Building & Scaling the AI Safety Research Community, with Ryan Kidd of MATS

Ryan Kidd, Co-Executive Director of MATS, shares an inside view of the AI safety field and the world’s largest AI safety research talent pipeline. PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://matsprogram.org/s26-tcr. He discusses AGI timelines, the blurred line between safety and capabilities work, and why expert disagreement remains so high. In the second half, Ryan breaks down MATS’ research archetypes, what top AI safety organizations are looking for, and how applicants can stand out with the right projects, skills, and career strategy.

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CHAPTERS:

(00:00) About the Episode

(03:50) MATS mission, AGI timelines

(13:43) Evaluating current AI safety (Part 1)

(13:48) Sponsor: Tasklet

(14:59) Evaluating current AI safety (Part 2) (Part 1)

(28:11) Sponsors: Agents of Scale | Shopify

(30:58) Evaluating current AI safety (Part 2) (Part 2)

(30:59) Safety research versus capabilities

(40:01) Frontier labs, deployment, governance

(51:51) MATS tracks and governance

(01:04:11) Research archetypes and tooling

(01:12:25) Labor market and careers

(01:20:09) Applicant selection and preparation

(01:29:33) Admissions, salaries, and compute

(01:40:34) Future programs and paradigms

(01:54:11) Outro

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