AI Safety Programs I Think Would Be Impactful But Don't Have Bandwidth to Run
I spend a decent amount of time thinking about which programs would help the AI safety (AIS) ecosystem grow in a healthy, high-impact way. Below is a short list of ideas I find genuinely important—and that I would be excited to see exist—but that I am not in a position to spearhead right now. This is starting as a bit of a brain dump, but I’d like to add a lot to this. So please let me know if you think there are any high impact programs that are missing.
If any of this resonates with you and you might want to build it, I would love to hear from you.
Note: many of these are not solely my idea, I’m just the one listing them here.
Roughly in order of how interested I’d be in helping
Standardized intro reading group curricula
Many groups need reading lists, discussion questions, facilitator notes, and maybe short guide videos—not only for university intro groups (technical, policy, strategy tracks) but also for the start of research fellowships and other onboarding. Ideally this would be modular: different topic bundles, reading levels, and lengths (e.g. four weeks vs. a full semester), so organizers can mix and match instead of rebuilding from scratch each time. I touched on some of my own experience running intro programs in an earlier post; the natural next step for the ecosystem is shared, versioned curricula that many groups can adopt and improve.
Research on AIS-related survey and application questions
Programs use applications and surveys in ad hoc ways; there are sporadic studies, but not much that feels cumulative or generalizable. That makes it harder to write good screening questions, which in turn worsens the capacity bottleneck: limited spots sometimes go to people who are a weaker fit while stronger candidates slip through. Systematic work—what predicts outcomes, which questions actually measure what we think they measure, how to compare across programs—would help the whole field allocate attention better.
A structured 1-on-1 program
Some of the highest-impact parts of multi-day workshops are the 1-on-1 conversations—and much of that value could plausibly be captured online if the culture and tooling existed. I picture a simple site where people in AIS can schedule 1-on-1s with each other, with an optional layer of curation: for example, a recommended match every week or two based on interests, career stage, or goals. Today there is neither strong shared norm nor infrastructure for “everyone serious about AIS should be doing regular 1-on-1s,” and I think that is wasting a lot of possible impact.
An updated ARENA-style program
High-quality online materials that do a better job at upskilling people to do technical AIS work. I do not think this has to be a large in-person program, but it would be nice to have it be something other organizations could use to run their own bootcamps.
Retreat-style workshops
I would like to see more long-weekend retreats with on the order of thirty participants and roughly ten professionals: a relatively plug-and-play version of the kind of experience offered by AISST × MAIA workshops or Action Potential. Workshops have been proven to be high impact, yet there aren’t that many of them. Scaling this up without reinventing it each time would be valuable.
More “Robert Miles–style” foundational content
There is still a lot of room for good short videos on core ideas: instrumental convergence, different forms of misalignment, basic threat models, and so on. I would say Robert Miles has done this the best but any additional resources could lower the cost of onboarding for everyone else.
Feel free to give me any anonymous feedback you may have!