Lens courses cover an important gap in the AI safety ecosystem. I'm recommending them now to everyone who's starting (or already established) in the field!
Ignacio Roldan Fernandez · FacilitatorMARS Fellow
Lens Academy
Lens unblocks AI safety upskilling pipeline by running intermediate online courses on topics like Compute Verification, AI Control, Advanced Strategy, Theoretical Alignment, and more.
participants
content rating
meeting rating
want to take another course
alumni want to volunteer
Ignacio Roldan Fernandez · FacilitatorLens and its tutor pushes you more than you might want to be pushed in the moment, but it's actually really helpful to really make you dig in and make you learn.
Nick Shapiro · AlumniFounder & senior software engineer
What comes after BlueDot? There's a massive gap between what courses can currently offer and what fellowships require. Lens fills that gap, not just with a familiar cohort structure, but with a coach that scales with you.
Daniel Walsh · AlumniGen Stream Fellow
Courses
See all coursesCompute Verification
What it takes for adversarial countries to verify, and thus trust, each others AI commitements? Study the technical and governance challenges it takes for a multinational AI deal.
WIP
AI Control
Can we get useful work even from a misaligned model? Study control and evaluation of models, especially the misaligned ones.
Advanced AI Safety Strategy
Build accurate models of how the AI future could unfold, so you can reason about which interventions may matter most.
AI Risk Fundamentals
Why could superintelligent AI be catastrophic, and what should you do about it? Decide what you believe in this intro-course.
Our courses are based on leading resources from Redwood Research, Iliad, XLab, and others. We collaborate with experts to stress-test and improve.
Courses are usually 25-30 hours in total. 90m meetings happen every 5 hours of material. We run 1-week intensives, or 5-week part-time cohorts.
Problem
AI safety is failing to meet intermediate upskilling demand.
100s of alumni finish intro-courses every month. Yet, next-step intermediate programs are bottlenecked by in-person costs or mentors, leading to 80-90% rejection rates. Hence, a lot of people either leave the field, or roam around inefficiently.
1. Beginner
Online intro-courses, university groups
2. Intermediate
In-person month-long bootcamps
3. Advanced programs
Highly-mentored, months-long programs
4. Paid fellowships & work
Full-time, mentored and paid fellowships
Solution
We offer online intermediate courses and projects to fix that.
Online programs allow us to scale and meet the incoming demand. This helps both with improving quantity and quality of available talent.
1. Beginner
Online intro-courses, university groups
2. Intermediate
In-person month-long bootcamps AND online intermediate courses
3. Advanced programs
Highly-mentored, months-long programs
4. Paid fellowships & work
Full-time, mentored and paid fellowships
Projects
Work in progress
WIP
Technical Project
A lightly mentored technical project for you to practice, build portfolio, and make a real contribution.
Dates to be announcedWIP
Governance Project
A lightly mentored governance project for you to practice, build portfolio, and make a real contribution.
Dates to be announcedWIP
Fieldbuilding Project
A lightly mentored fieldbuilding project for you to practice, build portfolio, and make a real contribution.
Dates to be announcedSome Testimonials
Lens courses cover an important gap in the AI safety ecosystem. I'm recommending them now to everyone who's starting (or already established) in the field!
Ignacio Roldan Fernandez · FacilitatorMARS Fellow
Lens and its tutor pushes you more than you might want to be pushed in the moment, but it's actually really helpful to really make you dig in and make you learn.
Nick Shapiro · AlumniFounder & senior software engineer
What comes after BlueDot? There's a massive gap between what courses can currently offer and what fellowships require. Lens fills that gap, not just with a familiar cohort structure, but with a coach that scales with you.
Daniel Walsh · AlumniGen Stream Fellow
The groups were excellent. Even though we did not know each other, we communicated openly and felt free to share our opinions regardless of experience.Alumni
I probably would not have taken the initiative to read the book on my own. Hearing what other people thought made it much more engaging.Alumni
Learning alongside people from different cultures and perspectives was very helpful.Alumni
The platform worked well overall, and I would recommend it to someone else.Alumni
Lens makes difficult material feel approachable for people who might otherwise be scared to read it alone.Alumni
The discussions gave me a welcoming place to speak freely, learn from others, and dig into the material.Alumni