DC Mini-Conference 2.0 (DCMC 2.0)

Raising $23,840active

Running a conference in DC for promising AI safety university students interested in policy to network, learn, and be exposed to the DC ecosystem.

Endorsed by

Ryan

Marcus

Running a conference in DC for promising AI safety university students interested in policy to network, learn, and be exposed to the DC ecosystem.

Endorsed by

Ryan

Marcus

Project Details

Myself and some other university AI safety organizers and recent graduates are putting together the second iteration of a DC Mini-Conference we ran from April 9-12, 2026. See this document for information about DCMC 1.0. The last conference had 35 students and ~30 guests working in AI policy. We thought it went well enough to warrant another iteration, and think we also learned a lot so that we can make the second version significantly better than the first. We aim to raise the bar for attendees, provide accommodations near the venue so that attendees are not tired from long commutes each morning (and can spend more time having valuable conversations at night), and give ourselves more planning time and better organization so that we can be more deliberate with our programming and schedule.

We are currently gauging organizing support interest from attendees of DCMC 1.0, but the core team responsible for making sure this goes well includes multiple organizers of DCMC 1.0:

Liam Robins: Recent graduate and founder of GW AI Policy Accelerator
Harshul Basava: Operations Co-lead at Georgia Tech AI Safety Initiative
Seth Lifland: Generator Resident and President of Virginia AI Security Initiative
Binit Maharjan: President and founder of George Mason Technology and Society Club
Thomas Zhong: President and founder of Terps for Safe AI
Advised by Jeremy Kintana: Generalist at Kairos and former Director of Wisconsin AI Safety Initiative

Our concrete output will be a multi-day mini conference in DC in October. We aim to include 30-35 students and have 20-30 guests and speakers from the DC AI policy ecosystem. After running the conference, we intend to collect feedback from attendees to learn how it impacted their thinking and career plans; we will also monitor career paths of attendees after the conference.

Theory of Impact

Many of the most important decisions around AI will be made in DC. DCMC 2.0 will contribute to making sure these important decisions are made sensibly in two ways:

Encouraging talented students interested in AI safety to work in policy. Many smart students assume the default path of technical AI safety, or fall through the cracks because of a lack of interest in the technical side. By showing them the many career paths they could pursue in DC, we encourage them to go into AI policy, where they can work in organizations including think tanks or the federal government itself.
Helping students who want to go into AI policy network and get acclimated to the DC ecosystem. Many students want to work in policy, but have never been to DC, and aren’t yet part of a network of AI policy researchers and advocates. DCMC 2.0 will help these students build up that network and learn about the DC ecosystem, and prepare them for eventually working in DC.

In person events like this have historically been very good at activating students to become more active organizers in their university groups, which also has the added benefit of strengthening talent pipelines. They have also frequently resulted in students pivoting their careers toward AI safety when they otherwise just had a passing interest in it. This is based on outcomes from Action Potential, GCP, and OASIS.

People

Seth Lifland

Team Member

Grants Received– no grants recorded

Add grant

Funding Asks

grantmaking.ai Launch Round

Applied

Minimum

$23,840

Ideal

$31,840

How the money will be spent

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dHJzfOckYYV8e8lTqzkKhozydCdPRwISdNXyEscq0FY/edit

Discussion

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