Is It Possible To Be a Good Guy in AI? – Kris Bar

Conversations with the people shaping the future of AI.

In this episode, Dewi sits down with Kris Bar, a former quantum computer scientist who later worked in the UK government on the Online Safety Act before moving into more direct AI Safety work.

Kris talks through how he first encountered the deeper risks posed by advanced AI systems, why he felt the policy world wasn’t engaging with those risks quickly enough, and what ultimately pushed him to shift his career toward areas where he could have greater impact. He reflects on the mismatch between government timelines and AI development, the moment he realised the stakes were far higher than he’d assumed, and how the BlueDot course helped him build the technical grounding needed to navigate the space more confidently.

This conversation explores the challenge of making sense of a fast-moving field, the limitations of shaping AI risk from within government, and the different pathways individuals can take toward work that genuinely matters.

A podcast by BlueDot Impact.