Thanks to Linda Linsefors for encouraging me to write my story. Although it might not generalize to anyone else, I hope it will help some AI safety newcomers get a clearer picture of how to get into the field.
In Summer 2023, I thought that all jobs in AI safety were super competitive and needed qualifications I didn’t have. I was expecting to need a few years to build skills and connections before getting any significantly impactful position. Surprisingly to me, it only took me 3 months after leaving my software engineering job before I landed a job in AI policy. I now think that it's actually somewhat easy to get into AI policy without any prior experience if you’re agentic and accept some tradeoffs.
The job: International AI policy event organizer
From January 2024 to February 2025, I worked on organizing high level international AI policy events:
Outline:
(00:55) The job: International AI policy event organizer
(03:16) How I got the job
(06:02) My theory as to what led to me being hired and how it can be reproduced by others
(07:27) My experience at this job and where I stand now
First published:
April 13th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qvCCQwnvM4Gb6W8Bg/how-i-switched-careers-from-software-engineer-to-ai-policy)
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO).
