AI safety for builders hackathon

I am planning an online AI safety for builder hackathon in India - to build tools, products, etc.

One thing I observed was that there is lot of research & empirical work happening in AI safety, but much less focus on building products and tools.

This gap has been recognized by several organizations. For example, organizations such as MATS and BlueDot have been coming up with field building initiatives.

There's a new thing called Surplus.dev, Forethought has recently released an RFP seeking useful AI safety tools, etc

There'll be three themes

1. AI tools for Accountability
2. AI tools for Epistemics
3. AI tools for India

See this list of proposals.

I think this will make AGI go well in 2 ways

1. Bring AI safety work from research orgs / toy implementation to real world faster.
2. It is also a way to engage India where somehow AI safety ecosystem is very small even though it represents a significant share of the world's population and technical talent. Culturally Indian tech has a builders focus & it can be a huge momentum inducing event for them.

If this is successful - I (with friends / colleagues) plan to launch a full fledged AI safety for builders fellowship. See a proposal called AI kavach.

• Prize pool : $ 3,000
• Honorarium to judges and speakers : $1,000
• Ops / marketing / organizers time: $1,000

[2x this money for 2 hackathons / more prizes / in person events]