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Anyone who wants to work in AI safety needs a good answer to the application question “tell me about a technical project you’re proud of, preferably related to AI safety.” It may sound obvious, but as a student who hasn’t worked on projects as much as I should over the past few years, I wish somebody had told me this earlier. Having an independent project, even if it’s just proof that you can use RL, looks quite important for getting past many first stage application processes.