Some things I've done

• Co-founded Cavendish Labs, a research laboratory based in Vermont, addressing threats like strong AI and pandemics
• Running Contramont Research, an AI safety lab, with Andis, Sumeet, and others
• Implemented an SHA transformer by hand
• Co-wrote a musical
• Constructed unelicitable backdoors in language models
• Thought a lot about reinforcement learning, quantum information, neuroscience, drug development, astronomy, and robotics
• Co-founded Lex.ma with Derik
• Run a gravity chess tournament
• Made a U.S. Evolution Simulator

What I'm up to now

Current (live!) location: City of New York, New York

Cooking up interesting things at Promontory.

Last updated May 21, 2026

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Andrew Gritsevskiy

CV   •   google scholar

Hi! I'm Andrew, a researcher who loves to learn about the world, make things, and go on adventures.

I'm always excited to meet new people, so if you want to go hiking together, do a puzzle hunt, play a duet, or sneak into an oceanography conference, send me an email at mass(like the physical quantity)@hey.com!

Other things I've written

• Max Chiswick, legend
• Implementing an SHA transformer by hand
• Building Housing in Roads
• “My Way”
• On self-driving cars
• Q-learning in RASP
• Hand-coding backdoors in transformers with RASP<
• What We Look For In Founders
• Why writing is important
• How fast do those things shoot out from the jewelweed pods?
• The Language of Nature
• The Curse of Dimensionality

Things I enjoy

• Hiking, skiing, going on adventures
• Participating in theatrical productions!
• Puzzle hunts
• Writing musicals
• Making cheese
• Talking to people about things I know nothing about
• this and this

Fun links

• My Twitter account
• Music I like
• Mixture of Minds
• CO₂ at Mauna Loa; in my room
• Russia: A Nation of Contrasts
• Useless Thunderstorm Alert
• Gravity chess server
• isitjoever.com
• Friends' websites
• My Wikipedia account
• electronneutrino.com
• doemod
• wepledge.to