What drives AI progress?

What can increasingly capable AI systems do?

How could progress accelerate from here?

Pathways to Harm

Loss of Control

Authoritarianism

Biological Misuse

Bring the arguments together

What’s at stake?

What future do you want?

Competition and coordination problems

Responding to the Hugging Face incident

Orienting to the strategy

The technical challenge

Following the transition

Pacing and alternative strategies

Examining the objections

Your assessment of the situation 

Choose your focus

Go deep in one area

Make a plan

Create your 1-pager (optional)

Optional advice

Next steps: Deeper-dive courses

Next steps: Programs

In Unit 4, we evaluated strategies for reducing AI risks, using the AI Futures Project’s Plan A as a central case study.

Very few people in the world are trying to steer the development of AGI towards beneficial outcomes for humanity. We estimate it’s fewer than 2,000 full-time people!

An especially high-impact way to contribute is making this the focus of your career, joining the relatively small number of people working full-time to help AI go well. You could also contribute alongside your existing commitments by working on projects part-time or helping others understand AI.

In this unit, you'll create an action plan for how you could start contributing. This is only the beginning - you're not expected to have a perfect answer right now. 


Based on everything you've learned about so far during this course, prioritize an intervention from the Tailwind list. 

To help you prioritize, consider which intervention could address a pathway to harm you examined in Unit 3, drawing on your assessment of strategies in Unit 4.


Prioritize a single intervention

- What does success look like with this intervention? How does it help make AI go well? 
- What's the current status of this intervention? Are governments, AI companies or other actors already doing it? If not, why not? 
- Which organizations are working on this which you can contribute to or join?

Spend ~1 hour on this.


Do your own research

In this unit, you'll synthesize everything you've learned so far during the course, and you'll develop your own action plan for how you could contribute to making AI go well. 

We don't expect this to be super detailed or a perfect plan - treat this as a first draft, and something that's _good enough_ to help you get started.


Spend ~1 hour on this.

Once you're finished, 1) make the Google Doc shareable, 2) paste it below, and 3) share it with your group in Slack!


Write your personal action plan

Now that you've explored the landscape of AI safety, it's time to clarify your own path forward.

Start by creating your 1-pager — a concise document that captures what you're looking for and what you bring to the field. This is useful both for your own thinking and as something you can share with potential employers or collaborators.

We don't expect this to be super detailed or a perfect representation. Treat this as a first draft, and something that's _good enough_ to help you get started.


Spend ~1 hour on this.

Once you're finished, make the Google Doc shareable and share it with your group in Slack!


Create your 1-pager

Check out these resources if you'd like to receive career advice on AI governance, technical AI safety, or biosecurity. 


This course gave you the strategic landscape: what is at stake in the race to AGI, the drivers of AI progress, pathways to catastrophic harm, and strategies for addressing those risks.

Our deeper-dive courses let you specialize in the area that fits your background and where you want to contribute. Intensive and part-time versions of each of these courses kick off every month.


AGI Strategy

Go deep in one area

Exercises