"Common mistakes in AI safety group organizing" by Nikola Jurkovic

Back in the day, I was a very active AI safety group organizer. I commonly notice people making the same mistakes across many clubs. I have written down a list of some of these mistakes hoping people will avoid them in the future:

• Reading groups often require that people read things before meetings. This is a mistake. People often don't do the readings. And the lack of common knowledge that everyone has read the reading degrades the conversation quality.
  • Instead, have longer meetings, serve food (so, lunch/dinner meeting slots), and read during the actual meeting.
• Reading groups often don't sort people into cohorts properly. Mainly, they fail at clustering people into clusters of roughly equal ML knowledge and age. Grad students don't want to discuss a paper with freshmen. People with lots of ML knowledge don't want to discuss a paper with people with no ML knowledge.
  • Instead, group people with people similar to them in ML knowledge and age.
• Reading groups often rely on digital materials instead of physical printouts. Screens are distracting and there is no common knowledge that people are paying attention.
  • Neatly print every reading ahead of time instead.
• Clubs [...]

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First published:
September 19th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XFzqDJjAJBt8fkn8i/common-mistakes-in-ai-safety-group-organizing

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.