Roman Hauksson

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Hello! I'm an undergraduate Computer Science student at the University of Texas at Dallas. In the past, I was an officer for the open-source software club OpenUTD, an officer for the Computer Security Group, and the director of the ACM Research program. Now, I'm directing my focus towards co-founding UTD's effective altruism student group.

I want to use my career to help solve the world's most important and neglected problems and ensure humanity has a long and flourishing future. In particular, I'm interested in pursuing technical research to align powerful artificial intelligence systems with human values.

Effective Altruism UTD

If you wanted to have a positive impact on the world, how should you go about it? Conventional advice might lead you to focus on your local community: say, donating to a food bank or volunteering to pick up litter. But if you thought critically about how to do the most good with resources you have, this would lead you to take much different actions.

This is the focus of effective altruism: a project that aims to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice. It's both a research field which aims to identify the world's most pressing problems and the best solutions to them, and a practical community that aims to use those findings to do good.

People inspired by effective altruism have worked on projects that range from funding the distribution of 200 million malaria nets, to academic research on the future of AI, to campaigning for policies to prevent the next pandemic.

I'm the co-founder and president of UTD's effective altruism student group, which will give interested students a space to learn about and discuss these ideas, receive career advice, get connected to relevant people and resources, and conduct outreach on campus. To learn more and get involved, join our Discord server.