Louis Kirsch
Louis Kirsch is a researcher working on meta-learning and the automation of AI research who did his PhD with Jürgen Schmidhuber at IDSIA and worked as a research scientist at Google DeepMindGoogle DeepMindGoogle DeepMind is Google’s artificial intelligence research organization, formed in April 2023 by merging DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, with the Brain team from Google Research, and led by CEO Demis Hassabis. It developed AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and the Gemini family of models, and Hassabis and John Jumper received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold’s protein structure prediction work.Open the full entry; he is now a co-founder of Inherent, a London-based AI research lab.
Contents9 sections
Key facts
2017Graduating from the Hasso Plattner Institute
According to his personal website, he graduated from the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany as the top student of the class of 2017.[1]
2018Completing a Master of Research at University College London
According to his personal website, he completed a Master of Research (MRes) in computational statistics and machine learning at University College London under David Barber, graduating as the top student of the class of 2018.[1]
2019–2023PhD Studies at IDSIA
From 2019 to 2023, he was a PhD student at IDSIA, the Swiss AI lab, supervised by Jürgen Schmidhuber; according to his personal website, he has defended his doctoral thesis, titled “Automating AI Research.”[1]
In October 2019, he submitted a paper to arXiv with Sjoerd van Steenkiste and Jürgen Schmidhuber on improving generalization in meta reinforcement learning through learned objectives; according to his personal website, this was his first work on meta-learning reinforcement learning algorithms and was accepted at ICLR 2020.[2][1]
His personal website also states that he was awarded a total of 550,000 GPU hours on the Swiss National Supercomputer.[1]
December 2022Publishing a Paper on General-Purpose In-Context Learning
In December 2022, he submitted a paper to arXiv as first author with James Harrison, Jascha Sohl-Dickstein and Luke Metz, examining how meta-learning Transformers can yield general-purpose in-context learning.[3]
2024–2025Research Scientist at Google DeepMind
From 2024 to 2025, he was a research scientist at Google DeepMind; according to his personal website, he founded and led the research team there building LLM-based “AI Scientists.”[1]
An article by the investment firm Radical VenturesRadical VenturesRadical Ventures is an artificial intelligence-focused venture capital firm founded by Jordan Jacobs and Tomi Poutanen shortly after the 2017 launch of the Vector Institute in Toronto. It invests from incubation and seed through growth and pre-IPO stages, and its portfolio includes companies such as Cohere, Waabi, and World Labs. In 2026, it co-led the investment in Discovery Loop, founded by Jeff Dean and others, and completed the first close of its late-stage Radical Breakouts Fund.Open the full entry says he co-led DeepMind’s AI Scientist team with Edward HughesEdward HughesAI researcher and choral conductor; Inherent cofounder and chief scientist, formerly at Google DeepMind.Open the full entry.[4]
2025Co-Founding Inherent
According to his personal website, he co-founded Inherent in 2025 and serves as its “Chief Superintelligence Officer” (CΩO). Radical Ventures describes Inherent as a London-based research lab building general-purpose inventive AI to accelerate scientific discovery; its other co-founders are chief executive Tantum CollinsTantum CollinsTantum Collins is an artificial intelligence researcher who co-authored research on AI-assisted democratic deliberation under a Google DeepMind affiliation and is now a member of the AI research lab Inherent, whose manifesto he co-signed with other team members.Open the full entry, chief scientist Edward Hughes and chief technology officer Kaloyan Aleksiev.[1][5]
Inherent’s website states that the company aims to recursively self-improve to discover new knowledge and that it is incorporated as a public benefit corporation.[6]
2026Inherent Receives Seed Investment from Radical Ventures
Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts
Inherent: Official website: https://inherentlabs.ai/ (opens in a new window)[1]
Personal website: Public link: https://louiskirsch.com/ (opens in a new window)[6]
X: Public account: https://x.com/LouisKirschAI (opens in a new window)[1]
GitHub: Public account: https://github.com/LouisKirsch (opens in a new window)[1]
LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louiskirsch (opens in a new window)[1]
Sources
- Louis Kirsch (opens in a new window)
- Improving Generalization in Meta Reinforcement Learning using Learned Objectives (opens in a new window)
- General-Purpose In-Context Learning by Meta-Learning Transformers (opens in a new window)
- The Race for Recursive Self-Improvement (opens in a new window)
- Inherent (opens in a new window)
- Living within the Experiment (opens in a new window)