Blaise Agüera y Arcas

Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP and Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society and founder of Paradigms of Intelligence (PI). PI is an organization working on basic research and transformative technologies in AI and related fields, especially the foundations of neural computing, sociality, evolution, and Artificial Life. In 2008, Blaise was awarded MIT’s TR35 prize. During his tenure at Google, he invented Federated Learning, an approach to decentralized model training that avoids sharing private data; innovated on-device AI for Android and Pixel; and founded the Artists + Machine Intelligence program. A frequent public speaker, he has given multiple TED talks and keynoted NeurIPS. He has also authored numerous papers, essays, op eds, and book chapters, as well as several books: Ubi Sunt, Who Are We Now?, What Is Life?, and What Is Intelligence?, published by Antikythera and MIT Press in 2025.

Blaise's research seeks a deeper understanding of the principles underlying life, evolution, ecology, and intelligence, with a special focus on computation and symbiosis; as an engineer and thought leader, he seeks to use this growing understanding to promote positive futures for our intelligent planet.