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 runs intermediate online courses on Compute Verification, AI Control, Advanced Strategy, Theoretical and Empirical Alignment.
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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 make you dig in and make you learn.
Nick Shapiro · AlumFounder & 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 · Alum turned facilitatorGen Stream Fellow
Courses
See all coursesAI Risk Fundamentals
Why could superintelligent AI be catastrophic, and what should you do about it? Decide what you believe in this intro-course.
AI Futures: Forecasting & Strategy
Advanced strategy course for improving your forecasting, threat modeling, and theory of change thinking.
Compute Verification Track
Compute Verification 1
What it takes for adversarial countries to verify, and thus trust, each others AI commitments? Study the technical and governance challenges it takes for a multinational AI deal.
Dates to be announcedCompute Verification 2
How mature hardware verification really is, what cloud records prove, and how a determined actor evades it all. The advanced second half of the compute verification track.
Dates to be announced
AI Control Track
AI Control 1
How can we safely use powerful AI systems that may actively subvert oversight? Study threat models, control evaluations, monitoring, and practical protocols.
Dates to be announcedAI Control 2
Collusion, sandbagging, research sabotage, and threat models beyond scheming. The advanced second half of the AI control track.
Dates to be announced
Theoretical Alignment Track
Alignment Theory of Deep Learning
Why does deep learning work, and what does the answer mean for alignment? A one-week slice of the Iliad Intensive: singular learning theory, training dynamics, and data attribution.
More courses in this track?
We’re considering running four courses built from the Iliad Intensive on: Alignment Theory, Learning Theory, Abstractions & Interpretability, and Agent Foundations. Leaving your email will help us prioritize.
Empirical Alignment Track
Mechanistic Interpretability
Build a transformer from scratch, then open it up. Extract activations, train linear probes, use sparse autoencoders, and more. Importantly, test your theory-of-change thinking and dual use of mech-interp. Built from ARENA's Chapter 1.
Dates to be announcedMore courses in this track?
We’re considering running four courses built from ARENA on: Interpretability, RL, Evals, and Alignment Science. Leaving your email will help us prioritize.
Our courses are based on leading resources from Redwood Research, XLab, Iliad, ARENA, and others. We collaborate with experts to stress-test and improve them.
Courses are usually 25-30 hours in total. 90m meetings happen every 5 hours of material. We run 1-week intensives, or part-time cohorts over 3 weeks.
Projects
Technical Project
A lightly mentored technical project for you to practice, build portfolio, and make a real contribution.
Dates to be announcedGovernance Project
A lightly mentored governance project for you to practice, build portfolio, and make a real contribution.
Dates to be announcedFieldbuilding Project
A lightly mentored fieldbuilding project for you to practice, build portfolio, and make a real contribution.
Dates to be announcedProblem
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
Some 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 make you dig in and make you learn.
Nick Shapiro · AlumFounder & 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 · Alum turned facilitatorGen 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.Alum
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.Alum
Learning alongside people from different cultures and perspectives was very helpful.Alum
The platform worked well overall, and I would recommend it to someone else.Alum
Lens makes difficult material feel approachable for people who might otherwise be scared to read it alone.Alum
The discussions gave me a welcoming place to speak freely, learn from others, and dig into the material.Alum