An application response I wrote! Feel free to leave feedback!
What do you think is the most important lever for making AI go well for humanity?
"'Revolutionary love' is the choice to labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves in order to transform the world around us" (Revolutionary Love Project).
At the BlueDot Impact panel "AI Safety Needs Generalists — Here's How to Get In", held on May 22, 2026, there were an array of mixed emotions expressed by the attendees (and, I'd assume, the panelists, too). As one can probably infer from the title, the panelists explained the urgent capacity bottlenecks that the field of AI safety is experiencing in terms of talent and organising capacity, and proposed some limited number of opportunities for people to apply to so that they can compete to fill that gap. Expectedly, some attendees, especially many of those who'd been recently rejected from the inaugural class of the generalist-focused Generator Residency, were getting somewhat frustrated at these sentiments in the Zoom chat due to the apparent contradiction: how can AI safety recruiters claim to be so strapped for talent, and yet be seemingly hyperselective about who they let onto their teams? Particularly as many of the attendees were mid-career professionals attempting to pivot into AI safety, initial answers about showcasing previous cause-related work also didn't seem exactly helpful. Panelists proceeded to give suggestions about producing legible output as opposed to "LinkedIn slop" and demonstrating value and truth alignment (i.e. recognising that X-risk is real rather than believe "cope" that it will probably be solved somehow). However, although I didn't personally comment in the chat, I (and I'm sure many others) noticed that these answers didn't actually solve the problem. They were tips on how to distinguish yourself from other applicants to the position you want — helpful tips, sure, but they didn't answer why the position is so selective in the first place. Despite this, however, some attendees' gripes and grumbles remained unresolved by the hour-long panel's end.
I've seen similar situations play out in my own life, too. One of my friends at my university expressed actual interest in our AI Safety club, investing over two hours in the "intro to AIS" fellowship application, only to lose it completely once he was rejected (and start working on standard MLE instead). Another actually did make it in and has even attended board meetings, but he's been rejected from the external AI safety fellowships he's applied to, and is wrapped up in his part-time SWE internship. Even my own sister, a chronically offline med school student whom I had no idea had ever heard of Effective Altruism, told me randomly that she'd actually applied for an 80k hours advising call, only to be rejected and then never touch the movement again. (That last one took me by total surprise!)
As an AI Safety @ UCLA organiser who went from never having trained an AI model to SPAR participant within 6 months, there's definitely cases where the current talent pipeline absolutely succeeds; I'm totally invested in AI safety as a field and a career. I've also faced an arguably greater amount of rejection, though; differences in outcomes between myself and my loved ones can't be chalked up to simple (and slightly demoralising) concepts like competence, intelligence, or "legible impressive-ness." I'd say the by-far biggest motivator for me to start doing ML research, apply to programs like SPAR and MATS, attend EAGs, and generally contextually immerse myself in the field have been the connections and genuine mentorship I've received from senior organisers in my university club. Encouragement, advice, networking opportunities, and most of all reminders to maintain perspective in the face of rejection, all coming from people I trusted, were the foundation for my motivation to continue my efforts in the field. One could say that I was already value-aligned and primed to do AI safety work, but I'm inclined to call this value alignment "revolutionary love." It captures the desire to labour and utilise my time and position to create revolutionary change with respect to daunting global risks and harmful structures, with the grit, determination, and aspirational altruism best characterised by a "loving" spirit for both current and future generations.
Conversely, I'm also inclined to think that revolutionary love on the side of organisers — people who can provide the mentorship, guidance, and unwavering support that I so enjoyed — is also something the AI safety talent pipeline desperately needs. Especially as people increasingly scramble for impactful opportunities and experiences in the face of an extremely uncertain job market and world, I believe that revolutionary love — forged by community and human connection as opposed to hyper-optimising competition — will draw more deserving talent to the movement than just monetary or careerist incentive structures. I think that the average person is more value-aligned than many AI safety people believe; empirically, the prospect of "doing good" is almost never seen as a negative for prospective applicants. However, in the face of competing agents in financial incentive and attention economy, retention amidst a slew of (albeit often necessary) rejections does more harm to making AI go well for humanity than I think people care to admit. People today have existential and practical longings to be part of causes greater than themselves; I believe that focusing on expanding personable, accessible, and inertial movement-building will both reach people on the brink of meaningful contribution as well as leverage the psychology of community for dedicated long-term career retention. I don't see this lever as a panacea by any means, and I also wouldn't say I want to promise that every single attendee at that meeting can secure a stable position in AIS field-building. However, I think impressions of the panel may have at least been far more positive if panelists' answers had focused on such a sense of community, proposing that we make space for people who want to help rather than advising attendees on how to best step on and outcompete each other for false scarcity. The movement must possess, in the words of Antonio Gramsci, a "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will", and prospective founders, field-builders, researchers, policymakers, strategists, and those in every other field of AIS must cultivate this optimism of the will on both sides of the talent pipeline.
An application response I wrote! Feel free to leave feedback!
