Hugging Face
BlueskyI am a machine learning researcher focused on developing trustworthy, interpretable, and socially beneficial AI systems.
Currently, I'm a scholar in the ML Alignment & Theory Scholars (MATS) Program, working on Scalable Oversight and AI Control with David Lindner, Erik Jenner, and Scott Emmons.
My previous research includes work on the reliability of steering vectors in Large Language Models with Dmitrii Krasheninnikov and David Krueger at the Krueger AI Safety Lab at the University of Cambridge. I have also worked on applications of representation engineering at the Health-NLP group, supervised by Seyed Ali Bahrainian and Carsten Eickhoff.
I hold a Master of Science in Machine Learning and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Tübingen. My research is in the intersection of Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing, driven by the challenge of building safe and equitable AI systems. As AI technologies advance, I want to contribute to addressing the societal risks and ensure equitable benefits by improving scientific understanding and effective governance approaches.
Feel free to reach out to me via mail!
Publications
Joschka Braun, Carsten Eickhoff, Seyed Ali Bahrainian
ICML 2025 Workshop on Reliable and Responsible Foundation Models, 2025
Paper / Poster / arXiv /
@InProceedings{braun2025beyond,
author = {Joschka Braun and Carsten Eickhoff and Seyed Ali Bahrainian},
title = {Beyond Multiple Choice: Evaluating Steering Vectors for Adaptive Free-Form Summarization},
booktitle = {ICML 2025 Workshop on Reliable and Responsible Foundation Models},
year = {2025},
eprint = {2505.24859},
}
Joschka Braun, Carsten Eickhoff, David Krueger, Seyed Ali Bahrainian, Dmitrii Krasheninnikov
ICLR 2025 Workshop on Foundation Models in the Wild, 2025
Paper / arXiv /
@InProceedings{braun2025understanding,
author = {Joschka Braun and Carsten Eickhoff and David Krueger and Seyed Ali Bahrainian and Dmitrii Krasheninnikov},
title = {Understanding (Un)Reliability of Steering Vectors in Language Models},
booktitle = {ICLR 2025 Workshop on Foundation Models in the Wild},
year = {2025},
eprint = {2505.22637},
}
Joschka Braun
BSc Thesis at Univesity of Tübingen, 2022
Paper / Slides /
@InProceedings{Braun2022BSCTHESIS,
author = {Joschka Braun},
title = {Verbal Epistemic Uncertainty Estimation for Numeric Values with GPT-3},
booktitle = {BSc Thesis at Univesity of Tübingen},
year = {2022},
}Talks
University of Tübingen, 2022
Slides
Projects
Joschka Braun, Dmitrii Krasheninnikov, Usman Anwar, Robert Kirk, Daniel Tan, David Krueger
Blog post on the key challenges in controlling LLM behaviour with steering vectors. Published on The Alignment Forum., 2024
Project Page / Paper /
@InProceedings{Braun_Steering_Blog_Post_2024,
author = {Joschka Braun and Dmitrii Krasheninnikov and Usman Anwar and Robert Kirk and Daniel Tan and David Krueger},
title = {A Sober Look at Steering Vectors for LLMs},
booktitle = {Blog post on the key challenges in controlling LLM behaviour with steering vectors. Published on The Alignment Forum.},
year = {2024},
}
Joschka Braun, Bálint Mucsányi, Seyed Ali Bahrainian
Implemented a custom LogitsProcessor class to reweight logits of topic-relevant tokens during summary generation. Evaluated and compared different strategies on the NEWTS dataset., 2024
Paper / Code / arXiv /
@InProceedings{Braun_Reweighting_Logits_2024,
author = {Joschka Braun and Bálint Mucsányi and Seyed Ali Bahrainian},
title = {Logit Reweighting for Topic-Focused Summarization},
booktitle = {Implemented a custom LogitsProcessor class to reweight logits of topic-relevant tokens during summary generation. Evaluated and compared different strategies on the NEWTS dataset.},
year = {2024},
eprint = {2507.05235},
}Public Debates
I debated risk-based AI regulation with Ina Brandes, Minister for Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, as part of the RWI-Wirtschaftsgespräch 2023. Our discussion centered on balancing innovation and societal-scale risks to ensure artificial intelligence provides a net benefit to society.
Video / Link
With my teammate Dominik Hermle, I defended the 2020 German Debating Championship (DDM) title, becoming the first team in the event's 20-year history to win in consecutive years. The final round topic was "Should Western countries no longer intervene militarily abroad?"
Video / Link
Miscellaneous
David Rein al.
Acknowledged Contributor to HCAST benchmark: Contributed task feedback and set human performance baselines for ML Engineering tasks., 2025
Project Page /
@InProceedings{rein2025hcasthumancalibratedautonomysoftware,
author = {David Rein al.},
title = {HCAST: Human-Calibrated Autonomy Software Tasks},
booktitle = {Acknowledged Contributor to HCAST benchmark: Contributed task feedback and set human performance baselines for ML Engineering tasks.},
year = {2025},
eprint = {2503.17354},
}
Joschka Braun, Damon Falck, Yeonwoo Jang
Participated in the June 2025 Anthropic Alignment Hackathon in San Francisco, co-developing an "Exploration Hacking" prototype over two days alongside Damon Falck and Yeonwoo Jang., 2025
Slides /
@InProceedings{Braun_Anthropic_Hackathon_2025,
author = {Joschka Braun and Damon Falck and Yeonwoo Jang},
title = {Anthropic Alignment Hackathon: Exploration Hacking},
booktitle = {Participated in the June 2025 Anthropic Alignment Hackathon in San Francisco, co-developing an "Exploration Hacking" prototype over two days alongside Damon Falck and Yeonwoo Jang.},
year = {2025},
}Homepage Template
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