AI Safety Los Angeles (AISLA)

Manifund Grant Progress Update, April 2026, Kristina Vaia

Overview

Six months ago I received a $2,500 seed grant to establish Los Angeles’s first dedicated AI community with a strong focus on safety, governance, and high-impact work. This update is both an honest accounting of what happened and a case for why the next phase deserves continued investment.

What I Tried and What I Learned

The original format was focused on academic discussions on technical papers and the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. We held four sessions, all posted on Partiful, and provided a great spot for discussion, food, and refreshments.

We eventually learned that it was not working optimally. The format attracted too narrow an audience, was heavily rationality adjacent, and less accessible to researchers, engineers, and builders who were not already embedded in EA and LessWrong circles.

The long academic discussion sessions were tiring, not everyone was engaged, and the overall energy wasn’t what I’d hoped for. Los Angeles is not San Francisco. The community here is more diverse, more creative, and requires a different entry point, so I made a deliberate decision to change the model entirely.

Our Pivot: Leading with Community

We shifted to informal, casual dinners as the anchor event format, creating a space for intellectually stimulating discussions on AI safety and whatever else guests wanted to explore. Lower barrier to entry, higher quality conversations. I believe the depth emerges naturally once trust is established, not because it’s overly structured or mandated by an agenda.

What surprised me most is that removing structure did not reduce intellectual depth, it dramatically improved it. Conversations were sharper, more candid, and more interdisciplinary. Instead of performative or overly academic discussion, people engaged in real, high-quality exchanges across multiple disciplines.

AISLA is early stage infrastructure for the AI ecosystem in Los Angeles, currently expressed through curated, high signal gatherings.

AISLA functions as a high trust, in person coordination layer for the AI ecosystem in Los Angeles, enabling talent discovery, relationship building, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

AISLA is intentionally evolving beyond a purely “AI safety” frame into a broader AI community with a strong safety and governance backbone. This allows us to engage a wider set of researchers, engineers, founders, and operators while still anchoring the community in thoughtful, long-term considerations.

We intentionally allow conversations to move beyond AI safety when it makes sense. Some of the most engaging discussions naturally expand into adjacent areas like physics, systems thinking, or broader questions about technology and society. There is no pressure to stay narrowly on topic. That kind of restriction tends to reduce curiosity and energy.

Recent Validation

Our most recent dinner in March 2026 validated this completely. Eight people (including me) gathered at 1212 Santa Monica, seated around a cozy fire pit.

The room included:

• a researcher from RAND
• a Stanford affiliated fellow
• an AE Studio employee working under CEO Judd Rosenblatt
• a machine learning engineer
• a senior technologist in cybersecurity
• a technically strong rationality community member
• an entrepreneur using AI in her business

The conversation ranged from alignment strategy and governance to real world deployment risks, physics, and career paths in AI.

This is the cross-disciplinary mix AISLA was meant to generate, it just took a format change to unlock it.

This event also reflects early validation that AISLA can attract high signal participants across research, industry, and policy, and facilitate meaningful interaction between them.

Team Update

Nathaniel Burnham has joined as co-founder.

Nathaniel leads the Los Angeles rationality community and hosts RAT meetings every Wednesday. His network includes prominent figures in alignment research.

Together we bring complementary strengths. I focus on operations, communications, and building the network. Nathaniel brings technical credibility, alignment network depth, and has contributed to building our website and outreach.

My background across AI governance, technical research exposure (MINT Lab), and operations allows me to engage both technical and non-technical participants and connect them into the broader AI safety ecosystem.

Engagement with the Broader Ecosystem

I stay actively connected to the broader AI ecosystem through both content and in-person engagement, including events in Berkeley, EAG conferences, and ongoing conversations with researchers, policy professionals, and builders.

This allows AISLA to function not just as a local community, but as a bridge between Los Angeles and the broader AI ecosystem.

This positioning enables AISLA to surface emerging talent in Los Angeles and connect them to opportunities, organizations, and conversations happening in more established hubs.

Public Communications and Growing Profile

@asktheaigirl is my AI education platform across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, now focusing primarily on YouTube for deeper engagement.

The goal is to translate complex AI ideas into accessible, thoughtful content while directing attention into AISLA and the broader ecosystem.

This creates a pipeline:

public awareness → community → deeper engagement

Infrastructure and Online Presence

Website: https://aisafetyla.com/
Discord + WhatsApp groups for coordination
Events hosted via Partiful

LA AI Landscape and Opportunity

Los Angeles has a growing but fragmented AI ecosystem, including:

• AE Studio’s alignment team
• UCLA and USC research groups
• BlueDot and AISAP communities
• EA and rationality networks

What’s missing is consistent, centralized infrastructure - a stable, high signal environment where people in AI can reliably connect, exchange ideas, and build relationships over time.

This is not a discovery problem, it is a coordination problem.

AISLA is designed to become the coordination layer for this ecosystem.

Unlike more saturated hubs like San Francisco, Los Angeles represents an undercoordinated but high potential talent pool, making it a uniquely high leverage environment for early engagement.

Expected Outputs (Next 6 Months)

• 80–120 total attendees across events
• 20–30 high-signal recurring members
• 10–15 individuals pursuing AI safety or governance more seriously
• 3–5 individuals entering relevant courses, research programs, or roles

While AISLA is early stage, the goal is to move beyond connection into tangible engagement with the AI safety ecosystem.

The Next Phase: Four Pillars

Over the next six months, AISLA will expand across four pillars:

• Community dinners – anchor events driving retention and trust
• Discussions and debates – focused but engaging intellectual exploration
• Workshops and build sessions – shifting from discussion to action
• Network and talent layer – mapping and connecting people across the ecosystem

We plan to host 2-4 events per month.

Funding Request: $13,000

• Monthly dinners: $3,600
• Discussions/networking: $1,800
• Build sessions: $1,200
• Marketing/ops: $1,000
• Organizer stipends: $5,400

This funding supports not just events, but the development of a consistent coordination layer that enables ongoing relationship building, knowledge exchange, and talent engagement in the Los Angeles AI ecosystem.

Sustainability and Long-Term Model

While this phase is grant funded, AISLA is designed to evolve into a sustainable model over time. Potential revenue streams include event sponsorships, partnerships with AI organizations, and eventually a light membership layer or programming.

The goal is to build something that is not only impactful, but durable and self-sustaining.

Why This Matters Now

AI is rapidly shaping policy, national security, and real world deployment.

Los Angeles has the ingredients - talent, universities, industry, but lacks cohesive infrastructure.

AISLA fills that gap with a model that is:

• accessible
• intellectually serious
• cross-disciplinary

Long-Term Vision

AISLA is not just a meetup group. It’s an early stage effort to build foundational community infrastructure for AI in Los Angeles.

The long-term goal is to evolve into a high trust, high signal network that enables talent flow, collaboration, and eventually company formation in the region.

In this sense, AISLA is directionally similar to South Park Commons or Mox, but focused on AI and rooted in the Los Angeles ecosystem.

This model is not limited to AI specific communities. Similar high signal talent networks have emerged in broader tech ecosystems. For example, NextPlay (founded by Ben Lang) brings together high performing individuals navigating career transitions and has become a powerful node for talent, opportunity, and deal flow. AISLA applies a similar principle - curating high signal individuals and facilitating meaningful connection, but within the AI ecosystem.

Over time, AISLA could expand into:

• structured membership
• talent pipelines
• partnerships with AI labs
• programs or fellowships
• a physical space

The immediate focus is not scale, but density. High density networks are what eventually produce talent flow, company formation, and long-term ecosystem leverage.