Michal Valko
Comment: Please do not resubmit the article without resolving these glaring tone issues TNM101 (in solidarity · chat) 07:00, 14 August 2026 (UTC)
- Comment: Clearly notable, but there are stark pov issues in this article. This may be due to machine writing. Keep in mind we are a tertiary source primarily concerned with reporting what secondary sources say about the subject. Claims and achievements mentioned about the subject should reflect that. Sulfurboy (talk) 22:26, 13 August 2026 (UTC)
Michal Valko (* 25 November 1981) is a Slovak[1] computer scientist and artificial intelligence researcher[2] based in France.
His work spans international research institutions and global artificial intelligence laboratories, focusing on machine learning, reinforcement learning, representation learning and large language models.[3]Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag[4][5][6]
Childhood and education
Michal Valko was born in Košice in Slovakia. His mother studied artificial intelligence at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, graduated in 1976 and his great-aunt worked on the ENIAC computer. Michal obtained his Master of Science degree in computer science from Comenius University in Bratislava in 2005. He subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Pittsburgh in 2011, during which time he undertook a visiting research programme at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2016, he was awarded a Habilitation to conduct research in Mathematics from the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay.
Professional career
Michal Valko began his research career with an internship at Intel Labs in Silicon Valley (2009–2010). In 2011, he joined the French national research institute Inria, where he secured a permanent position as a research fellow in 2012 and subsequently began lecturing on machine learning as part of the MVA master’s programme at ENS Paris-Saclay. He established an international presence in industrial AI research by co-founding the Google DeepMind research laboratory in Paris, where he worked from 2019 to 2024.[7] Following this, he joined Meta AI in Paris as a chief scientist and lead researcher focusing on reinforcement learning and the post-training optimization of foundation models, contributing directly to the Llama ecosystem.[8][9][10][11] In 2025, he joined Isara Labs as a founding researcher.[12][13]
Research
Michal Valko is the author of 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications, which are widely cited internationally and have an h-index of 50[14]. His internationally recognised contributions in this field include co-authoring the Nash Learning from Human Feedback (NLHF) framework, co-authoring the Bootstrap Your Own Latent (BYOL) self-learning method, which was published at the NeurIPS 2020 conference and the application of graph structures to sequential decision-making problems.[15][16][17]
Awards and honors
- ASAI AI Personality Social Impact Award (2026) [18]
- Best Paper Award, ICML (2023)[19][20]
- Scientific Excellence Award, Inria (2014–2017, 2018–2021)
Public engagement
He serves as the scientific ambassador for the ESET Science Award[21] and is a co-founder of the Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School (EEML). He regularly contributes as an expert commentator on trends and governance in the field of artificial intelligence to international and independent media outlets and gives talks at global technology forums.[22][23][24][25]
References
- ↑ TV report: A Slovak meets the founder of Facebook – Michal Valko. Markíza TV, 2025.
- ↑ .týždeň: Michal Valko (GLOBSEC 2025) – Should we be afraid of artificial intelligence?, 2025.
- ↑ AOL: Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg have personally recruited AI staffers as talent war heats up, 2024.
- ↑ EuroCC Slovakia: A meeting with Michal Valko, an expert on large language models.
- ↑ Context: Zuckerberg targets Google's DeepMind talent for Meta's AI ambitions, 2024.
- ↑ Denník N: Slovak expert explains autonomous hacker attacks by AI models, 2026.
- ↑ Forbes Slovakia: AI expert: China’s DeepSeek didn’t surprise me; Europe is too slow, 2026.
- ↑ Weixin: Crazy rush for AI talent! Meta does not require an interview!, 2024.
- ↑ New York Post: Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg personally recruited staff in the field of artificial intelligence as the battle for talent intensifies, 2024.
- ↑ Forbes Slovakia: Slovaks steering tech giants: Which of our own are working for Musk or Zuckerberg?
- ↑ Forbes Slovakia: Slovenský Ainstein Valko: Chcem pomocou umelej inteligencie zmierniť utrpenie okolo nás
- ↑ Forbes Slovakia: Through the eyes of the editor-in-chief – The best way to get the most out of talent is to start valuing it.
- ↑ Profile in Forbes Slovakia magazine
- ↑ user=jrazNCQAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate Citations on Google Scholar
- ↑ Data Analytics Post: Machine learning tackles graphs..
- ↑ Data Analytics Post: BYOL: Representing images.
- ↑ Data Analytics Post: Machine learning tackles graphs.
- ↑ ASAI AI Personality 2026
- ↑ 12567 Best Paper at ICML 2023
- ↑ Inria: Artificial intelligence: an unrivalled poker player, 2017.
- ↑ ESET Science Award 2024: Gala Evening.
- ↑ Gulf News, 2026.
- ↑ Ministry of Education, 2026.
- ↑ BizpreneurME, 2026.
- ↑ .týždeň, 2026.
External links
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