Kairos & Constellation's Generator Residency kicks off with 27 AI safety generalists

Kairos and Constellation kicked off the first cohort of the Generator Residency this summer in Berkeley, bringing together 27 AI safety generalists for a three-month immersive program. The residency is designed for professionals who want to apply broad skills—ranging from organizational leadership and government experience to cybersecurity and operations—to the AI safety field. Residents receive direct mentorship from experienced researchers and generalists, and are working on a wide spectrum of projects that address ecosystem gaps. These include running workshops for professionals transitioning into AI safety, building a cross-organizational talent directory, supporting university AI safety groups, serving as chiefs of staff at new organizations, and developing tools for model welfare and model specification research.

Several concrete initiatives have already taken shape. Seth Lifland and Jacob Brinton are running Lateral Workshop, a fully funded three-day program (September 11–13 in Berkeley) that helps mid-career and senior professionals explore career transitions into AI safety through expert talks, small-group discussions, and one-on-one mentoring. Matt Handzel is serving as chief of staff to Jeff Alstott, focusing on recruiting and hiring infrastructure for a new AI safety organization. Meanwhile, Matthew Kenney is building a collaborative platform for conducting model welfare interviews and annotating self-reports, enabling researchers to run branching conversations, automate interviewer turns, and review AI-generated annotations with structured codebooks. These projects highlight how generalists can move quickly and flexibly to strengthen the AI safety ecosystem.