TL;DR: Figure out what needs doing and do it, don't wait on approval from fellowships or jobs.
If you...
Have short timelines
Have been struggling to get into a position in AI safety
Are able to self-motivate your efforts
Have a sufficient financial safety net
... I would recommend changing your personal strategy entirely.
I started my full-time AI safety career transitioning process in March 2025. For the first 7 months or so, I heavily prioritized applying for jobs and fellowships. But like for many others trying to "break into the field" and get their "foot in the door", this became quite discouraging.
I'm not gonna get into the numbers here, but if you've been applying and getting rejected multiple times during the past year or so, you've probably noticed the number of applicants increasing at a preposterous rate. What this means in practice is that the "entry-level" positions are practically impossible for "entry-level" people to enter.
If you're like me and have short timelines, applying, getting better at applying, and applying again, becomes meaningless very fast. You're optimizing for signaling competence rather than actually being competent. Because if you a) have short timelines, and b) are honest with yourself, you would come to the conclusion that immediate, direct action and effect is a priority.
If you identify as an impostor...
..applying for things can be especially nerve-wrecking. To me, this seems to be because I'm incentivized to optimize for how I'm going to be perceived. I've found the best antidote for my own impostor-y feelings to be this: Focus on being useful and having direct impact, instead ofsignaling the abilityto(maybe one day) have direct impact.
I find it quite comforting that I don't need to be in the spotlight, but instead get to have an influence from the sidelines. I don't need to think about "how does this look" - just "could this work" or "is this helpful".
And so I started looking for ways in which I could help existing projects immediately. Suddenly, "optimize LinkedIn profile" didn't feel like such a high EV task anymore.
Here's what I did, and recommend folks to try
Identify the risk scenario you'd most like to mitigate, and the 1-3 potentially most effective interventions.
Find out who's already working on those interventions.[1]
Contact these people and look for things they might need help with. Let them know what you could do right now to increase their chances of success.[2]
What I've personally found the most effective is reaching out to people with specific offers and/or questions you need answered in order to make those offers[3].Address problems you've noticed that should be addressed. If you have a track record of being a reliable and sensible person (and preferably can provide some evidence to support this), and you offer your time for free, and the people you're offering to help actually want to get things done, they're unlikely to refuse[4].
(Will happily share more about my story and what I'm doing currently; don't hesitate to ask detailed questions/tips/advice.)[5]
This work was supported by the EA Hotel, which offers free or low-cost food and accommodation to people working to improve the world, which happens to be an excellent place to visit if you'd like to extend your runway and be surrounded by great people who are mostly working towards AI safety. They do have applications for free, or you can pay to be there very affordably.
Relatedly, the EA Hotel is in urgent need of fundingdespite being extremely cost effective and having incubated multiple organizations in AI safety. Consider donating, they are blocked on basic maintenance for lack of funds and will run out of money in a few months by default.
As a general rule, assume the person you're messaging or talking to doesn't have the time to listen to your takes - get straight to the point and make sure you've done the cognitive labor for them.
I should add that in order to do this you need to have developed a bit of agency, as well as understanding of the field you're trying to contribute to. I'm also assuming that since you have the capacity to apply for things, you also have the capacity to get things done if you trade the time.
Post encouraged and mildly improved by plex based on a conversation with Pauliina. From the other side of this, I'd much rather take someone onto a project who has spent a few months trying to build useful things than spending cycles to signal for applications, even if their projects don't go anywhere. You get good at what you practice. Hire people who do things and go do things. e.g. I once gave the org Alignment Ecosystem Development, which runs all the aisafety.com resources, to a volunteer (Bryce Robertson) who'd been helping out competently for a while. Excellent move! He had proved he actually did good stuff unprompted and has been improving it much more than I would have.
Also! I'd much rather work with someone who's been practicing figuring out inside views of what's actually good to orient their priorities rather than someone looking for a role doing work which someone else thinks is good and got funding to hire for. Deference is the mind-killer.
I agree! FIG (as the example most familiar to me) was initially pretty accessible to entry-level folks (in 2023) and now has an acceptance rate of <2%. Entry-level programmes are flooded with applicants, making them both extremely competitive and slow to move. Solely applying to fellowships and jobs is an inadequate strategy for most newcomers to AI safety.
In some sense, fellowships' primary value-add is to systematise and reduce the agency required to find a mentor. But, as you suggest, emailing mentors/organisations directly can be an excellent way to bypass long, competitive application processes.
Based on what I did when I was getting into the space, this is what I'd suggest:
Identify people or organisations you think are doing great work that you could contribute to.
