Here's some advice I often find myself giving folks getting into the AI governance space: 

Take trends seriously 

A lot of the impact GovAI and myself have had often relies on making some pretty basic inferences from important trends. E.g. the insight behind the frontier AI regulation work was simple: AI systems seem to keep improving. If they do, they’ll pose national security risks. If that happens, that may well warrant some government intervention. In short, run to where the ball is going.

Make up your own mind

One mistake I sometimes see people making is focusing too much on not being wrong. To not get epistemic egg on their face. That can result in you not take risks, not trying to actually figure things out. That can stunt your own development. But it can also stunt the development on the field. Your job as a researcher is to contribute to our collective understanding of these really tricky issues, not just your own.

Collated and Edited by:
Moritz von Knebel and Markus Anderljung

More and more people are interested in conducting research on open questions in AI governance. At the same time, many AI governance researchers find themselves with more research ideas than they have time to explore. We hope to address both these needs with this informal collection of 78 AI governance research ideas.
​