Jacqueline King

I studied political philosophy at Sciences Po Paris and UC Berkeley, drawn to questions about ethics, institutional power, and the politics of defining the common good. During my final year at Berkeley, I worked with the Human Rights Center documenting violations and thinking about what accountability actually looks like in practice.

I never envisioned myself working in tech. But the ethical questions that first pulled me into philosophy—about harm, about who decides what's good, about how systems shape lives—turned out to be everywhere in this industry. They just wear different clothes.

That's how I ended up at YouTube, working on AI systems for younger audiences. The questions haven't really changed: What does it mean for an algorithm to be "good" for a child? How do you build systems that serve people well when "well" is genuinely contested?

I'm drawn to AI alignment because it feels like a continuation of work I've always cared about—making powerful systems more accountable, more legible, more humane. My background is in the humanities, and I think that perspective belongs in conversations about how AI should behave.