AI safety: From the Fence to the Field
Despite the popular notion, AI safety is close to the opposite of doom-luddism; many of the same ideas and people behind it also built the AI breakthroughs we have today.
Ankur will cover various tribes & camps in AI safety and how the same safety/alignment problems are interpreted differently by various camps. He’ll get into underserved areas and blind spots where India can play a role - a strong build-stuff culture, representing ‘middle powers’, etc.
Ankur will cover what one can do in AI safety today - technical work is only one type, and despite the name, governance work can be pretty technical.
He’ll cover the intellectual predecessors of AI safety - Effective Altruism, Rationality, etc. He’ll also discuss economics and the job market in AI safety - how (outside big labs) it’s largely philanthropy driven. And that (a lot of) AI safety should be treated as a product with real stakeholders, incentive structures, etc.
About the speaker:
Ankur Pandey was first introduced to proto AI safety (then called Friendly AI) through interactions with MIRI, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Singularity University - about 15 years back. At the time, it felt like worrying about overpopulation on Mars.
He spent the years in between in applied ML and then as a founder across three bootstrapped startups, including LongShot AI. In 2025, he realized that watching AI from the fence was no longer exciting and made a hard pivot into AI safety and adjacent work.
Since then, he has been an active field builder (organized an international book club on AI + society, events at the India AI Impact Summit, etc). Did multiple cohorts (BlueDot, Center for AI Safety, Cambridge Digital Minds). Been a fellow at SPAR, AI Safety Camp, and an invited guest at the PIBBSS workshop & EA global. He also consulted for Alice (AI security).
He currently consults / contributes for Groundless.ai on AI epistemic risk and continues independent AI safety research. Most importantly, he is building a fellowship around AI safety for builders (backed by grants from Manifund).
Pre-read:
Join online: meet.google.com/zuc-kkdf-bxc
Looking forward to seeing you!