Enisa is currently co‑launching GenerAISts, a project that conducts primary research across the AI safety ecosystem on talent pipelines. Before this, she spent 6+ years in tech leadership (data & analytics), LLM post-training, computer science education, and entrepreneurship.
Enisa Ismaili
Karma: 53
New talent is coming to AI safety. What happens next?
Thank you for the thoughtful pushback.
On the framing: “maturing” is intentional, and it was meant as a process descriptor rather than a claim of arrival. The field has become more institutionalized and more legible to the outside world at each stage: around 2010, when formal technical and governance research first began scaling; through 2020, when it experienced rapid acceleration; and again after 2022, when, driven largely by the public release of large language models, it saw a talent influx and early institutional infrastructure taking shape, and continuing.
We recognize the counterarguments. Whether they reflect a young field finding its footing or something more structurally stuck is a question we are carrying into the next phase, we do not yet have the data to settle it. Same situation with field attractiveness, reputational risk, and funding models: these are factors we are collecting input on, and your framing here is a useful addition to that picture. The suggestion to look outward, interviewing mature fields on how they navigated similar problems, is a fair methodological point and one we will take forward.
On the “generalist” label: we flag the limitation in the Terminology section. It is shorthand for a cluster of non-technical roles, rather than a claim that those roles lack specialization. Appendix 3 has the fuller breakdown.
The suggestion on aggregate spend is a fair one, and its feasibility is worth exploring, thank you for the idea. However, what we see now also suggests that historic data might be not very accurate in predicting today’s and tomorrow’s state of the issue.
We appreciate the challenge. If any of this connects to direct experience on either side of hiring, we would welcome the conversation.
Thank you, Jamie. I appreciate you flagging this, and I am glad the observation resonated. I have followed up by email to discuss further.