Encode Africa AI Safety Essentials and Build Fellowship

We are running a 2-part fellowship which focuses on allowing exceptional African undergraduate talents to learn about priorities in AI Safety and how they can think about AI Safety career pathways, then finally giving them a chance to join a build fellowship where they work on a variety of portfolio-building projects[think of people who want to begin substaks that right about AI Safety issues in Africa, people who want to make content about AI safety and africa, people who want to run groups at their universities and people who want to work on short African relevant technical research project] under mentorship.

The first part of the fellowship is the 6-week AI Safety essentials track, which runs on facilitated group discussions aiming to make the AI safety field less confusing to African talents who are thinking about a career in AI Safety, mapping out where work is currently being done in Africa and globally, what priorities are of focus, and how they can effectively build a footprint in the field. Fellows from the essentials track leave with a concrete clarity on what entry points and effective contributions look like for them.

The final part is the build track w, where fellows commit 6 weeks to work on a project that contributes directly to building their footprints in AI Safety. We are looking at supporting projects that have clear milestones they want to achieve within those 6 weeks, prioritizing ideas that contribute to strengthening the overall potential of the African AI safety field. We personally will focus on people who want to do coms and policy [ writing a relevant op-ed, starting a substack or podcast to talk abou AI Safety and africa, looking at launching an advocacy coalition, going to ai content creation] and technical track [ who want to replicate technical ai safety research in african settings, run evals and red teaming on models in local contexts, prototyping safety as a service tools]. This track will run highly on agency and independence, as we believe they are two of the great traits of people who want to work in AI Safety. From our end, we will pair fellows with mentors who meet with fellows for milestone check-ins as they work on their project milestones. Fellows get a $1k stipend as they work on their projects.

We are seeking this fund to ensure the smooth operation of our fellowships, which seek to build the capacity of talented African youth who want to work in AI safety.