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Researcher profile

Koen Holtman

Koen Holtman contributes to research discovery and scholarly infrastructure.

ResearcherAffiliation not importedOpen to collaborate
Artificial Intelligencecs.CYMachine LearningEmerging TechnologiesMultiagent Systems

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Published work

5 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Open Problems in Frontier AI Risk Management

Frontier AI both amplifies existing risks and introduces qualitatively novel challenges. Not only is there a notable lack of stable scientific consensus resulting from the rapid pace of technological change, but emerging frontier AI safety practices are often misaligned with, or may undermine, established risk management frameworks. To address these challenges, we systematically surface open problems in frontier AI risk management. Adopting a problem-oriented approach, we examine each stage of the risk management process - risk planning, identification, analysis, evaluation, and mitigation - through a structured review of the literature, identifying unresolved challenges and the actors best positioned to address them. Recognising that different types of open problems call for different responses, we classify open problems according to whether they reflect (a) a lack of scientific or technical consensus, (b) misalignment with, or challenges to, established risk management frameworks, or (c) shortcomings in implementation despite apparent consensus and alignment. By mapping these open problems and identifying the actors best positioned to address them - including developers, deployers, regulators, standards bodies, researchers, and third-party evaluators - this work aims to clarify where progress is needed to enable robust and meaningful consensus on frontier AI risk management.The paper does not propose specific solutions; instead, it provides a problem-oriented, agenda-setting reference document, complemented by a living online repository, intended to support coordination, reduce duplication, and guide future research and governance efforts.

0 citations0 reviewsNo code linkedOpen access
preprint2026arXiv

The Case for ESM3 as a General-Purpose AI Model with Systemic Risk Under the EU AI Act

Due to ambiguity in the wording of the EU AI Act, we examine the question of to what extent frontier biological foundation models such as ESM3 are subject to obligations for general-purpose AI models with systemic risk under the EU AI Act. In this paper, we map ESM3 to the biorisk chain, and conclude that it would be desirable if the providers of ESM3 and similar biological models were subject to these obligations, which would require them to assess and mitigate dual-use risks from their models. We then perform an analysis, comparing the attributes of ESM3 to the classification criteria in the AI Act and the supporting material. We conclude that at this time, ESM3 does not appear to be meaningfully regulated by the Act. We then propose remedies to correct the situation.

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preprint2021arXiv

Counterfactual Planning in AGI Systems

We present counterfactual planning as a design approach for creating a range of safety mechanisms that can be applied in hypothetical future AI systems which have Artificial General Intelligence. The key step in counterfactual planning is to use an AGI machine learning system to construct a counterfactual world model, designed to be different from the real world the system is in. A counterfactual planning agent determines the action that best maximizes expected utility in this counterfactual planning world, and then performs the same action in the real world. We use counterfactual planning to construct an AGI agent emergency stop button, and a safety interlock that will automatically stop the agent before it undergoes an intelligence explosion. We also construct an agent with an input terminal that can be used by humans to iteratively improve the agent's reward function, where the incentive for the agent to manipulate this improvement process is suppressed. As an example of counterfactual planning in a non-agent AGI system, we construct a counterfactual oracle. As a design approach, counterfactual planning is built around the use of a graphical notation for defining mathematical counterfactuals. This two-diagram notation also provides a compact and readable language for reasoning about the complex types of self-referencing and indirect representation which are typically present inside machine learning agents.

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preprint2020arXiv

AGI Agent Safety by Iteratively Improving the Utility Function

While it is still unclear if agents with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) could ever be built, we can already use mathematical models to investigate potential safety systems for these agents. We present an AGI safety layer that creates a special dedicated input terminal to support the iterative improvement of an AGI agent's utility function. The humans who switched on the agent can use this terminal to close any loopholes that are discovered in the utility function's encoding of agent goals and constraints, to direct the agent towards new goals, or to force the agent to switch itself off. An AGI agent may develop the emergent incentive to manipulate the above utility function improvement process, for example by deceiving, restraining, or even attacking the humans involved. The safety layer will partially, and sometimes fully, suppress this dangerous incentive. The first part of this paper generalizes earlier work on AGI emergency stop buttons. We aim to make the mathematical methods used to construct the layer more accessible, by applying them to an MDP model. We discuss two provable properties of the safety layer, and show ongoing work in mapping it to a Causal Influence Diagram (CID). In the second part, we develop full mathematical proofs, and show that the safety layer creates a type of bureaucratic blindness. We then present the design of a learning agent, a design that wraps the safety layer around either a known machine learning system, or a potential future AGI-level learning system. The resulting agent will satisfy the provable safety properties from the moment it is first switched on. Finally, we show how this agent can be mapped from its model to a real-life implementation. We review the methodological issues involved in this step, and discuss how these are typically resolved.

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preprint2020arXiv

Corrigibility with Utility Preservation

Corrigibility is a safety property for artificially intelligent agents. A corrigible agent will not resist attempts by authorized parties to alter the goals and constraints that were encoded in the agent when it was first started. This paper shows how to construct a safety layer that adds corrigibility to arbitrarily advanced utility maximizing agents, including possible future agents with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The layer counter-acts the emergent incentive of advanced agents to resist such alteration. A detailed model for agents which can reason about preserving their utility function is developed, and used to prove that the corrigibility layer works as intended in a large set of non-hostile universes. The corrigible agents have an emergent incentive to protect key elements of their corrigibility layer. However, hostile universes may contain forces strong enough to break safety features. Some open problems related to graceful degradation when an agent is successfully attacked are identified. The results in this paper were obtained by concurrently developing an AGI agent simulator, an agent model, and proofs. The simulator is available under an open source license. The paper contains simulation results which illustrate the safety related properties of corrigible AGI agents in detail.

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