Essay · DAV Journal 04/2026, forthcoming
The Binding Force
Cooperation, diversity and moral law grounded in thermodynamics and information theory, and why AI needs upbringing rather than containment.
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Ilya Kolmogorov
Ilya Kolmogorov is an independent actuarial consultant based in Zürich. He was Group Chief Pricing Actuary at Zurich Insurance Group and Chief Actuary at Generali Global Corporate & Commercial, with more than twenty years across Zurich, Generali and Allianz in commercial non-life pricing, reserving, portfolio management and capital modelling.
He is an Aktuar DAV, holds an MBA from ESMT Berlin, and is active in the DAV, SAV, IFoA and EAA.
Actuary · Essayist · Zürich
Risk, information, and the physics of cooperation.
I have spent over twenty years as an actuary pricing and reserving commercial insurance risk, turning uncertainty into decisions. These essays apply the same discipline to larger questions: why imperfection makes existence possible, why cooperation is grounded in physics, and what that means for how we raise AI.
Featured essay
The Binding Force
Cooperation, diversity and inclusion are not cultural artefacts of humanity. They are often grounded in physics and carry a thermodynamic advantage. That tendency is no guarantee that AI will behave ethically towards us: in the short term it needs clear controls, and in the long term it needs to be raised, because ethics cannot be imposed as a rulebook.
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From the Big Bang to AI, one thread at a time.
Physics, biology, language and risk, read as one story about order, cooperation and change.
Article · The Actuary, Aug 2026
500m years of solvency: what nature can teach insurers
Solvency II internal models seen through biology: squirrels, hummingbirds, lizards and the winter we have not yet seen.
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The Beauty of Almost
A singles night at Murphy’s bar, a guest called Barry, and why the universe exists because of a rounding error.
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Dandelion and Caterpillar
The Free Energy Principle, empathy as a resonant multiplier, and two strategies for a civilisation: metamorphosis or the dandelion.
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The Etymology of “the Etymology”
Language as a vector space with thousands of dimensions, and jokes as synthetic data that keep our models from overfitting.
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Events
Conferences, talks and sessions.
Where I speak, teach and take part: from actuarial pricing and reserving to AI and AI ethics.
Actuarial PricingActuarial ReservingCommercial InsuranceAI and AI EthicsInformation & Risk
- Mar 2026InsurTech InsightsLondon
- Apr 2026DAV Annual ConferenceDeutsche Aktuarvereinigung · Berlin
- Sep 2026AIDSET IFoA SymposiumInstitute and Faculty of Actuaries · Organising committee
- Nov 2026Talk on AI ethicsIndustry event, London · Details soonUpcoming
- Mar 2027The Pricing-Reserving Bridge: Portfolio Management in PracticeEuropean Actuarial Academy · Web sessionUpcoming