchen, Tim H. Taminiau
Physical Review X, 9(3), 031045. 2019.
Michiel A. Bakker, Duy Patrick Tu, Humberto Riverón Valdés, Krishna P. Gummadi, Kush R. Varshney, Adrian Weller, Alex Pentland
NeurIPS Workshop on Human-Centric Machine Learning. 2019.
Alejandro Noriega-Campero‡, Michiel A. Bakker‡, Bernardo Garcia-Bulle, Alex Pentland
AIES'19: Second AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society. 2019.
Michiel A. Bakker, Alejandro Noriega-Campero, Duy Patrick Tu, Prasanna Sattigeri, Kush R. Varshney, Alex Pentland
KDD Workshop on Explainable AI. 2019.
2018
Mohamed H. Abobeih, Julia Cramer, Michiel A. Bakker, Norbert Kalb, Matthew Markham, Daniel J. Twitchen, Tim H. Taminiau
Nature Communications, 9(1), 2552. 2018.
2015
Michiel A. Bakker‡, Sebastian Mehl‡, Tuukka Hiltunen, Ari Harju, David P. DiVincenzo
Physical Review B, 91(15), 155425. 2015.
2013
Harry van der Graaf, Michiel A. Bakker, Hong W. Chan, Edoardo Charbon, Fabio Santagata, Pasqualina M. Sarro, Dennis R. Schaart
Journal of Instrumentation, 8(01), C01036. 2013.
Experience
Ph.D. Computer Science
MIT · 2017 – 2020
M.Sc. Computer Science
MIT · 2017 – 2019
M.Sc. Physics
TU Delft · 2012 – 2015
B.Sc. Physics
TU Delft · 2008 – 2012
Assistant Professor
MIT · 2024 – present
(Senior) Research Scientist
Google DeepMind · 2021 – 2026
Research Intern
Google DeepMind · 2019
Co-Founder and Managing Director UK
Bloomon · 2015 – 2017
Research Intern
IBM Research · 2015
Master Thesis
QuTech, TU Delft · 2014 – 2015
Research Intern
RWTH Aachen · 2014
Co-Founder and Country Manager
Lamudi Myanmar · 2013 – 2014
Global Venture Developer Intern
Rocket Internet Myanmar · 2013
Bachelor Thesis
CERN and Nikhef · 2012
Website Design
Based on the homepages of Martin Saveski and Jacques Carolan. Photo is by Judith Jockel for the Volkskrant.