Don't just aim for Frontier Labs

Why AI safety should live wherever AI is deployed, not just where it is built.I spotted a request for feedback on whether someone with AI safety experience should take a for-profit company and "get their hands dirty" as an AI transformation leader, pivoting away from a strategy focused on AI research labs. I work at a Saa S company, and find it meaningful to de-risk AI in products that impact millions of people. If experienced safety advocates avoid opportunities where AI is deployed and focus only on existential risks, wouldn't that worsen near-term outcomes?I actually held the default view after my first 5-10 readings on AI risk in the 2010's (including Nick Bostrom, Tim Urban, 80,000 Hours, Future of Life Institute). Specifically, by 2021, I had developed the intuition that making an impact on AI safety did require working at an AI lab. After all, the lab was where most AI-accelerating change appeared to originate, and therefore had to be the best place to steer towards positive outcomes.The last 3 years changed my mind, if only through actual, published incidents. Even with recursive self-improvement at our doorstep, I believe that absolute control over our future (especially the future of people alive today) is difficult enough to warrant a time discount on AI-specific X-Risk. This underscores the merits of assigning moral weight to real-world harms in the present and, therefore, allocating some resources to mitigate them. Empirically, they both get interest and funding, according to Erich Grunewald. Now, there are some information gaps in both, but while Catastrophic Risk is material (MIT 2026), we also understand that Frontier AI labs benefit enormously from spotlighting X-risk and downplaying the present risks and non-catastrophic harms of LLMs (Karen Hao).What grounded, rational arguments can we bring to folks debating whether to join a "regular for-profit company"? Should AI safety talent be focused on the labs that develop AI? The precedent in the cybersec