Moving to San Francisco for the Sentient Futures Residency

I spent three months this year on the Sentient Futures Residency, where I got to know the AIxAnimals field, meet animal welfare practitioners, and immerse myself in the AI safety scene in San Francisco. It was my first time living in America.

I took on three projects:

• A meta-analysis of speciesism benchmarks
• Contributing towards a mid-training data pipeline
• Planning for the project I’m doing now back in the UK, creating emergent misalignment from factory farming manuals

There were around 12 other residents from varied backgrounds. Mostly from the US, but we also had people from Egypt, Vietnam, Ireland and another Brit besides myself.

The residency provided accommodation near Mox, plus full membership and two meals a day. That gave us our own private office with monitors, and a very homely work environment. Lots of people would relax there and take part in the regular events, and there were free snacks and drinks. It’s also really inspiring to be around other people working in the field, exchanging ideas and getting feedback on your own. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking to enter animal welfare or the AIxAnimals field.

It was also a good chance to see whether moving to San Francisco would be my cup of tea. I’ve often considered it. I’ve lived abroad for the last 12 years and enjoy it, living in North America is something I’ve long wanted to try, the salary is very competitive, and it’s probably the best place to get started in AI safety.

The trip has made me update against it though:

• It’s a long way from my friends and family in Europe
• The visa process is arduous and would likely commit me to the country for a significant time
• For the high impact jobs I’d be competing for, I think my counterfactual would be bad. I’m more likely than most to leave early and come home, and I don’t keep the same hours as most of the EAs working in SF

It’s a lovely city though, and it was very easy to make friends and meet new people. I’d highly recommend it to people who don’t share my circumstances and beliefs.

The residency was fairly unstructured. The first two weeks were packed with activities, training exercises, onboarding and networking events. After that it tapered off to one or two events a week, usually Q&A sessions with people in the animal welfare or AI safety space. That doesn’t include the after-work activities we did together, which were very good from a networking standpoint.

The day-to-day culture was unusual from a European standpoint. We spent long days at the coworking space, often from mid-morning until late at night, but a lot of that time went on socialising and events, meals with other residents, Sentient Futures and the other organisations at Mox, and chatting to people over the free drinks the space provided. Still, I’ve been working part time for the last two and a half years, and I don’t think that pace suits me.

I preferred the lack of structure as I had plenty to do. It might be less suited to people who don’t have a good list of project ideas to go for.

I learnt a lot more about the AIxAnimals space by spending time among the people in it. The main surprise was how useful it is to be in San Francisco. We regularly got feedback on our projects, in some cases from people at frontier labs, usually through contacts we’d met at parties or after work events.

If you’re interested in the type of AIxAnimals projects SentientFutures work on you can find a list of past incubator projects here.