FAR.Labs x Ai Salon: Communication Gaps in AI Safety (Pilot Session)
Expert Series: AI Risk Narratives & Public Outreach (Pilot Session)
📣 FAR.Labs and Ai Salon are partnering up to pilot a new event series focused on moderated, single-threaded conversations about AI safety and adjacent topics.
📌 Topic Overview
AI researchers focused on existential risk often struggle to reach general audiences, which tune out these narratives as too abstract or overwhelming. Similarly, outreach efforts around present-day harms, despite being concrete and immediate, struggle to mobilize a public that feels it has no power to address the harms caused by AI.
This salon explores the communication challenges facing the field of AI safety, as well as the ways in which the tension between X-risk framing and present-day harms shapes the discourse around AI risk. We'll discuss the gap between technical and public understanding, why catastrophic risk narratives often fail to land with general audiences, and whether the field's messaging strategies are helping or hurting the cause.
Join us to discuss:
Why technical AI safety arguments don't translate well to public discourse
Whether focusing on existential risk actually alienates people who care about present-day harms
How other high-stakes fields (climate, public health, nuclear safety) have navigated similar communication challenges
What more effective public communication about AI safety could look like
🗓️ Logistics
⏱️ Dinner will be served by FAR.Labs (Downtown Berkeley) between 5:45-6:30pm, while the Salon discussion will run between 6:30 - 8pm.
🚨 To facilitate smooth and cohesive conversations, please arrive no later than 6:30pm.
🔎 About Ai Salon & FAR.Labs
The Ai Salon is a global community founded in San Francisco focused on intimate, small-sized group discussions on the sociological, economic, cultural, and philosophical impacts and meaning of AI developments. We host small group discussions, all of which you can find on our calendar. You can find summaries of our previous conversations on our substack.
FAR.Labs is a co-working hub in downtown Berkeley dedicated to supporting the AI safety research community. It's operated by FAR.AI, an AI safety research non-profit. At FAR.AI, our mission is to ensure advanced AI is safe and beneficial for everyone. We spark much-needed technical breakthroughs through our in-house research team and targeted grants to academic research groups. We also bring together policymakers, industry leaders and academics to foster a coordinated global solution for safe AI development.
Please be advised: Unfortunately, space is very limited at these community events and we can't always accept everyone we'd like to. We base acceptances based on levels of interest and passion demonstrated in registration question answers. If you are not accepted to this event, please try and come to another!