David 'davidad' Dalrymple
California Institute for Machine Consciousness / DARPA ARPA-H
Functionalist What matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material
David “davidad” Dalrymple is an American computer scientist, mathematical researcher, and fellow at the California Institute for Machine Consciousness (CIMC), previously holding research positions at DARPA, MIT Media Lab, and the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute.
Dalrymple is the creator of the Open Agency Architecture (OAA), a mathematically grounded framework for constructing autonomous AI agents whose goals, cognitive boundaries, and decision-making processes are formally verifiable. In presentations at CIMC (2026, alongside Joscha Bach), Dalrymple analyzed the question of whether large-scale transformer architectures instantiate emergent conscious states and outlined the technical protocols required to verify ethical alignment if synthetic systems attain moral patienthood.
Dalrymple’s work focuses on uniting formal methods, cybernetics, and consciousness theory so that advanced autonomous systems operate transparently and safely as artificial general intelligence emerges.
Known for. Open Agency Architecture (OAA), formal verification of autonomous systems, machine consciousness ethics, successor species safety protocols
Coverage on this site
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David 'davidad' Dalrymple is listed with the other functionalists and computationalists, who hold that what matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.