“Sixteen schemes for AI safety” by Austin Chen

These days, I often run across whippersnappers excited to do something for AI safety — but aren’t quite sure what. One of the fun things about the Future Fund era were the big lists of project ideas; as we enter a new era of crazy money sloshing around, it might be time to bring back the lists! Note that these ideas range from “very confident this is good” to “completely harebrained”; I’m not telling you which are which. If you’re excited for ideas like these, consider joining Surplus, our upcoming software incubator: https://manifund.org/surplus Jobs, jobs, jobs Already, the top problem for most AI safety orgs is hiring good people. Vast torrents of funding will only exacerbate the imbalance between available money and people to hire. So now is a great time to figure out how to discover new talent & match people to jobs. 1. Triplebyte for AI safety jobs Triplebyte would interview a tech candidate once, then forward the results to a bunch of different companies. This would reduce the O(MN) problem in hiring between M orgs and N people to O(M+N), saving applicants and interviewers time. Most obviously, you could just do this for technical AI safety [...] ---Outline:(00:43) Jobs, jobs, jobs(01:04) 1. Triplebyte for AI safety jobs(01:53) 2. Database of every single AI safety person(02:46) 3. Intro AI safety megaconference(03:48) 4. Unionize the lab employees(05:20) 5. Safety scorecards to inform job applicants(06:09) 6. Help people move to US (and maybe Bay Area specifically)(06:45) Cargo-culting from academia(07:11) 7. AI Safety Nobel Prize(08:25) 8. University of AI Safety(09:07) 9. Good AI safety research journal(09:31) 10. Legit, academic AI safety conference(10:06) Products I would consume(10:20) 11. Turn the AI 2027 TTX into a mass market product(11:27) 12. "Lighthaven/Constellation/Mox in DC"(11:36) 13. Common application for AI safety funding(11:55) 14. Givewell for AI safety(12:20) 15. In-depth profiles of AI safety leaders(13:15) 16. "what-is-agi.com"(14:14) Questions to generate project ideas(16:09) Other notes and advice --- First published: June 3rd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jTyfbs7GW5rf78adK/sixteen-schemes-for-ai-safety --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.