Apart Research Women in AI Safety Hackathon
Earlier last month, I spent my weekend participating in the Apart Research Women in AI Safety Hackathon. My goals were twofold: to research potential AI safety solutions and to connect with more people in this growing community!
What is the Women in AI Safety Hackathon?
The Women in AI Safety Hackathon brings together talented individuals to tackle crucial challenges in AI development and deployment. This event particularly encourages women and underrepresented groups to contribute their unique perspectives to critical areas of AI safety, including alignment, governance, security, and evaluation.
As AI systems become increasingly powerful, diverse perspectives in their development and safety mechanisms are important. This hackathon provided a platform for participants to:
Collaborate with leading women researchers and practitioners in AI safety
Develop practical solutions to pressing AI safety challenges
Build lasting connections in the AI safety community
Receive mentorship from experienced professionals
Present ideas to industry experts
Challenge Tracks
The hackathon featured several focused challenge tracks:
AI Alignment & Values
Developing methods for value learning
Improving reward modeling
Enhancing the interpretability of AI systems
Safety Evaluations & Testing
Creating robust testing frameworks
Developing evaluation metrics
Building assessment tools for AI systems
AI Governance & Policy
Designing accountability frameworks
Developing oversight mechanisms
Creating safety standards
Technical AI Safety
Addressing mesa-optimization
Working on robustness
Developing safety architectures
Our Project: Preparing for AGI
During the hackathon, my team and I worked on examining the prospect of AGI from multiple angles — careers, finances, and logistical readiness. Drawing on various discussions from LessWrong, our research highlights how entrepreneurs and those who develop AI-complementary skills may thrive under accelerated timelines, while traditional, incremental career-building could falter.
Our project explored financial preparedness, focusing on striking a balance between stable investments (like retirement accounts) and riskier, AI-exposed opportunities, with an emphasis on retaining adaptability amid volatile market conditions. We also examined logistical considerations — housing decisions, health, and strong social networks — which can buffer against unexpected disruptions if entire industries or locations are suddenly reshaped by AI.
The collaborative environment and expert mentorship during the hackathon helped us refine our approach and consider angles we might have otherwise missed. Through intense discussion and research, we developed a practical roadmap for individuals seeking to navigate the uncertainties of an era when AGI might rapidly transform both labor markets and daily life.
Learn More
Interested in our work? You can read more about our paper “Preparing for Accelerated AGI Timelines” on the Apart Research website.
If you’re interested in participating in future hackathons or learning more about women in AI safety initiatives, I encourage you to follow Apart Research/join their community!