Episode Details

In my occasional advising calls with aspiring AI Safety folks, one of the most common questions I get is “What courses should I take next?” I often find myself replying: “None; go do stuff instead.”

Fabricando fit faber. By making, one becomes a maker.

There are a lot of courses in AI safety and governance. I’ve helped teach a few. Some are quite good! But after the tenth or twentieth person tells me “I’ve read If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies and taken BlueDot's AGI Strategy and the CAIS AI Safety course, I’m not sure whether I should do ARENA or apply to MATS…” I start to notice a pattern. I want to take them by the shoulders and say “THOSE ARE NOT YOUR ONLY CHOICES.”

Look. MATS is pretty cool. Many of their graduates do good work. It's also, AFAIK, swamped with promising applicants and eager young ML engineers.

If you think MATS sounds like a good fit for you, sure, you should probably apply. And then, while your keyboard is still cooling from the red-hot fire of your earnest expression of interest, you should turn that incandescent determination towards something you can do [...]

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First published:
March 11th, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AWzcocxYTRBtxWA8b/we-do-not-live-by-course-alone

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.