TLDR: 

We think starting city- and national-level field-building organisations can be a valuable way to contribute to AI Safety. If you are interested in getting support doing so, fill out this EOI (Expression of Interest) form. If you are already organising such a group but feel like you could benefit from more hands-on support, you can sign up as well.

I have recently put out a call for action about starting AI Safety groups at specific locations, but I wanted to make a short post about how we would be excited to support people at any location in starting such initiatives. To get a sense of what responsibilities running a city- or national-level field-building organisation entails, you can check out one of the posts above.

Based on your fit for starting such organisations, ENAIS would be happy to support you with:

• Fundraising
• Creating organisational strategy and structure
• Mentoring and professional development
• Networking
• Promoting your group and finding existing AIS-interested people in your city/county
• Providing career advice for your group members
• Writing newsletters etc.

We are most interested in providing hands-on support for (prospective) fieldbuilders who are or would consider eventually working in a professional capacity (at least 20 hours per week or more), but to be clear, I’m excited to provide advising calls to any city or national AIS group organiser! For university groups, I would refer you to the awesome guys at Kairos (although I’m happy to do a quick call with any uni-group organiser to connect!) Consider also joining our monthly coordination calls, the ENAIS newsletter for fieldbuilders and my blog for knowledge-sharing about communitybuilding.

I would especially love experienced professionals to consider starting city and national organisations, as they are in a good position to attract other people with the same amount of experience. I think AI Safety is bottlenecked by the lack of such professionals in several ways, so working on this could be especially promising. If you are a mid-career or senior professional considering doing AIS fieldbuilding, I would be happy to talk to you, and we are more likely to be able to provide you with hands-on support even if you aren’t able or planning to transition to working in fieldbuilding at a professional capacity. If you are unsure about whether this is the right career move for you, you can still fill out the EOI form and indicate this. I would be happy to talk to you about the different considerations that might go into such a decision.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the field-building strategy for ENAIS in the past months, and I think that starting such initiatives can be a valuable way to contribute to AI Safety for people with various career backgrounds. However, in this post, I won’t go into these considerations, as I’m planning to publish content about this in my substack called The Field Building Blog. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at gergo[at]enais.co or write a comment!