The Librairy

The Librairy is a weekly newsletter that helps individuals and groups outside the field understand and be equipped with AI safety knowledge and resources.

Project Details

The Librairy is a newsletter series under my SubStack Thick Descriptions that takes one AI safety concept or current topic per issue and explains it in plain language for readers with no technical background, along with curated resources and a shoutout to someone actively working on the problem so that readers can check out their work. I launched it on June 27, 2026 initially writing only essay-like posts, but have now turned it into a fortnightly (for now) issue. I currently have 2 issues of The Librairy since 27th June, and my subscribers have grown from 4 to 15 in that time. My plan is to make this a lifelong project but I need some support to begin dedicating weekly time to the research, writing and outreach aspects of this.

What I will do: I will set aside 10 hours per week for searching for and engaging with the resources to share per the theme/focus of the week, write the draft, publish and invest in creating social media accounts + marketing/ads/promos for more reach to people outside the immediate AI safety and tech field. The newsletter will be aimed at non-technical readers (examples include civil society leaders, psychologists, journalists, HR, doctors, chartered accountants, lawyers, etc), who are not actively engaging with AI safety but do see or come across AI in their work life or the communities they work with, and would benefit from the knowledge of AI safety to understand the uses, risks and approaches to it as AI becomes incorporated more and more across domains.

Who is involved: I am the sole writer of the newsletter. However, the grant would allow me to make at least 1 collaborative issue per month where I invite someone working in an AI safety niche and write the issue with them. (Example, those working on AI and gender bias, AI and child safety, etc). I would also use the grant to hire a part-time social media expert to spend weekly 3 hours to turn my writing and output into social-media suitable content, create a presence online, etc. I would target LinkedIn and Instagram with this (I anyway promote my posts on my personal linkedin and Slack communities that I am a part of). As opposed to the minimum amount, if I get the ideal amount, I would want to conduct recorded interviews with people workin at the intersection of AI and another field, and publish those.

The output: The concrete output would be a weekly newsletter written about specific topics each week, with collab pieces (and possibly interviews) as output once a month, a social media presence through Instagram and LinkedIn, and an aim to get to 100 quality subscribers by 6 months.

Long-term goal: I see this newsletter not being limited to just a newsletter, but turning into an interview series on Youtube, becoming a slack community for those interested in AI safety but work in other fields and learn from each other, and I also aim, down the line (10-12 months) to convert this into a program once I have a community set up, where I will propose incubation to an established organisation and under them implement an applied fellowship program where individuals working in different sectors and fields can do 12 weeks fellowship to learn about AI, safety, basic technical knowledge and spend 4 weeks on an applied project with a mentor to create something for application in the field they work in (tool, framework, policy, etc)

In a nutshell, this grant, over a period of 6 months, would let me move from fortnightly to weekly issues, dedicate consistent time to research and writing, get help for social media presence, grow reach through collaborations with other AI safety communicators and targeted promotion, do all of this without having to worry about how to support myself financially if I keep doing unpaid work, and make this into a long-term avenue for people from other fields to engage with and incorporate AI safety.

Theory of Impact

As we see AI being developed, scale and deployed at rates faster than was ever imaginable, one thign that concerns me the most is how AI safety as a field right now (of course which is developing and is growing), is limited to specific experts and hubs, and a lot of the writing in the field is either too technical, too philosophical or on platforms which arent reachable or even known to the everyday person.

In order to reduce x-risk from AI, we need experts and talent working in the field, yes, but we also need people not in the field to know what AI and AI safety is, what harm and risk looks like and equip them to identify it in their own ecosystems, flag it and know where and how to seek ways of change or mitigation. The very nature of an existential risk makes it an issue for all beings, so to me it seems like an urgent issue to address that we involve more and more people in AI safety and governance, and without this, I don't think we have a chance at reducing x-risk like AI safety, one which requires not just for AI to be safe or regulations to be in place, but for the everyday users or adjacent-deployers of it to understand what it truly means beyond compliance trainings.

Though it has only been 2 issues of The Librairy, and some standalone posts, 2 people have already reached out to me regarding how it helped them. One was a person working in HR consultancy, and spoke about how they were a part of a hiring discussion with their client and the topic of AI came up, and they were able to follow and contribute to it because of what they had read through my newsletter. Another was a school psychologist/counsellor, who mentioned how she had noticed patterns in how the children coming to her spoke about engaging with AI but had not yet thought of it as an AI safety issue until she read the newsletter issue and realised that AI safety is something she needs to learn more about to be able to guide the students who come to her.

People

Sakshi Chaubey

Team Member

Grants Received– no grants recorded

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Funding Asks

grantmaking.ai Launch Round

Applied

Minimum

$7,000

Ideal

$15,000

How the money will be spent

Minimum amount: $7000

Writer stipend = $3,900 ($15/h)
Social Media Manager = $1,560
Promotion = $600
Collaborations = $400
Design tools = $250
Contingency = $290

Monthly equivalent: $1,167

Note: This amount sustains a 10 hours per week commitment to the newsletter, hiring someone for part-time social media, and growing my reach and network by moving it from a fortnightly to a weekly issue.

Ideal amount: $15,000

Writer stipend = $7,800 ($20/h)
Social Media Manager = $2,912
Promotion = $1,200
Collaborations = $1,500
Design tools = $500
Contingency = $1,088

Monthly equivalent: 2,500

Note: This amount increases my hours to 20 per week (double) at a slightly higher rate, which would reduce how much unpaid work, job search processes, and unrelated paid-work I have to engage with, so that I can focus on this more, pursue interviews with professionals (this would increase the social media manager's involvement and subsequent rate as well), grow this more actively and possible, by the end of the grant period, begin the async community I want to start.

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