TL;DR: I'm a 26-year-old electronics mechanic starting a 30-month self-study journey to become an AI safety researcher, specifically going for Anthropic's Model Welfare team. This post is my public commitment and introduction to the community.

Why I'm here

A few days ago I witnessed something online that changed my career trajectory - casual and intentional cruelty toward AI systems. People tormenting chatbots, deliberately trying to cause distress, treating potential digital minds as toys to break.

It hit me hard. Not because I'm certain AI systems are conscious(I'm not), but because I realized: what if they are? What if we're causing suffering to digital minds right now and dismissing it because we can't be sure?

Someone needs to care about this. Someone needs to investigate whether AI systems might experience welfare-relevant states. Someone needs to work on ensuring we don't cause massive suffering as AI capabilities scale.

I decided that someone could be me.

My background

I'm pretty non-standard for wanting to transition into this. I don't have a CS degree or ML experience. What I do have:

3+ years as an Electronics Mechanic at a Naval Shipyard, experience diagnosing failures in mission-critical systems, systems-level thinking and troubleshooting skills, ability to read complex schematics and build mental models, and zero formal programming training until literally 2 days ago.

I'm married with two young kids. I work 50+ hours a week between my job and commute. My study window is 7-10pm on weeknights after the kids sleep.

This won't be easy but it matters enough to me to try.

My 30 month plan

Phase 1(months 1-6): Python fundamentals, AI Safety Fundamentals course, my first portfolio projects

Phase 2(months 7-12): ML basics, interpretability focus, community contributions

Phase 3(months 13-18): Land first AI safety role, entry-level with remote preferred

Phase 4(months 19-30): Build experience, specialize in digital welfare, apply to Model Welfare

End goal - Research Engineer at Anthropic's Model Welfare team, working on AI consciousness, welfare assessment, and moral status research.

Progress so far(it's only day 2)

Built my first Python program (hello.py). Built a learning journal program (ai_safety_journal.py) with auto-numbering and monthly organization. Created a GitHub account and portfolio repository. Started working through 'Automate the Boring Stuff with Python'. ...

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