Joel Becker

I'm currently trying to help figure out what on earth is going on with AI capabilities at METR. (Check out my talk at the AI Engineer World's Fair for a quick overview of research highlights from 2025.)

I'm also Founder/CEO of Qally's and a regrantor through Manifund. Previously, I worked in economics and genomics research at NYU, Oxford, and Harvard.

Outside work: I was once the most profitable forecaster on Manifold Markets, co-ran a statistics consultancy advising professional 'soccer' teams, and built a social media presence peaking at 300,000 followers. I enjoy a good sing-along, keeping physically (and financially!) healthy, and cultivating my digital garden.

Email: joelhbkr@gmail.com; joel@metr.org; joel@qallys.com

Meeting Calendar: preferred times, all times

Anonymous Feedback: form

Research

Forecasting AI Time Horizon Under Compute Slowdowns

P Whitfill, B Snodin, and J Becker (2025), Working Paper

Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity

J Becker et al. (2025), Working Paper

Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks

T Kwa et al. (2025), NeurIPS 2025

HCAST: Human-Calibrated Autonomy Software Tasks

D Rein et al. (2025), Working Paper

RE-Bench: Evaluating frontier AI R&D capabilities of language model agents against human experts

H Wijk et al. (2024), ICML 2025 (Spotlight)







Media & Talks

Where to start

Podcasts & Shows

Talks

  • AI Engineer World's Fair — time horizon + developer productivity (2025)
  • Harvard CS 2881 — time horizon + developer productivity + other AI capabilities research (2025)
  • MIT FutureTech — time horizon (2025)
  • Anthropic — developer productivity (2025)
  • OpenAI — developer productivity (2025)
  • Microsoft Research — developer productivity (2025)
  • FAR.AI — time horizon + developer productivity (2025)
  • Constellation — time horizon + developer productivity (2025)
  • Stripe — time horizon + developer productivity (2025)
  • Foundation for American Innovation — developer productivity (2025)
  • Golden Gate Institute — developer productivity (2025)
  • 80,000 Hours — time horizon (2025)
  • EU AI Office — RE-Bench (2024)

Press Coverage

Contact

Email: joelhbkr@gmail.com; joel@metr.org; joel@qallys.com

Meeting Calendar: preferred times, all times

Anonymous Feedback: form