Scope a concrete way that you could help them accelerate their work (e.g. a research proposal).
Send them an email (ideally through a warm connection, if possible).
This pathway is much less saturated and competitive, and you only need one good match to change your trajectory.
Though, as OP says, note that this route is not a perfect substitute!
Funding: Programs often come with stipends; individual mentors generally won’t.
Structure: You lose the pre-built scaffolding, accountability, and peer group.
Success rate: Just like fellowship applications, direct outreach (especially if cold) will have a low hit rate — you should expect that upfront and not read much into early rejections
TL;DR: Figure out what needs doing and do it, don't wait on approval from fellowships or jobs.
If you...
... I would recommend changing your personal strategy entirely.
I started my full-time AI safety career transitioning process in March 2025. For the first 7 months or so, I heavily prioritized applying for jobs and fellowships. But like for many others trying to "break into the field" and get their "foot in the door", this became quite discouraging.
I'm not gonna get into the numbers here, but if you've been applying and getting rejected multiple times during the past year or so, you've probably noticed the number of applicants increasing at a preposterous rate. What this means in practice is that the "entry-level" positions are practically impossible for "entry-level" people to enter.
If you're like me and have short timelines, applying, getting better at applying, and applying again, becomes meaningless very fast. You're optimizing for signaling competence rather than actually being competent. Because if you a) have short timelines, and b) are honest with yourself, you would come to the conclusion that immediate, direct action and effect is a priority.
If you identify as an impostor...
..applying for things can be especially nerve-wrecking. To me, this seems to be because I'm incentivized to optimize for how I'm going to be perceived. I've found the best antidote for my own impostor-y feelings to be this: Focus on being useful and having direct impact, instead of signaling the ability to (maybe one day) have direct impact.
I find it quite comforting that I don't need to be in the spotlight, but instead get to have an influence from the sidelines. I don't need to think about "how does this look" - just "could this work" or "is this helpful".
And so I started looking for ways in which I could help existing projects immediately. Suddenly, "optimize LinkedIn profile" didn't feel like such a high EV task anymore.
Here's what I did, and recommend folks to try
Identify the risk scenario you'd most like to mitigate, and the 1-3 potentially most effective interventions.
Find out who's already working on those interventions.[1]
Contact these people and look for things they might need help with. Let them know what you could do right now to increase their chances of success.[2]
What I've personally found the most effective is reaching out to people with specific offers and/or questions you need answered in order to make those offers[3]. Address problems you've noticed that should be addressed. If you have a track record of being a reliable and sensible person (and preferably can provide some evidence to support this), and you offer your time for free, and the people you're offering to help actually want to get things done, they're unlikely to refuse[4].
(Will happily share more about my story and what I'm doing currently; don't hesitate to ask detailed questions/tips/advice.)[5]
This work was supported by the EA Hotel, which offers free or low-cost food and accommodation to people working to improve the world, which happens to be an excellent place to visit if you'd like to extend your runway and be surrounded by great people who are mostly working towards AI safety. They do have applications for free, or you can pay to be there very affordably.
Relatedly, the EA Hotel is in urgent need of funding despite being extremely cost effective and having incubated multiple organizations in AI safety. Consider donating, they are blocked on basic maintenance for lack of funds and will run out of money in a few months by default.
Crossposted to EA Forum.
If nobody seems to be on the ball, consider starting your own project.
Here it's quite helpful to focus on what you do best, where you might have an unfair advantage, etc.
As a general rule, assume the person you're messaging or talking to doesn't have the time to listen to your takes - get straight to the point and make sure you've done the cognitive labor for them.
I should add that in order to do this you need to have developed a bit of agency, as well as understanding of the field you're trying to contribute to. I'm also assuming that since you have the capacity to apply for things, you also have the capacity to get things done if you trade the time.
Post encouraged and mildly improved by plex based on a conversation with Pauliina. From the other side of this, I'd much rather take someone onto a project who has spent a few months trying to build useful things than spending cycles to signal for applications, even if their projects don't go anywhere. You get good at what you practice. Hire people who do things and go do things. e.g. I once gave the org Alignment Ecosystem Development, which runs all the aisafety.com resources, to a volunteer (Bryce Robertson) who'd been helping out competently for a while. Excellent move! He had proved he actually did good stuff unprompted and has been improving it much more than I would have.
Also! I'd much rather work with someone who's been practicing figuring out inside views of what's actually good to orient their priorities rather than someone looking for a role doing work which someone else thinks is good and got funding to hire for. Deference is the mind-killer.