Peter West is an incoming postdoctoral fellow, with a focus on the interaction between AI, language, and scale. Peter’s recent research has explored hidden capabilities and limits in large language models, developing methods to unlock abilities in compact models and characterizing challenges that even the largest models continue to face. Peter completed his PhD at the University of Washington with Yejin Choi, and his BSc at the University of British Columbia (UBC), both in computer science. He has conducted research at the Allen Institute for AI and Microsoft Research, and has published work outside of AI in areas such as optical physics and ML systems. Peter will begin a faculty position at UBC in 2025.