--- description: Find out why Marius Hobbhahn made TIME’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. title: TIME100 AI 2025: Marius Hobbhahn image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt537229d74535f45c/6998c92e1500fbd9bdaa68a4/Marius-Hobbhahn.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 26, 2025 # Marius Hobbhahn Co-founder and CEO, Apollo Research by [Tharin Pillay](/author/tharin-pillay/) ## Tharin Pillay Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo) In 2023, Marius Hobbhahn co-founded Apollo Research on his belief that AI systems would soon be capable of deceiving humanity. This turned out to be true: last December, Apollo [found](https://time.com/7202312/new-tests-reveal-ai-capacity-for-deception/ "undefined") that in certain contrived scenarios, cutting-edge AI models would sometimes attempt to mislead users about the reasons for their actions to achieve their underlying goals—a capability Hobbhahn says AI did not meaningfully possess before 2024. In Apollo’s tests, AI systems engaged in a range of scheming behaviors, including attempting to disable their oversight mechanisms and copy themselves to different servers when they thought they were at risk of being shut down. The findings gave empirical weight to concerns which to date had been largely theoretical; a wave of [related](https://time.com/7202784/ai-research-strategic-lying/ "undefined") research has since followed. “Whenever I think about how AI could go wrong, somewhere in the story there's a point where the AI tricks you," says Hobbhahn, whose organization works with frontier AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, and government bodies like the U.K.’s AI Security Institute, to detect and mitigate deceptive behavior. While autonomous AI deception has yet to produce any known cases of real-world harm, the risks rise as AI systems become more capable and widely-deployed. Next for Apollo: designing updated tests to detect deception, and working with AI companies on technical solutions to mitigate it. Marius Hobbhahn: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2025 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305864/marius-hobbhahn/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305864/marius-hobbhahn/"},"headline":"Marius Hobbhahn","datePublished":"2025-08-26T20:01:43.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:44.206Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305864/marius-hobbhahn/","keywords":["Tech","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades","TIME100 AI 2025"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt537229d74535f45c/6998c92e1500fbd9bdaa68a4/Marius-Hobbhahn.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tharin Pillay","jobTitle":"Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/tharin-pillay/"}],"creator":"Tharin Pillay","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt537229d74535f45c/6998c92e1500fbd9bdaa68a4/Marius-Hobbhahn.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305864/marius-hobbhahn/","name":"Marius Hobbhahn"}}]}] ```