Deric Cheng

Deric
Cheng

I'm currently serving as the Director of Research for the Windfall Trust, a non-profit focused on ensuring that the economic benefits of advanced AI are shared by everyone.

I also lead the AGI Social Contract, a consortium of experts proposing strategies to guide the design of a new social contract through the upcoming societal transition.

In the next few years, every country in the world will need to have a plan on how to respond to the economic disruption caused by AI. My priority is to drastically increase the number of researchers & experts designing these national economic preparedness plans. My primary areas of focus include tax policy, welfare resilience, market design, and labor market policies.

I was formerly the AI Governance Lead for Convergence Analysis. At Convergence, I hosted a conference on AI economic impacts and guided a number of fellowships conducting economic policy research. Before my focus on AI economics, I also conducted research on foundational AI governance policies (e.g. chip registries & model registries) & soft nationalization.

Previously, I was the fifth software engineer at Alchemy, an Ethereum infra startup now valued at $10.2 billion. At Alchemy, I created web3.university, a learning platform with over 200k students.

I was also previously a rapid prototyping researcher at Google's Interaction Lab, where I led software explorations for a next-gen Google Glass. At Google, I independently designed and built the first "Babelfish" real-time translation feature, launched in 2017 on the Pixel Buds.

Outside of work, I'm into surfing, community living, and music production. I started and organize a music festival now in its 6th year.