Matthew Kenney

I'm the founder of Algorithmic Research Group, where I lead research on benchmarks, environments, and multi-agent systems for understanding recursive self-improvement.

I've collaborated with researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind on advancing the state of the art in language models and AI safety. My technical work spans transformer pre-training, some minimal post-training/RLing, model quantization, RAG systems, and agents. One might call me a generalist. I'm ok at a lot of things, but not an expert at any of them (except maybe agentic archtectures). I've worked on everything from backend development to training models to deploying them in production.

Previously, I was a Senior ML Engineer at Apple and at Alethea building models and applications. Before that, I was an Assistant Research Professor at Duke University. I served as a Visiting Researcher at Constellation. I currently teach a class at Duke on the side. I used to be a new media artist building weird stuff with code.

All projects →
  • DESIGNTK 531: AI-Integrated Hardware Prototyping and Interaction Design — Duke University, Pratt School of Engineering, MEng in Design & Technology Innovation (2025–Present)
  • EGR 190/EGR 590: AI for Everyone — Duke University (Spring 2020)
  • EGR 190-02/EGR 590-02: Machine Learning Methods and Practice — Duke University (Fall 2019)
  • ISS 294L: Interactive Graphics — Duke University (Spring 2018, Spring 2019)
  • CMAC 564S: Physical Computing — Duke University (Fall 2018)
  • MFAEDA 713-0: Computational Media — Duke University, Co-Instructor (Fall 2018)
  • Algorithmic Research Group — Open Philanthropy (2024–Present)
  • Agentic AI R&D Grant — Open Philanthropy (2023–2024)
  • AI Agents for AI Research and Development — Constellation Visiting Researcher Forum, Berkeley, CA (2023)
  • Big Problems in Big Tech — Duke University Annual Provost's Forum (2023)
  • Disinformation in the Age of AI — Keynote, International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) BIAI track, Baltimore, MD (2022)
  • Creative Red Teaming: Approaches to Addressing Bias and Misuse in Machine Learning — Keynote, Conference on Neural Information Processing (NeurIPS) BIAI track, Vancouver, Canada (2020)
  • AI Index Search Engine — Stanford Human-Centered AI Forum, Palo Alto, CA (2019)
  • At the Intersection of AI and Disinformation — Duke University Annual Provost's Forum, Durham, NC (2019)
  • Deepfakes: Commodification, Consequences, and Countermeasures — Open Data Science Conference West, San Francisco, CA (2019)
All creative work →