AI safety comms work that I would be excited to see
Ideas for creators, funders, and founders to grow AI safety comms.
BlueDot has given out over $200k in grants to AI safety creators over the past 6 months. We want to triple that by the end of the year.
More people need to understand what advanced AI means and how they can help solve it, and we don’t yet have the infrastructure to communicate that well.
These are ideas I’ve gathered from engaging with creators and others in the space. They aren’t polished proposals, but starting points for people looking to work on this. I’d be excited to see these ideas, and many more, explored.
The goal of AI safety comms
AI safety communication helps:
AI safety orgs communicate their work to attract talent and get people to take action.
Specific audiences understand the impact of advanced AI and how they can contribute to AI safety.
Excellent comms is:
Engaging. People will read, watch, or listen to it.
Nuanced. It makes a complex topic accessible without being misleading or overhyped.
A person who would excel at this is experienced at making engaging content and understands AI safety well enough to get the details right.
Rather than upskilling people to make content, I’d be more excited to help people who are great at writing, producing, filming, and editing transfer their expertise to AI safety.
Projects I’d be excited to see
Content studios
AI safety orgs want people to engage with their work, but most don’t have in-house comms expertise. This might include projects like creating videos to share their research or filming their events for marketing material.
They are wary of hiring creators who lack AI safety context for fear that their content will not be handled responsibly. Doing this comms work also usually sits low on their priority list, so they are less willing to vet creators and closely manage them. The result is that their work goes uncommunicated.
An AI safety content studio could help AI safety orgs distribute their work more widely.
This could follow the model of other orgs like:
AE Studios. They build tech products for clients (Fortune 10, top startups) and reinvest profits into a dedicated alignment research team exploring overlooked directions. An AI safety version could take on paid client work, then reinvest the profits into the AI safety content it most wants to see.
Good Impressions. They support AI safety orgs with marketing and engagement. They have dedicated funding so that their fees don’t get in the way of the most impactful projects.
Agencies for AI safety creators
Creators spend a large chunk of their time just keeping their projects alive. An agency would help them focus on producing great content by handling other work like brand deals, sourcing contractors (e.g. editors, sound engineers) or legal work.
This could look like a YouTube channel agency model (e.g. Nebula or Complexly), or an operational support like Impact Ops.
Creator residencies
We have spaces for AI safety researchers to convene, like the London Initiative for Safe AI and Constellation. We could have spaces designed for creators to connect with others doing similar work and share resources like equipment or filming space.
In-person communities and purpose-built spaces enable people to do great work, and we could have hubs like these in several locations.
A living database of content & ideas
Creators are constantly looking for what to make next, and researching which ideas matter and how to talk about them eats up a lot of time. Meanwhile, the field has messages it wants shared.
A live resource or platform could help AI safety experts and creators coordinate on what to produce in a variety of formats and languages. There’s a lot of room to explore what this might look like.
This could include quotes, video and audio snippets or images that would be useful for conveying particular messages.
Talent pipelines for AI safety creators
So far, only a handful of programs have run to bring creators into AI safety. If we want more creators in the space, we need to help them get in.
This could look like:
Scaling up fellowships like the Frame Fellowship or plzdontkillus, which focus on accelerating existing creators to produce more and better content.
A hackathon. An event you can run often, which gives people a chance to try their hand at making AI safety content.
A MATS-style stream to match creators with a mentor and make it easy to get feedback from relevant experts.
A course or bootcamp. Work out the key things a creator needs to understand about the field, then build on-ramps that get them deep on the specific topics they need, fast.
Placement programs like Tarbell, which help creators get work at major comms outlets so they can produce more nuanced AIS content from inside them.
Funding for creators
There’s no clear way to make a living producing AI safety content. Choosing to do this means making a big bet. We already support independent researchers to upskill and do speculative work. We could provide the same kind of support for creators.
This could look like:
Exploratory grants for early-stage creators like FLI’s digital media accelerator, which allows creators to start producing AI safety content.
A fund for much larger grants that support an excellent creator to continue producing content over years rather than months, in the same way one might fund a promising researcher.
Resources to get started
Learn more about AI safety
BlueDot’s Future of AI course. A free resource for understanding the impact of advanced AI.
BlueDot’s AGI Strategy course. A 25-hour discussion-based course to get an in-depth understanding of AI safety.
Get funding
Future of Life Institute’s Digital Media Accelerator provides funding to creators to raise awareness and understanding of ongoing AI developments and issues.
Long-Term Future Fund previously funded Rob Miles to make podcasts and videos, and Nicky Case to create AI safety explainers.
Survival & Flourishing Fund previously funded Tarbell Fellowship for AI safety journalism.
Emergent Ventures has previously funded creators
Start creating content
Tarbell Fellowship places journalists in major newsrooms.
Frame Fellowship provides structure, funding, mentorship, and production support to enable creators to consistently produce accurate, compelling content at scale.
plzdontkillus is an experimental creator bootcamp
Join an existing comms org
80,000 Hours produces AI safety content through podcasts, articles and YouTube videos
CivAI builds live demonstrations that foster gut-level understanding of AI
Seismic Foundation provides specialist marketing and communications capabilities
Reach out to me at anglilian@bluedot.org if you’ve been thinking about this and have something more fleshed out, including additional resources I might have missed.