What do you think is the most important lever for making AI go well for humanity?
"'Revolutionary love' is the choice to labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves in order to transform the world around us" (Revolutionary Love Project).
At the BlueDot Impact panel "AI Safety Needs Generalists — Here's How to Get In", held on May 22, 2026, there were an array of mixed emotions expressed by the attendees (and, I'd assume, the panelists, too). As one can probably infer from the title, the panelists explained the urgent capacity bottlenecks that the field of AI safety is experiencing in terms of talent and organising capacity, and proposed some limited number of opportunities for people to apply to so that they can compete to fill that gap. Expectedly, some attendees, especially many of those who'd been recently rejected from the inaugural class of the generalist-focused Generator Residency, were getting somewhat frustrated at these sentiments in the Zoom chat due to the apparent contradiction: how can AI safety recruiters claim to be so strapped for talent, and yet be seemingly hyperselective about who they let onto their teams? Particularly as many of the attendees were mid-career professionals attempting to pivot into AI safety, initial answers about showcasing previous cause-related work also didn't seem exactly helpful. Panelists proceeded to give suggestions about producing legible output as opposed to "LinkedIn slop" and demonstrating value and truth alignment (i.e. recognising that X-risk is real rather than believe "cope" that it will probably be solved somehow). However, although I didn't personally comment in the chat, I (and I'm sure many others) noticed that these answers didn't actually solve the problem. They were tips on how to distinguish yourself from other applicants to the position you want — helpful tips, sure, but they didn't answer why the position is so selective in the first place. Despite this, however, some attendees' gripes and grumbles remained unresolved by the hour-long panel's end.
I've seen similar situations play out in my own life, too. One of my friends at my university expressed actual interest in our AI Safety club, investing over two hours in the "intro to AIS" fellowship application, only to lose it completely once he was rejected (and start working on standard MLE instead). Another actually did make it in and has even attended board meetings, but he's been rejected from the external AI safety fellowships he's applied to, and is wrapped up in his part-time SWE internship. Even my own sister, a chronically offline med school student whom I had no idea had ever heard of Effective Altruism, told me randomly that she'd actually applied for an 80k hours advising call, only to be rejected and then never touch the movement again. (That last one took me by total surprise!)
As an AI Safety @ UCLA organiser who went from never having trained an AI model to SPAR participant within 6 months, there's definitely cases where the current talent pipeline absolutely succeeds; I'm totally invested in AI safety as a field and a career. I've also faced an arguably greater amount of rejection, though; differences in outcomes between myself and my loved ones can't be chalked up to simple (and slightly demoralising) concepts like competence, intelligence, or "legible impressive-ness." I'd say the by-far biggest motivator for me to start doing ML research, apply to programs like SPAR and MATS, attend EAGs, and generally contextually immerse myself in the field have been the connections and genuine mentorship I've received from senior organisers in my university club. Encouragement, advice, networking opportunities, and most of all reminders to maintain perspective in the face of rejection, all coming from people I trusted, were the foundation for my motivation to continue my efforts in the field. One could say that I was already value-aligned and primed to do AI safety work, but I'm inclined to call this value alignment "revolutionary love." It captures the desire to labour and utilise my time and position to create revolutionary change with respect to daunting global risks and harmful structures, with the grit, determination, and aspirational altruism best characterised by a "loving" spirit for both current and future generations.
Conversely, I'm also inclined to think that revolutionary love on the side of organisers — people who can provide the mentorship, guidance, and unwavering support that I so enjoyed — is also something the AI safety talent pipeline desperately needs. Especially as people increasingly scramble for impactful opportunities and experiences in the face of an extremely uncertain job market and world, I believe that revolutionary love — forged by community and human connection as opposed to hyper-optimising competition — will draw more deserving talent to the movement than just monetary or careerist incentive structures. I think that the average person is more value-aligned than many AI safety people believe; empirically, the prospect of "doing good" is almost never seen as a negative for prospective applicants. However, in the face of competing agents in financial incentive and attention economy, retention amidst a slew of (albeit often necessary) rejections does more harm to making AI go well for humanity than I think people care to admit. People today have existential and practical longings to be part of causes greater than themselves; I believe that focusing on expanding personable, accessible, and inertial movement-building will both reach people on the brink of meaningful contribution as well as leverage the psychology of community for dedicated long-term career retention. I don't see this lever as a panacea by any means, and I also wouldn't say I want to promise that every single attendee at that meeting can secure a stable position in AIS field-building. However, I think impressions of the panel may have at least been far more positive if panelists' answers had focused on such a sense of community, proposing that we make space for people who want to help rather than advising attendees on how to best step on and outcompete each other for false scarcity. The movement must possess, in the words of Antonio Gramsci, a "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will", and prospective founders, field-builders, researchers, policymakers, strategists, and those in every other field of AIS must cultivate this optimism of the will on both sides of the talent pipeline.
Works Cited
Revolutionary Love Project. https://revolutionarylove.org/about/