Create a platform for people in AI Safety to conveniently set up 1:1s with others to improve networking in the space without needing more in-person events.
About the project
The main goal of this project would be to develop a platform for people in AI Safety to set up 1:1s with each other, to improve networking and spread of ideas in the space. I imagine the site will have everyone's profiles, with some tags/filtering, and a simple scheduling process.
I expect this project to be somewhat difficult to get working but to be hugely impactful if done right. There are a lot of important questions related to this project, including:
- How do people get onto the site? Is it open sign-up? Invite only? Vouching system?
- Should there be a matching system or self-selected?
- How should we restrict brand new people requesting top professionals? Should there be tiers? ELO? Probably something else?
- How do we stop people from flaking?
- What does the booking process look like?
- Should there be on-site messaging?
- And many more things
The project would mainly be answering these questions and developing a minimally viable product to see if further investment into the platform is warranted.
Theory of change
In-person events have been proven to be incredibly effective at speeding up people's career trajectories, and 1:1s at these events are typically the sessions most people point at as the most important/impactful. I expect a huge portion of the benefit of these 1:1s could still be achieved even if remote, and having them remote has the benefit of them being much cheaper and greatly increasing the number of possible people to talk to.
Your role
Your role would be fairly similar to a product manager in that I envision you doing a lot of market research and development for the systems/guidelines of the platform. I will help connect you with possible users and possible future owners of the project, but you will largely be responsible for conducting such interviews, proposing the object level systems, and getting an MVP built.
Prerequisites
The main prerequisite I have for a mentee on this project is thoughtfulness, as if successful this project will involve many people with high opportunity cost and should thus be respectful of their time. This will mostly look like being able to foresee possible failure modes and ensuring a good user experience from the start.
SWE experience would also be a huge plus, but it may be possible to contract out the development of the actual site.
Beyond this, I am open to a fairly wide variety of profiles.
Application question(s)
Do not use AI in any capacity for these questions.
Submit your answer as a Google Doc, shared so that anyone with the link can edit (this keeps the revision history visible to us).
Propose 3–5 questions, similar in kind to those in the About the Project section, that you expect will be important to answer for this project. Questions aimed at resolving possible failure modes are somewhat preferred. For each, give at least two candidate answers with brief reasoning for each. Make your reasoning process explicit — I want to see how you are reasoning through possible options.
About the mentor
Nixon Hanna is a Generator Resident passionate about fieldbuilding and improving the AI safety university group landscape, with a background in surgical robotics and physics. He currently helps run MIT AI Alignment, specifically their AI Safety Fundamentals fellowship, as well as advising various other groups. He is also the Lead Organizer for OASIS 7.0, a workshop for top university group organizers. He has previously had short stints at Redwood Research and EquiStamp. You can read more about his background at nixonhanna.com.