CV | Laurens Samson

2023 - Present
PhD in Safety in Multimodal Generative Models

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Focus on Red teaming, AI ethics, privacy, and bias in Large Language Models
- Research Lab - SIAS Group and VISLab, consisting of multicultural and international researchers
- Supervised by: Prof. Yuki Asano (Machine Learning & Computer Vision) and Prof. Sennay Ghebreab (Socially Intelligent AI)
2017 - 2019
Master in Artificial Intelligence

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Specialised in machine learning, deep learning, and computer vision
- Graduated with an 8.0/10
2017
Exchange Program

San Francisco State University, San Francisco, USA
- Computer science courses
2013 - 2017
Bachelor in Beta Gamma, Major in Artificial Intelligence

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Studied interdisciplinary research fields including chemistry, logic, and sociology
- Focused on artificial intelligence in the final two years

2025 - Present
Lead R&D LLMs, AI Platform

City of Amsterdam
- Leading 8-person team implementing LLMs organization-wide
- Benchmarking LLMs on bias, truthfulness and sustainability in Dutch
2021 - 2025
Founder & Computer Vision Lead, R&D Computer Vision Team

City of Amsterdam
- Led 10-person team creating ethical AI solutions
- Managed AI Governance with ethics, bias, privacy, and security standards
- Key Projects - Blurring as a Service (anonymization tool), Ethical Scan Bike (urban monitoring), Citizen Participation (co-creation approach)
2020 - 2021
Machine Learning Engineer, R&D AI Team

City of Amsterdam
- Developed AI prototypes for city management
2020
Teaching Assistant

University of Amsterdam, Bachelor Artificial Intelligence
- Practical sessions in Calculus & Optimisation
2019 - 2020
Machine Learning Engineer

TomTom Research & Development, Autonomous Driving
- Automated high-definition map generation for autonomous vehicles
2019
Machine Learning Intern

TomTom Research & Development, Autonomous Driving
- Structured semantic segmentation using adversarial training
2015 - 2017
Founder & CEO

BrouwBrood, Green Startup
- Bread production from beer brewing leftovers
- Semi-finalist Accenture Innovation Awards

Peer-Reviewed
- L. Samson, N. van Noord, O. Booij, M. Hofmann, E. Gavves and M. Ghafoorian. I Bet You Are Wrong: Gambling Adversarial Networks for Structured Semantic Segmentation. ICCV 2019, Computer Vision for Road Scene Understanding and Autonomous Driving.
- S. Kanis, L. Samson, D. Bloemberen and T. Bakker. Back to Basics: Deep Reinforcement Learning in Traffic Signal Control. SIGSPATIAL 2021, Urban Computing.
- M. De Kreek, K. Alfrink, M. de Waal, G. Kortuem, T. Turel, B. Visser, and L. Samson. When 'doing ethics' meets public procurement of smart city technology – an Amsterdam case study. IASDR 2023, Life-Changing Design.
Under Review
- A. Pires, L. Samson, S. Ghebreab, F. Santos. How Large Language Models Judge and Influence Human Cooperation. 2025, Arxiv: Under Review.
- L. Samson, N. Barazani, S. Ghebreab, Y. Asano. Privacy Aware Visual Language Models. 2025, Arxiv: Under Review.

M. Ghafoorian, L. Samson, O. Booij. Generative Adversarial Networks for Image Segmentation. Patent pending, 2022.

2024
World Economic Forum

Blurring as a Service feature
- Privacy-preserving AI technology coverage
2024
Dutch Government News

Binnenlands Bestuur
- Citizen participation in AI development
2023
National Press Coverage

Parool, AD, Computable & more
- Anonymization algorithm coverage

Master's AI Thesis Co-supervision
- Kaleigh Douglas (2021) - Anonymizing People in Images Using GANs
- Tom Lotze (2021) - Unsupervised Object Discovery through Copy-Paste GANs
- Sierk Kanis (2021) - Deep Reinforcement Learning in Traffic Signal Control

AI & Machine Learning
- Machine Learning, Computer Vision, NLP, LLMs
- AI Ethics, Privacy, Governance, Red Teaming
Programming & Tools
- Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Git, Docker