“Psychological Support for AI Safety Researchers Is Neglected and Easy to Provide” by Ihor Kendiukhov
Podcast: LessWrong (30+ Karma)Published On: Tue Sep 08 2026
Description: I think there is a big chunk of relatively low-hanging-fruit-style neglected work useful for AI safety which I can roughly label as “psychological help for AI safety workers”. I didn’t run actual studies, but the amount of anecdotal evidence is big enough for me to claim it is significant and generalizable. I think the utility of this work will increase, perhaps dramatically, as people face more and more pressure due to the upcoming Singularity. Many people operate in war-like conditions and experience war-like stress. This must be managed. Definitions What follows is a working definition of “psychological work”. It includes things like: Literal mental health support and stress management.Providing motivation when the probability of success is very low and the stakes are very high.Keeping people from burning out while maintaining their abnormal levels of productivity optimized for a short time window of human agency.Preventing people from doing harmful things in desperation.Keeping people from doing useless but morally compelling work.Family and relationship work: partners and parents who don't share the timelines, anticipatory grief, how to talk about any of this at dinner.Doing something with the fact that NDA-bound and infohazard-adjacent work can't be [...] ---Outline:(00:45) Definitions(02:04) Current state(07:21) Why we should care about that(09:42) We must avoid making things worse(11:31) Current measures are not enough(14:12) Better measures --- First published: September 8th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TuHhSxGYgSudKeDtb/psychological-support-for-ai-safety-researchers-is-neglected --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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