(Why) we’re launching the next cohort of Generator

Published on October 14, 2026 5:41 AM GMT TL;DR: The first round of the Generator Residency went very well. Our residents created and ran several large-scale fieldbuilding, talent infrastructure, and operational projects that have already had important impacts on the ecosystem.   Six weeks after the program ended, 12 of our 27 residents have been hired to full-time roles at core AI safety orgs, and most have received several offers.  Kairos and Constellation are running a second round from January to April 2027. Apply to the next round of the Generator Residency by November 1st.  Introduction In April, we wrote AI Safety's Biggest Talent Gap Isn't Researchers. It's Generalists.  We wrote this because we noticed that organizations across the ecosystem were struggling to hire for key non-research roles. While these roles were often getting many applicants, candidates didn’t meet basic requirements. The original memo we wrote (that became the post above) inspired us to create the Generator Residency as an intervention to support more generalists trying to break into AI safety. The program concluded six weeks ago, and this post details the successes we’ve seen from the first round of Generator, which have inspired us to launch a second round of the program.      Programs and projects from Generator Programs residents started: Talent Commons, a cross-organization talent directory now run as a Kairos product, which will include data from participants in SPAR, Pathfinder, GCP, Generator, BlueDot courses, Astra, Anthropic Fellows, OpenAI Safety Fellows, and MATS. Praxis, a retreat bringing top national debaters into contact with AI safety: about 40 debaters, including 20 national champions. Lateral, a three-day workshop bringing mid-career professionals to Berkeley to work with AI safety professionals: 705 applications for about 35 seats, and a likelihood to recommend of 9.7 out of 10 from attendees. Gen Stream, a one-week program in London funded through Generator. Longitude DC, an eight-day policy intensive for 15 early-to-mid-career technical AI safety professionals with more than 20 speakers, running October 6 to 13. M3, an AI security matching fellowship, which raised $200k from BlueDot on top of Generator funding. Residents working with mentors at established organizations contributed to: Lab engagement through Nightingale and Constellation. Recruiting and strategy at METR. A frontier robotics benchmark program for Robocurve. Events at Constellation. Fundraising and hiring for a new organization founded by Jeff Alstott. The Plan A launch, in collaboration with AI Futures Project. Founder scouting for Coefficient Giving's Project Tailwind. Other notable projects included: A one-week AI safety world-modeling bootcamp with 25 attendees covering ML fundamentals, futurism, and the technical case for alignment. A workshop series on improving management within AI safety (interviews with more than 10 managers and three workshops). AI safety founder support (meetings with 32 founders, with 6 given deeper support). Support for mid-career operations people transitioning into AI safety (leading to hundreds of referrals across more than 50 roles). A map of the work on AI character and model specs. 12 SPAR generalist projects that came out of the residency. Resident Outcomes  Generator was designed as a path into full-time generalist roles in AI safety. Six weeks after the program ended, 12 of the 27 residents have been hired into full-time positions. Their employers include BlueDot Impact, Guidelight, Constellation, Kairos, METR, Eleos, CBAI, and CEA. In several of these cases, the hiring organization began working with the resident during Generator.  Of the residents who have not yet taken a full-time role, some are running programs that came out of the residency or AI safety university groups at Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford. Others have received offers, including from Coefficient Giving, Quorum, and ARENA, and are deciding between options. A few residents have been pitched by funders on turning their one-time project into a much larger, recurring program.  Below are a couple of selected testimonials from previous residents:  Additional testimonials and information are available on the Generator website. Reflections We stood Generator up in three months. It was the first multi-month in-person program Kairos had run. Most of what we learned was about what residents needed from us, and we think most of it applies to other programs that support people rather than research outputs.  Some key lessons we learned:  1. Candidate selection shaped the program more than anything else.  Candidate selection is, of course, an incredibly important part of any program. However, we were surprised by just how much of our planned programming changed based on the proactivity of our participants.  Residents discovered who the other residents were before the program started and created a group chat and had calls with each oth