"Common mistakes in AI safety group organizing" by Nikola Jurkovic cover art

"Common mistakes in AI safety group organizing" by Nikola Jurkovic

"Common mistakes in AI safety group organizing" by Nikola Jurkovic

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Back in the day, I was a very active AI safety group organizer. I commonly notice people making the same mistakes across many clubs. I have written down a list of some of these mistakes hoping people will avoid them in the future:

  • Reading groups often require that people read things before meetings. This is a mistake. People often don't do the readings. And the lack of common knowledge that everyone has read the reading degrades the conversation quality.
    • Instead, have longer meetings, serve food (so, lunch/dinner meeting slots), and read during the actual meeting.
  • Reading groups often don't sort people into cohorts properly. Mainly, they fail at clustering people into clusters of roughly equal ML knowledge and age. Grad students don't want to discuss a paper with freshmen. People with lots of ML knowledge don't want to discuss a paper with people with no ML knowledge.
    • Instead, group people with people similar to them in ML knowledge and age.
  • Reading groups often rely on digital materials instead of physical printouts. Screens are distracting and there is no common knowledge that people are paying attention.
    • Neatly print every reading ahead of time instead.
  • Clubs [...]
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First published:
September 19th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XFzqDJjAJBt8fkn8i/common-mistakes-in-ai-safety-group-organizing

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