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After over a decade of leading purpose-driven projects in social business, education, and impact consulting, I'm diving into something completely different – AI safety and alignment. Because apparently, managing humans wasn't complicated enough.
For the next weeks, I'll be sharing snippets of my high-impact career transition journey. I hope my writing helps to
Following 1-1 career advice from @Sudhanshu Kasewa at 80000 Hours, inspiration from @Lynn_Tan at Effective Altruism UK, guidance from my BlueDot AI Safety course facilitator @Lovkush 🔸, I'll be writing these posts as if I'm talking to myself three months ago – uninformed, confused, insecure, but armed with enough productivity hacks (and childhood conditioning by the Energizer Bunny to keep going and going and going).
I have 14+ y.o.e. 'winning or learning' in people leadership, project management, and impact consulting. Why shift career, now?
During my ExecMSc in Social Business and Entrepreneurship, I had some mind-bending revelations:
Looking deeper into the research and initiatives behind doing good better was like realising I've been using a spoon to empty the ocean when someone hands you a pump. It turns out some initiatives aren't just more impactful (using here the framework: scale, solvability, & neglect) – they're up to 100x more effective with the same resources. (And this ain’t the Arab in me using exaggeration for stylistic emphasis!). Now knowing this, my inner compass is set to where/how I can do most good with my career.
Source: Giving What We Can
According to 2500+ of the world's top AI scientists/researchers, AI safety isn't just another tech trend – it's potentially one of the most important challenges of our time. Experts like Oxford philosopher Toby Ord estimate that existential risks from unaligned AI might be higher than those from climate change and nuclear war combined. (For more: video; article)
One (overly simple but helpful) way to think of it is:
When I learned that fewer people work full-time on AI safety than on studying dung beetles (not making this up - but likely slightly now outdated), I realised this might be where my weird mix of experiences could contribute to positive counterfactual impact.
Here's your daily dose of pseudo-psychology:
Not knowing you're crazy is crazy, otherwise you're just as normal as everyone else.
Over the past months, I've embarked on a very intentional career sabbatical, armed with a scout mindset and reasoning transparency, to systematically explore what I know, challenge my assumptions, identify key knowledge gaps - and stay as normal as everyone else!
A dear coach, @Edmo_Gamelin at Consultants for Impact, once suggested I use the above breakdown less as percentage goals to fulfil and more as a cadence to flow with. I like!
Over the past months, I've
This approach has helped me explore and map out the high-impact space with clarity and purpose.
I'm still iterating my personal Theory of Change, but two pathways in particular are crystallising - I think.
Turns out, the AI Safety field needs more than just programmers. Backgrounds we might not typically associate with tech can be incredibly valuable.
For instance:
These realisations aren't unique to me – your diverse perspective might be more relevant to AI safety than you (or others) realise.
AI Safety organisations, like any others, need someone to make sure the brilliant minds aren't spending their time figuring out how to facilitate effective team meetings, or attract/retain highly talented people, or align organisational culture/strategy with personal values/ambitions.
After dozens of conversations with people working in high-impact organisations and skimming hundreds of high-impact job posts, I've identified such non-technical functions mostly correspond with the following roles:
I've come to understand the impact of such roles through
the multiplier effect, which refers to a factor that dramatically increases the effectiveness of a group, giving that group the ability to accomplish greater things than without it.
For more on the value of operations management in high-impact organisations, click here. Here too. Here too, too.
Now, did I just subtly put myself on par with Batman? Smooth, Moneer.
Stay tuned for more updates.
#AISafety #AIAlignment #AIEthics #Leadership #PeopleOps #EffectiveAltruism #ToTheBatMobile
