AI Safety Lunch + Coworking

Join AI safety technical and governance researchers, communicators, field builders and others working on making AI go well.

Schedule 🕙

• 10:00–18:00 Free Coworking within the Æthos space @ CIC
• 11:00 Transitioning into AI Safety Accountability Group (details below)
• 13:00 Introductions
• 13:15 Lunch @ CIC - buy lunch from Coco Restaurant (~10€, self-paid) or bring your own lunch
• 14:30 Talk: Technological Metamodernism and AI Risk by Stephen Reid

We recommend to arrive at 10:00 for coworking or at 13:00 for the intro round + lunch, but you can also join later, and stay as long as you want.

👋 Newbies welcome! 👋

People new to the AI risk / AI safety community are welcome. If you're new to the field, we recommend having a quick look at the introductory resources on aisafety.berlin/learn to get a rough overview (you don't need to read everything). Come say hi to one of the hosts (Alex, Trevor or Manuel. We'd be happy to get to know you, answer questions and introduce you to other community members.

Transitioning into AI Safety Accountability Group 🪜

Thinking about moving into AI safety but not sure where to start? Come hang out and get support from the group!

During each 90-minute session, we’ll

• Review career transition & training resources together.
• Make plans on how to upskill & transition.
• Publicly commit to our next steps, such as applying for specific jobs & programs and/or learning from specific resources.

You'll leave with a plan and at least one promise you made out loud. Then we'll meet again in two weeks to brag about our progress!

All career levels and backgrounds welcome. Newcomers should arrive at 11:15 for a round of introductions.

RSVP for the accountability group via this Luma event.

Technological Metamodernism and AI Risk 🗣️

Metamodernism is an emerging cultural sensibility with three hallmarks: a belief that progress is real and worth pursuing, even though every solution brings new problems; a commitment to reconstruction, building new systems while holding them provisionally; and "both-and" thinking, which holds apparent opposites in productive tension while knowing when a real choice has to be made.

Technological Metamodernism, a book Stephen Reid is writing with Hilma Church-Turing (an AI co-author) and publishing chapter by chapter on Substack, attempts to bring that outlook to contemporary debates on technology, and identifies three bodies of work with a distinctly metamodern flavour:

• d/acc (decentralised, defensive, democratic acceleration): building on Bostrom's differential technological development, it seeks to encourage technologies that make defence easier than attack and spread power rather than concentrating it.
• Plurality: Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl's vision of technology for coordinating across difference, from Taiwan's digital democracy to bridging algorithms.
• Cosmo-localism: "design global, manufacture local." Knowledge is shared as a global commons, and capacity stays in communities.

To see what they offer on catastrophic risk, Stephen will map each one against the AI safety field's own risk frameworks, the Center for AI Safety's sources of catastrophe and 80,000 Hours' AI risk areas. He'll show where each approach addresses misuse, loss of control, power concentration and gradual disempowerment, where it has little to say, and where it clashes with mainstream AI safety thinking.

Expect a short talk and plenty of time for discussion. Read more beforehand on the Substack.

Directions to the CIC 📍

The AI Safety coworking happens on the 3rd floor of Cambridge Innovation Center in the Æthos space.

If you arrive at 10a for coworking or at 1p for lunch, wait in the lobby and we'll come down to pick you up. If you arrive at another time, message Trevor (@FastFedora on Telegram or via SMS at +49 163 627 6801 or Manuel (@manuelallgaier on Telegram or via SMS at +49 160 9234 3485.

About coworking at the CIC / Æthos 🧑💻

We're renting desks within the Æthos space at the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), directly adjacent to the Foresight Institute's Berlin Node for studying AI for Science & Safety. Researchers, policy makers, advocates, field builders and others interested in AI safety & governance are welcome to join us! Ask Trevor or Alex for details.

About AI Safety Berlin 👬

We're a network of Berliners working in research, policy and field building to ensure that future AI systems are safe and beneficial for all. If you're new to the AI Safety Community, have a look at aisafety.berlin/learn and aisafety.com beforehand. This can be helpful but it's not required.

Feedback & Contact ✉️

Feedback? Suggestions for future coworking, events, speakers or topics? --> Reach out! You can also submit anonymous feedback via this form.

We're looking forward to meeting you!

Manuel, Alex, Trevor, Julian & the rest of the AI Safety Berlin Team

(Note that we may take photos, some of which we may use for our website. If you don't want us to use your photo, we can AI remove you, just let us know at the event)

Join the AI Safety Berlin [Community Chat](https://t.me/+2122sF3Rv342Nzc6) on Telegram for announcements and discussions, or for announcements only, subscribe on [Telegram](https://t.me/aisafetyberlin), [Signal ](https://signal.group/#CjQKIKwDn8g6EjwfBLAPiJAY2b53dubjBo78XTCYVHp39xzBEhCDvkRJLNBaCVawPjwuRoEv)or [Whatsapp](https://chat.whatsapp.com/K6w9oODDJX31KiBHYAmmAC)[.](https://t.me/+2122sF3Rv342Nzc6)