The Missing Product Layers in AI Safety

Epistemic Status: We’re highly confident in how the larger tech industry defines roles, makes decisions and builds products based on our years of experience in it. We’re fairly confident in the frontier labs operational models based on their job postings. Our suggestions for what to build and how to have gone through some pressure testing, and confidence could be raised through discussion with leaders in AI Safety to further understand what makes this space unique. Intro Frontier labs have adopted proven methodologies from tech to build their capabilities using matrixed organizations, including builders. This allows them to advance at a rapid pace, keeping their flywheel spinning, while AI safety struggles to keep up. To prevent serious risks of advanced AI, AI safety needs to close that gap and one way to accomplish that is by building products that address common needs and diffuse AI safety outputs to compound their impact. There are aligned people that have extensive experience building products, but are not currently finding opportunities in existing organizations or through founder support to build them. We (the authors and collaborators) each have 10+ years of experience at s