Ian Hogarth

British investor

Ian Hogarth CBE is an investor and entrepreneur. He co-founded Songkick in 2007[1] and Plural Platform in 2021.[2] Hogarth is the current Chair of the UK Government's AI Foundation Model Taskforce, which conducts artificial intelligence safety research.[3]

## Education

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Hogarth attended Dulwich College, before studying information engineering at the University of Cambridge. He later specialised in machine learning during his Masters.[4][5][6] Hogarth also spent time at Tsinghua University in Beijing, learning Mandarin Chinese.[6]

## Entrepreneurship and investing

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### Songkick

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Hogarth founded live music startup Songkick with friends Michelle You and Pete Smith in 2007. This was part of the 2007 Y Combinator program in Boston. Hogarth and his fellow Songkick co-founders were named to Inc. magazine's 30-under-30 list in 2010.[7] The same year, Hogarth won the British Council’s UK Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year award.[8] He was also named one of Forbes magazine's 2012 music 30-under-30.[9]

In 2013, Songkick launched Detour, a crowdfunding platform for concerts.[10]

In June 2015, Songkick announced its merger with direct ticket vendor CrowdSurge and a $16.6m Series C investment round. Hogarth became co-CEO of the combined company, alongside Matt Jones, the former CrowdSurge CEO.[11]

### Silicon Milkroundabout

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In 2010, Hogarth and Songkick COO Pete Smith founded Silicon Milkroundabout, a career fair for high tech startups in East London.[12] It was established in response to lack of interest from graduates hampering tech start-ups, according to Hogarth.[13]

### Plural Platform

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Hogarth co-founded Plural Platform in 2021, an early stage venture capital firm.[14] Hogarth has invested in more than 150 companies,[15] including over 50 AI companies.[6]

## Artificial intelligence

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Hogarth has co-written the State of AI report since 2018 with Nathan Benaich.[16][17] He wrote a blog post entitled "AI Nationalism" about the rise of machine learning influencing a new kind of geopolitics.[18] He also wrote a viral article in the Financial Times arguing that the "race to God-like AI" poses risks, and might lead to human extinction.[19][16] Hogarth was listed as one of the 100 most influential personalities in artificial intelligence by the magazine Time in 2023.[16]

### AI Safety Institute

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On 18 June 2023, Hogarth was announced as Chair of the UK Government's Foundation Model Taskforce, an AI safety research organization.[3] This AI safety research is mainly focused on "near-term" risks such as AI-enabled cyberattacks or pathogen generation.[16] The role reports directly to the Prime Minister and the Technology Secretary, and it has a government budget of £100 million.[3] After the AI safety summit, the Foundation Model Taskforce evolved and was renamed the AI Safety Institute (AISI), with Hogarth remaining its Chair.[20] In a report in October 2023 Hogarth announced the appointment of Jade Leung from OpenAI and Rumman Chowdhury the co-founder of Humane Intelligence.[21]

The AISI discovered that the safeguards designed to prevent AI models behind chatbots from issuing illegal, toxic, or explicit responses could be easily bypassed with simple techniques. Testing five unnamed large language models, the AISI found them "highly vulnerable" to jailbreaks, which are text prompts designed to elicit prohibited responses. On 20 May 2024, the AISI also declared to open its first overseas office in San Francisco.[22]

## References

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1. ^ "MediaGuardian 100 2013". The Guardian. 1 September 2013.
2. ^ "Plural Thinking: A New Fund Is Recruiting Seasoned Entrepreneurs To Build A Scalable European VC Platform". Forbes. Archived from the original on 23 April 2023.
3. ^ a b c "Tech entrepreneur Ian Hogarth to lead UK's AI Foundation Model Taskforce". GOV.UK. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
4. ^ "About". Ian Hogarth. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
5. ^ Ben Sisario (1 May 2011). "A Go-to Site for Tracking Music Acts". The New York Times.
6. ^ a b c "Ian Hogarth". UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. 11 January 2019. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
7. ^ Jason Del Ray. "Michelle You, Ian Hogarth, and Pete Smith, Founders of Songkick". Inc Magazine.
8. ^ "Songkick founder scoops young music entrepreneur gong". Music Ally. 20 May 2010.
9. ^ Zack O’Malley Greenburg. "30 under 30: Music". Forbes Magazine.
10. ^ Will Smale (17 June 2013). "Organise a concert by your favourite band". BBC.
11. ^ Stuart Dredge (4 June 2015). "Songkick and CrowdSurge merge to make a splash in live music market". The Guardian. London.
12. ^ Gabriella Griffith (23 February 2012). "Songkick founder Ian Hogarth on making money in music and east London tech scene trends". London Loves Business.
13. ^ "IT Takes On The City: Silicon Milkroundabout Aims For Top Graduates". HuffPost UK. 27 September 2011. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
14. ^ "Ian Hogarth". Plural. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
15. ^ "The AI Revolution is Just Beginning (with Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth)". Harvard Business Review. 17 November 2021. ISSN 0017-8012. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
16. ^ a b c d "TIME100 AI 2023: Ian Hogarth". Time. 7 September 2023. Retrieved 17 February 2024.
17. ^ Hogarth, Ian; Benaich, Nathan. "State of AI Report 2023". www.stateof.ai. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
18. ^ Hogarth, Ian (13 June 2018). "AI Nationalism". Ian Hogarth. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
19. ^ Hogarth, Ian (12 April 2023). "We must slow down the race to God-like AI". Financial Times.
20. ^ "Prime Minister launches new AI Safety Institute". GOV.UK. 2 November 2023. Retrieved 28 March 2024.
21. ^ "Frontier AI Taskforce: second progress report". GOV.UK. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
22. ^ Milmo, Dan (20 May 2024). "AI chatbots' safeguards can be easily bypassed, say UK researchers". Archived from the original on 20 May 2024. Retrieved 20 May 2024.