Anthropic has appointed Harvard physicist Christopher Stubbs to its Long-Term Benefit Trust (LTBT), adding a scientific perspective to the body responsible for helping oversee the AI company’s public benefit mission.
"I am honored to join Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust and to help the company deliver on its public benefit mission," said Stubbs in a press release announcing the hire. "I use AI tools in my research every day and see what they make possible, and as an educator I have confronted some of the hard questions they raise. As a grandfather, I want to help ensure that AI is developed and deployed for the long-term benefit of humanity."
Anthropic operates as a Public Benefit Corporation, a structure designed to pursue financial growth while also advancing broader societal interests. The LTBT was established to help preserve that balance over time by providing oversight and ensuring the company remains accountable in how it builds and deploys AI systems.
Stubbs is the Samuel C. Moncher Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Harvard University, where he served as Dean of Science from 2018 to 2024. His research includes cosmology and precision measurement, and he has advised on issues related to national security and arms control.
He also served on the High-Z Supernova Search Team, whose work helped establish that the universe’s expansion is accelerating. The team later received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
He previously served as the first project scientist for what is now the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which began a 10-year survey of the southern sky in June.
More recently, Stubbs has also written about the challenges of maintaining reproducibility in AI-assisted research, where models can produce different outputs in response to the same prompt.
“When Chris found evidence that the universe was expanding at a rate no one expected, he and his team followed the data even when it went against the prevailing wisdom of the field. As AI starts to transform how science itself is done, Chris’s intellectual honesty, rigor, and commitment to the truth are the values we want shaping the future of this technology, and I’m grateful he’s bringing his deep expertise to the Trust,” said Daniela Amodei, Co-founder and President of Anthropic.
Long-Term Benefit Trust Chair Neil Buddy Shah said developing powerful AI safely requires a deep understanding of science and a commitment to integrity.
"Not only has Chris worked on some of the hardest problems in science, but he has consistently been a high-integrity leader of large, complex, collaborative scientific endeavors across academia, government, and the national laboratories. That will be of great value to the Trust as we support Anthropic in developing AI for the long-term benefit of humanity," Shah said.
Anthropic said the trustees operate independently of the company’s management and investors, advising leadership on major decisions involving AI risks and its potential effects on society.
On the LTBT, Stubbs will be joining the CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Neil Buddy Shah, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security, Richard Fontaine, former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, and Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, who joined Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences in July.
Photo: Shutterstock