Talk to many AI safety university group organizers, notice what separates successful groups from struggling ones, then write a report on the state of uni groups and a pragmatic project proposal for how to increase their impact.
About the project
Project outputs:
- An actionable project proposal to increase the impact of uni groups
- A report on the current state and impact of uni groups
Here’s an example output:
- You might discover that the all successful groups have an ops team, and most failing groups do not.
- Then you might investigate what blockers exist to those groups building ops teams, and if doing so would actually help them
- If building an ops team would help, you’d then think hard about how to get all groups ops teams within 3 months, and write a pragmatic proposal
Success is causing action to be taken. For example:
- You write a project proposal that gets implemented by one or more uni groups
- You discover a high leverage project early, and spend the rest of the time working on it, producing measurable results
- You write an impact report and give it to Kairos. Someone tells you it changed their strategy in a specific way
Failure is not causing action to be taken, for example:
- You write many project proposals, but they’re too complicated and none get implemented
- Your impact report does not lead to anyone doing anything differently
Theory of change
AI Safety university groups are impactful. Many of them have crippling issues that no one is aware of, because no one talks to all the organizers. I think this project will surface several high leverage interventions that were previously missed.
Your role
**You'll own the project end to end.
**Here are some things I expect you to spend time on:
1. Figuring out scope / where to focus
- You could focus on: recruitment, retention, curriculum, organizer burnout, what happens to members after they graduate, why some groups thrive and others die, etc
- I think you should choose one, for example “why do promising members drop off after the intro fellowship, and what do the groups that retain them do differently?”
- Your first job is to decide what your focus is
2. Talking to many AI safety university group organizers
- You should become the single person on earth who best understands the state of AI safety university groups
3. Writing reports or proposals
Prerequisites
- You have relevant experience: you've organized for a university or worked in consulting
- You’re personable: you can get on a call and make the other person smile
- You’re a clear, concise writer
Application question(s)
What concrete steps would you take in your first two weeks to figure out the scope you want to focus on?
About the mentor
Julian runs hiring and talent operations at Kairos. As a Pathfinder fellow, he co-founded the University of Toronto's AI safety group, and as a SPAR researcher he developed a benchmark for agentic cheating on AI research tasks. He also built Toronto's first AI safety summer program. Julian studies Computer Science and Statistics at the University of Toronto, where he is a National Scholar.