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Registry 01 · Researcher

RAND Network

Dr. A. Vandermeer

Seventy-five years of patient work, and a door held open for you.

Governance frameworks built for static technology will not survive contact with adaptive systems. We need new institutions whose authority is grounded in continuous evaluation rather than pre-deployment certification.

Senior Fellow · AI Governance & Long-Horizon Risk

Brief / 01

Context record

Dr. A. Vandermeer is part of the RAND Network on Futurecraft, a curated layer of researchers, policy scholars, and institutional architects whose work informs how the platform organizes the questions, salons, and Research-to-Reality opportunities it surfaces to members.

Their current focus: What institutional forms can hold accountability for systems whose behavior exceeds their designers' comprehension? The working thesis: Governance frameworks built for static technology will not survive contact with adaptive systems. We need new institutions whose authority is grounded in continuous evaluation rather than pre-deployment certification.

Why this matters now: Most current proposals reach for analogies, FDA, FAA, NRC, that assume comprehensibility and stasis. The interesting work is in designing for irreducible uncertainty. The most productive collaborations from this profile tend to involve Policy researchers in democratic accountability and Operators inside frontier AI laboratories, drawing on the open research questions and portfolio listed below. Introductions are by invitation only and brokered through Futurecraft curators.

02 / PROFILE

Research record

Senior Fellow · AI Governance & Long-Horizon Risk

Current question

What institutional forms can hold accountability for systems whose behavior exceeds their designers' comprehension?

Why this matters

Most current proposals reach for analogies, FDA, FAA, NRC, that assume comprehensibility and stasis. The interesting work is in designing for irreducible uncertainty.

Open questions

  • , Where do existing audit regimes generalize, and where do they collapse?
  • , Which adjacent disciplines hold under-applied frameworks?
  • , What is the role of public participation in technical adjudication?

Collaboration opportunities

  • , Policy researchers in democratic accountability
  • , Operators inside frontier AI laboratories
  • , Foundations underwriting long-horizon governance

Research portfolio

  • , RAND Working Paper · Continuous Evaluation Regimes
  • , Forthcoming: 'Institutions for Adaptive Systems' (book chapter)
  • , Quarterly briefings to two G7 policy offices