Arb Research

Arb Research is a small, remote-first research consultancy founded around 2021 by Misha Yagudin and Gavin Leech. The firm operates at the intersection of AI safety, forecasting, and policy, providing high-quality independent research to clients in the effective altruism and AI safety ecosystems. Current leadership includes Gavin Leech (co-founder, AI PhD from University of Bristol) and Charles Dillon (former senior portfolio manager at Millennium). The team of roughly nine people spans machine learning PhDs, superforecasters, and policy researchers. Arb's most notable recurring project is the Shallow Review of AI Safety, a comprehensive annual survey mapping active research agendas across the AI safety field. The 2024 edition reviewed over 800 links and consulted dozens of researchers. The firm also produced a 90-page survey of AI's likely effects across ten perspectives including ML, governance, economics, and ethics, and contributed hundreds of AI forecasting questions for Metaculus's Future of AI series. In 2025, Gavin Leech co-authored The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025 with Dwarkesh Patel, published by Stripe Press. Other notable work includes impact assessments of AI Safety Camp, research on questionable research practices in machine learning, studies on AI bias against human-generated content (published in PNAS), and developing Talleyrand, an AI platform for scenario analysis. Arb has received multiple grants from Open Philanthropy, including $25,000 for staff support, $70,000 to support an AI Governance Retreat for professionals in the field, and $5,000 for an updated AI safety shallow review. The firm operates as a consultancy with fee-for-service clients rather than primarily as a donation-funded nonprofit.