AI & the Future of Community: David Blei, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, and Jamie Metzl in Conversation with Noah Feldman

David Blei is the William B. Ransford Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at Columbia University. He studies probabilistic machine learning and Bayesian statistics, including theory, algorithms, and application. David has received many awards for his research, among them the ACM Prize in Computing (2013), a Guggenheim fellowship (2017), a Simons Investigator Award (2019), the AAAI John McCarthy award (2024), and the ACM/AAAI Allan Newell Award (2024). He was the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Machine Learning Research from 2019-2024. He is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS).

Angela Warnick Buchdahl serves as the Senior Rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City, the first woman to lead this flagship congregation in its 185 year history. Under her leadership, Central has become one of the largest synagogues in the world, with livestream viewers in over 100 countries. Born in Seoul, Buchdahl is the first Asian-American to be ordained as a rabbi in North America. She offered blessings at the White House Hanukah party in 2014 and 2023. In 2025, Buchdahl authored her memoir, Heart of a Stranger, which became an instant New York Times bestseller. Rabbi Buchdahl and her husband Jacob Buchdahl, have three children.

Jamie Metzl is one of the world’s leading authorities on the implications of the intersecting AI, genetics, and biotechnology revolutions and how governments, corporations, organizations, and individuals can ride the wave of these unprecedented transformations to build their best possible futures. A technology and healthcare futurist and strategist and geopolitical expert, he is author of the bestselling books The AI Ten Commandments, A New Moral Code for Humanity; Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World; Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity; the sci-fi thrillers Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata; and other works.

Jamie is Founder and Chair of the global social movement, OneShared.World, a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, a faculty member of NextMed Health, and a Singularity University expert. Jamie previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations in Cambodia. In 2019, he was appointed to the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing. In 2025, he was appointed as a Commissioner of The Lancet Commission on Precision Medicine, which will release in 2028 what is expected to be a definitive report on the future of technology-enhanced healthcare.

A former partner in a global private equity firm, Jamie helped establish and serves as Special Strategist for the WisdomTree BioRevolution Exchange Traded Fund (ticker: WDNA) and sits on the advisory boards of Genomic Prediction, Harvard Medical School Preventive Genomics, the Lake Nona Impact Forum, NextMed Health, the Dubai Future Forum, and Walmart’s Future of Retail Policy Lab. He is also the Honorary Global Investment Ambassador of the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

Called “the original COVID-19 whistleblower” for his groundbreaking efforts calling for a full investigation into pandemic origins, Jamie was the lead witness in the March 2023 US congressional hearings on COVID-19 origins, the first such hearings held anywhere in the world. He appears frequently on national and international media, his work has been featured by 60 Minutes, the New York Times, and most major media outlets across the globe, and his syndicated columns and other writing on science, technology, health, politics, and international affairs appear regularly in publications around the world. His short story “A Visit to Weizenbaum” was made into the 2021 short film Source Code, and he was awarded a 2026 Grammy Certificate for his contribution to the Grammy Award–winning album Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His AARP The Magazine feature “A Fighting Chance,” exploring lessons from his late father’s cancer journey and the future of cancer care, received a 2026 APEX Award of Excellence for Health & Medical Writing.

Jamie is a founder and board Co-Chair of the national security organization Partnership for a Secure America and a board member of the American University in Mongolia and Parsons Dance. He previously served on the boards of HIAS, Park University, and the International Center for Transitional Justice, and has been an election monitor in Afghanistan and the Philippines and advised the government of North Korea on the establishment of Special Economic Zones.

An avid ultramarathon runner and ironman triathlete, Jamie is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former White House Fellow and Aspen Institute Crown Fellow who holds a PhD from Oxford, a JD from Harvard Law School, and is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University.

Jamie speaks frequently to corporate, nonprofit, and academic audiences around the world and was an opening keynote speaker at the 2023 Dubai Future Forum, the largest gathering of futurists in history.

Noah Feldman is the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Chair of the Society of Fellows, and founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, all at Harvard University. He specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis on power and ethics, design of innovative governance solutions, law and religion, and the history of legal ideas.

A policy & public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, Feldman also writes for The New York Review of Books and was a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine for nearly a decade. He hosts the Deep Background podcast, an interview show that explores the historical, scientific, legal and cultural context behind the biggest stories in the news.

Through his consultancy, Ethical Compass, Feldman advises clients like Facebook & eBay on how to improve ethical decision-making by creating and implementing new governance solutions. In this capacity, he conceived and architected the Facebook Oversight Board, and continues to advise the company on ethics and governance issues.

Feldman is the author of 10 books, including his latest, To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024).

Other works include: The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery & The Refounding of America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021); The Arab Winter: A Tragedy (Princeton University Press, 2020), The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President (Random House, 2017); Cool War: The Future of Global Competition (Random House, 2013); Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices (Twelve Publishing, 2010); The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton University Press, 2008); Divided By God: America’s Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2005); What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation building (Princeton University Press 2004); and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2003).

He is also the author of two casebooks with Kathleen Sullivan: Constitutional Law, 21st Edition (Foundation Press, 2022) and First Amendment, 8th Edition (Foundation Press, 2022).

In 2003, Feldman served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of Iraq’s interim constitution.

Earning his AB summa cum laude from Harvard, Feldman finished first in his class. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a D.Phil. from Oxford University, writing his dissertation on Aristotle’s Ethics and its Islamic reception. Feldman received his JD from Yale Law School, where he served as a book reviews editor of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.