AI Safety Seeding Initiative
There’s no AI safety group at Duke. We can help you change that.
Mentorship from experienced organizers, direct support to launch your AI safety group, and a path to funding, all for free.
Outside the US? Start here.
funded by
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Your launch timeline.
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July
Intro call
Twenty minutes, no prep, no commitment. We answer your questions, walk through what running a group actually looks like, and figure out together whether it makes sense at your school.
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Late July, early August
Setup
Co-founders, a website, a first-semester plan, and your Pathfinder application in by mid-August.
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Fall semester
Launch
Your first meetings, with us on call. And you join a community of organizers at other schools: people to swap ideas with, and workshops built for university group leaders.
We’ve done this before.
We’ve founded and directed university AI safety groups ourselves.
Thomas Rodskog
Founded AI Safety at UCSBAI Safety at UCSB
Jason Chin
Founded the Virginia AI Security InitiativeVAISI
The initiative is run in partnership with Kairos, the organization behind the Pathfinder fellowship for new AI safety group organizers. Pathfinder sets organizers up with a mentor, additional resources, and continued funding for things like food at meetings, speaker events, or compute.
More on our reasoning, and the gap we’re trying to fill here.
Book an intro call.
Twenty minutes, no prep. Choose a time that works for you.
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Alternatively, email us at team@aisafetyseeding.org, or point us to someone who’d be great.
Frequently asked questions.
What counts as an AI safety group?
Any student club that takes seriously where advanced AI is heading. That might be a reading group working through alignment research, a cohort running the AI Safety Fundamentals course, a technical group building interpretability or evaluations projects, or a policy group. If your campus has an effective altruism or rationality club but nothing focused on AI, that is exactly the gap we help you fill.
Do I need a machine learning background?
No. Some of the best organizers came from philosophy, policy, or plain curiosity. Running an AI safety group is mostly about gathering good people and holding real discussions, not writing proofs. We help you draw on existing resources and shape a curriculum and reading list for your group; you bring the willingness to lead.
My school already has an EA club. Should I still start one?
Usually yes. A group focused specifically on AI safety and alignment reaches students a general effective altruism club does not, and the two tend to strengthen each other rather than compete. Plenty of AI safety groups grew straight out of an existing EA or rationality community.
What does the Seeding Initiative actually give me?
Mentorship from people who have run these groups, help adapting existing curricula and reading groups into a plan for your campus, help building a website and finding co-founders, and a path to funding through the Pathfinder fellowship. All of it free.
How much time does this take?
A few hours a week during the semester once the group is running. The heavy lifting is the summer setup, and that is the part we do alongside you. After that, most groups run on a single weekly meeting.