Manfred Diaz
Ph. D candidate at Mila and Montreal Robotics.

I am a final year PhD candidate in Machine Learning and Robotics at Mila under the supervision of Liam Paull. My research focuses on AI and ML roots within other scientific disciplines, such as economics, game theory, mechanism design, and social choice theory, how various problems at the foundations of ML mirror others in these disciplines, and how these connections offer well-grounded frameworks for better understanding the present and shaping the future of AI.
In the past, I have interned at Google X, J.P. Morgan AI Research, Motional Inc., and Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab Canada.
Earlier, I graduated from Concordia University with an M.Sc. in Computer Science under Thomas Fevens while simultaneously acting as visiting researcher in the Shared Reality Lab at McGill University under the supervision of Jeremy Cooperstock. Before, I completed a B.Sc. in Computer Science summa cum laude from Universidad de las Ciencias Informaticas in Havana, Cuba and spent close to 10 years working as a software engineer and architect developing distributed systems with .NET Framework, Java and C++.
Updates
May 22, 2025 | Best paper award! Soft Condorcet Optimization won a best paper award at AAMAS 2025! See Marc’s announcement here. |
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May 19, 2025 | Tutorial @AAMAS 2025 Marc Lanctot, Kate Larson and Ian Gemp presented the tutorial on Evaluation of General AI Agents at AAMAS 2025! We share the website, the slides and a Google Colab that we prepared for the occasion! |
May 09, 2025 | New Paper. Following our work on a theory of appropriateness for generative AI, in this new paper, we argue that AI safety and alignment should be focused on how humans deal with the irresoluble disagreements that persist in societies and the mechanisms used to prevent them from spiralling into conflict. It is also a blogpost on LessWrong! |
May 06, 2025 | Ph.D. Done! I successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis Machine Learning Through The Science of The Artificial at Mila and the University of Montreal. Many thanks to my advisor Liam Paull and to the committee: Michael Dennis, Pablo Samuel Castro and Gauthier Gidel for their great questions and feedback! |
Feb 03, 2025 | AAMAS 2025 Tutorial! Together with Marc Lanctot, Kate Larson and Ian Gemp we are presenting a tutorial on Evaluation of General AI Agents at AAMAS 2025! Website is here and tutorial notes are coming soon! |