The Curve 2025: The Premier Big Picture AI Conference
October 3-5 at Lighthaven, in Berkeley, CA
"It felt like an event where history was happening." — Kevin Roose, NYT
The Golden Gate Institute for AI was partly inspired by The Curve, a 2024 conference that brought together 220 people from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints to discuss the big questions in AI. We’re excited to announce that we’re running it again this year, bigger and better. Read on to learn about the conference and how to get involved.
Applications are now open for the second edition of The Curve, our flagship annual event. 250 thinkers, builders and leaders – a curated group with a diversity of viewpoints and expertise, from frontier lab staffers to government, academia, VC, journalism, and more – will gather to discuss where AI is going, how it will impact the world, and what to do about it. If you want to be one of them:
Apply here (2-10 mins) to join as an attendee – for early bird pricing, apply by July 4th
Learn about sponsorship opportunities – support our mission and get the opportunity to engage with the exceptional group we’ll be bringing together
We’re looking for applicants from a wide range of fields. If you’re interested in shaping the impact AI will have on the world, are looking for an opportunity to learn from different perspectives, and have your own expertise to bring to the table – we want to hear from you!
Purpose
“The Curve led to some of the best conversations on AI policy I've ever had. I feel like I understand in much more detail the inside view perspectives of folks ranging from Jack Clark at Anthropic to Daniel Kokotajlo (formerly of OpenAI) to Dean Ball of Mercatus. Just overall one heck of a useful and fun conference.” – Dave Kasten, AI policy consultant
How can we achieve the best outcomes from advanced AI?
This question touches on every aspect of technology and society: Which applications best contribute to human agency and flourishing, and how can we foster them? Which consequences will be most disruptive, and what can we do about that? How might AI concentrate or distribute power? How rapidly will AI be adopted in different sectors, and what does that mean for growth, unemployment, and national security? When, if ever, should we expect superintelligence?
No single field has all the answers; no single group is positioned to steer toward the best outcomes. We are all proverbial blind men, attending only to our own part of the elephant. The Curve is a 2.5-day tour of this enormous creature – an opportunity to share knowledge, explore disagreements, build bridges, and make progress towards solutions.
People
"Super high quality attendees. It did not feel like an awkward Thanksgiving, but a good faith meeting of the minds." — Nathan Labenz, Cognitive Revolution
The participants, selected by invitation or application only, are curated to represent a mixture of views, areas of expertise, and spheres of influence. Attendees will include:
Researchers, engineers, and executives at the leading AI labs
Policy researchers, advocates, and government officials
Startup founders and operators
Journalists and bloggers
Academics and independent researchers
Grantmakers and VCs
And others with an important perspective on AI!
What will they all have in common? They expect AI to be a transformative technology, are working to shape its trajectory, are exceptional at what they do, and engage constructively in discourse.
For a more concrete sense of the types of people coming, here’s our initial speaker list:
Experience
“One of my favorite conferences I've been to. The mix of people from different "tribes" / ideologies made it much more fascinating than the usual conferences of people reinforcing each others' ideas. The quality of the participants was extremely high and it was surprisingly easy to talk to major players in the field.” – Eric Gastfriend, Americans for Responsible Innovation
We design the event to prioritize small group and one-on-one conversations. You're encouraged to skip sessions during the day in favor of talking with your fellow attendees – supported by a thoughtfully designed roster to help you find people to connect with. The venue is set up around conversation nooks, and we’ll keep it open late into the night to accommodate those long, winding, fruitful discussions. Sessions skew toward interactive workshops, debates, and fireside chats, which dive into topics you won’t find discussed elsewhere, and most talks segue into an office hour for deeper engagement with the speaker. We will also have a dedicated track of talks under the Chatham House rule, giving speakers the opportunity to go beyond their public positions.
Sessions & demos
“So many conferences are thoughtlessly run or designed. This was such a remarkable exception.” – Misha Glouberman (more here)
We’ve got some sessions in the works with our initial set of speakers:
Chad Jones (Stanford) will share his upcoming work on AI & economic growth
Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis) will talk about the geopolitics of AI infrastructure
Joshua Rothman (The New Yorker) will lead a conversation about what legal thinking on agency might imply for agentic AI
We expect some of the most interesting sessions to come from you, our audience. We’re looking for proposals for:
Sessions: talks, fireside chats, debates, workshops, activities, or anything else that productively engages a room full of people – creativity encouraged.
Demos: showcase your work at our demo fair. These can be demos in the classical sense (software or hardware products, interesting LLM behavior), or anything you can do at a table – posters for experimental results, artwork, hardcopies of books or magazines.
Proposals need not involve you! If you have a good idea for something “someone should do”, we may be able to make it happen. Here is more about what we’re looking for, including a long list of questions we’d love to see someone address (meant strictly for inspiration).
Details + How To Get Involved
"A great conference. I finally have some feel for what makes Berkeley special. It's through the looking glass. Subcultures within subcultures. The internet concretized." — Sam Hammond, Foundation for American Innovation
The Curve 2025 is co-hosted by the Golden Gate Institute for AI and Manifund. The conference will take place October 3-5 at the amazing Lighthaven campus in Berkeley, CA (pictured above). Here again are your opportunities to be part of it:
Apply here to join as an attendee – for early bird pricing, apply by July 4th
Encourage your friends and colleagues to apply and recommend them here
Learn about sponsorship opportunities
We hope to see you there!
