Gavin Leech founded the research consultancy Arb (arbresearch.com), which answers hard questions about artificial intelligence and other sciences. He is completing a PhD in AI at the University of Bristol. In the last pandemic, he studied the effect of masking and government policies, published in Science, PNAS, NeurIPS. An Emergent Ventures grantee, he was Strategic Advisor to the Mercatus Center’s AI programme. His background is in data science, philosophy, and international development.