New Fieldbuilding Organisations in Germany
Mentor: Tilman Räuker
Project area: AI Safety fieldbuilding
Project Language
Minimum Time Commitment
15 hours per week.
Project Abstract
Lets figure out what field building efforts would work best in Germany!
1) Identify unique talent pools in Germany that are useful for AI safety;
2) Strongest attractor for existing talent, mapping out reference classes for successful programs;
3) Developing blueprint for a new organisation/initiative.
Theory of Change
Bad frameworks produce bad decisions. The question of machine moral status will increasingly affect AI development and governance. Currently, most people reasoning about it lack adequate conceptual tools. This matters for catastrophic risk in several ways.Under-reaction: if AI systems develop welfare-relevant internal states and we lack frameworks to recognize this, we may create systems with misaligned interests while dismissing their signals as "mere computation." A system that experiences something like suffering under certain conditions, and whose operators dismiss this, is a system with reason to deceive.Over-reaction: anthropomorphizing systems that lack morally relevant properties wastes attention and resources, and may constrain beneficial AI development without corresponding benefit.Poor discourse: without shared conceptual foundations, public debate about AI consciousness polarizes between dismissive and credulous positions. Neither serves good governance.The primer addresses these by training researchers and practitioners to reason carefully across multiple frameworks, recognize what each assumes, and navigate uncertainty without false confidence. The German focus (incorporating European philosophical traditions, piloting with German-speaking users) builds SAIGE's national infrastructure while contributing to the broader field.Conceptual clarity is infrastructure. This project builds it.
Desired Mentee Background
Any or all, it's more about skills and resourcefulness than a field of study.
Desired Mentee Level of Education
Any level.
Other Mentee Requirements
- Have a decent entrepreneurial muscle or at least the desire to flex this muscle;
- Should have some confidence navigating AI safety landscape (at least BlueDot-level)