Jacob Brinton

TL;DR: Lateral Workshop is a program in Berkeley from September 11–13 for mid-career and senior professionals who are interested in transitioning into AI safety work to meet people in the field and explore how they can fit in. If you have experience in another field and are interested in translating that experience into impact in AI safety, apply here by August 9th! If AI safety is to keep scaling, we’ll need a lot of people that the field currently doesn’t supply well. People who know how to run 30+ person organizations. People who have deep connections in DC. People with specialized knowledge in cybersecurity or verification. Professionals from outside AI safety have those skills, but it’s been difficult for them to make the switch. The professionals we have spoken with rarely lack relevant skills. More often, they struggle to understand how the field works, where they could contribute, and how to become credible candidates. Here are some of the specific barriers experienced professionals face while trying to transition: * Difficulty in understanding the key priorities of the field * Lack of networks within the field and poor understanding of where to start to build them * Lack of free time to invest in time-intensive upskilling and context building * Financial risk (getting a role is competitive, and the field is insular enough that rejections from roles are correlated) * Difficulty evaluating a young and unfamiliar field that lacks many of the conventional markers of professional maturity Some professionals do navigate these barriers through persistent self study and deep attempts to understand the field. But requiring every candidate to independently reconstruct the field is slow and unnecessarily costly. AI safety has reduced similar friction for students by building clearer early-career pipelines; we think experienced professionals could benefit from a similar investment in talent pipelines and infrastructure. Even after some contact with the field,