Steven Reiss. Thinker · Researcher · Writer · Advisor

About

A cultural and institutional lens on how societies govern new technologies.

For more than ten years I worked inside the institutions that organize knowledge: universities, museums, archives. I ran publicly funded research and digitisation projects from scope to delivery, with budgets, teams, and accountability for what was published and made public. The procedures I wrote kept running after I left, which I still consider the best outcome this kind of work can have.

In 2024 I left the university track to work on the technologies being decided now. Today I advise institutions on AI governance, policy, and strategy, I research the cultural and institutional dimensions of new technologies, and I write. My training is art history and cultural research. The same eye that was taught to read what lies under the surface of a painting now reads money, institutions, and AI.

In the AI-safety and governance debate I work the structural risks the misalignment frame underweights: epistemic erosion, model collapse, and the concentration of interpretive power. The case I keep making is that people who study how institutions hold knowledge belong where the rules get written.

Experience

2024–
Founder & Principal Advisor, AI & Digital Transformation · Reiss Art & Culture GmbH, Göttingen

AI adoption and institutional change for public institutions and senior decision-makers across Europe and North America. Engagement with the EU AI Act and the governance debate, and a corpus of regulatory, policy, and institutional texts read with my own tools.

2024–
Contributing Writer, Culture · Bitcoin Magazine

One of the magazine’s main contributors on culture, with essays in print and online that read Bitcoin and AI as cultural and institutional facts.

2024–
Digital-art advisor & curator · public museums

Advising museums on digital art projects: Viewfinder at the Belvedere, Vienna, and Ana María Caballero’s Arrangements at the Francisco Carolinum, Linz, later shown during Digital Art Mile at Art Basel.

2024
Managing Consultant, Digital & AI Transformation · Electric Mind GmbH, Berlin

Strategic advisory on AI adoption and digital strategy across the cultural, technology, and finance sectors, with AI-supported research pipelines and workshops for leadership and specialists.

2021–23
Lead Editor, DFG-funded project · SUB Göttingen, University Archives

Ran Kopialbücher digital: catalogued 9,000+ legal and administrative records to research standard, defined the metadata standard later adopted institution-wide, and trained colleagues at other archives.

2016–22
Research Associate & Lecturer · University of Göttingen

Two multi-year publicly funded research projects: a catalogue raisonné with provenance research, and a 400-page critical edition. Taught seminars and organised the Young Scholars Forum at the 35th German Art Historians' Congress.

2020
Research Associate, Portrait Digitisation · Hessen Kassel Heritage

Led the digitisation of the museum's portrait holdings, coordinating curators, conservators, and IT, with responsibility for budget and final quality control.

2015–18
Collection Digitisation & Database · SUB Göttingen

Three digitisation projects, 15,000+ objects made available in open access, working with developers on the collection portal.

Education & fellowships

2017M.A. Art History & Scandinavian Studies, University of Göttingen
2013B.A. Art History & Scandinavian Studies, University of Göttingen
FellowshipsCentral Institute for Art History, Munich (2021–23) · Lübeck Centre for Cultural Studies (2018–21) · Albertina & University of Vienna (2018)

Writing & speaking

Writing15+ essays on AI, governance, and culture, including What Does AI Remember? and Anchoring Reality in the Age of AI. One of Bitcoin Magazine’s main contributors on culture. A book in progress, The Culture Protocol.
Speaking12+ talks at conferences, museums, and universities, including an opening lecture at the Belvedere, Vienna (2025) and “Painting the Orange Pill”, Bitcoin Amsterdam (2025).
Scholarly20+ academic articles, editions, and catalogue contributions.

Languages

SpokenGerman · English · Norwegian · Latin

You can reach me directly.

I answer my own mail. Full CV on request.

stenreiss@gmail.com