Project summary

Most people fear AI-driven career disruption. I want to build a tool that offers a structured reasoning aid, which would allow individuals to create personal job security estimations. It would allow users to explore how different assumptions about AI capabilities and adoption rates affect their outlook.

The primary intended users are mid-career professionals and students facing AI-related uncertainty. Using the Compass can reduce anxiety and support more deliberate skill investment (as it did for me). It may also serve as a structured discussion tool for career advisors, educators, and AI policy conversations. It could meaningfully improve the quality of career adaptation decisions during the AI transition.

I wrote a short article on the EA Forum about how this came about. I've also written a longer article on LessWrong, detailing the reasoning process.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

The primary goal is to build the Job Security Compass, a fast, browser-based, presumably account-free tool for structured reasoning about risks of AI displacement. The underlying methodology is openly published ("Job Security in the Age of AI", DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18821831).

Users will be able to decompose their specific roles into five core dimensions (Cognitive, Physical, Social, Sensory, and Adaptive), score their Human Advantage in each dimension, add experience, and apply real-world adoption factors (like cost, safety incentives, human preference). The tool will process these inputs to provide a personalized Risk Timeline. Tweaking the variables will allow users to find guidance for career orientation.

I will achieve this by developing a polished, responsive, client-side application usable across desktop, tablet, and mobile interfaces. By designing this as a browser-based tool, I can prioritize a rapid, secure launch. The code will be open-sourced under the AGPLv3 license to ensure it remains a transparent public good and is easily improvable over time as more real-world data becomes available.

How will this funding be used?

The $25,000 grant supports three months of dedicated execution to deliver a professional-grade, browser-based tool.

• Engineering & Logic: Rigorous implementation of the heuristic model and weighted scoring system into a fast, interactive client-side engine.

• UX/UI Design & Accessibility: Translating complex socio-economic variables into an intuitive interface, ensuring the tool is visually clear and optimized for all devices (Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile).

• Deployment & Infrastructure: Public launch, domain setup, CI/CD pipelines, and robust hosting infrastructure.

Minimum ($15,000) vs. Full Funding ($25,000): The minimum funding will ensure a functional, rigorously engineered tool with the core estimation logic intact. Reaching the full funding goal allows for the necessary time to achieve the high level of UX polish and device-agnostic accessibility required for the tool to reach a broader audience.

Future direction: The application architecture will allow for a possible second phase, which is out of the scope of this proposal, but where the app may be used both for creating an accessible catalog of curated estimations, and an anonymized public dataset on how people perceive their risks.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

I am the sole developer. I am a Senior Software Engineer with over two decades of experience, primarily focused on algorithms, backend architecture, DevOps, and cloud engineering, alongside building clean, minimalist web projects. I developed the underlying mathematical framework for this tool during my project work for the 2025 AI Safety, Ethics and Society course at the Center for AI Safety. My engineering background ensures the calculator's core logic and deployment will be robust and precisely implemented. The UX design will prioritize clarity and accessibility, translating the underlying complexity into an interface that works for a general audience. I currently have the schedule flexibility to dedicate myself to this project, ensuring it is built to a professional standard.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

There are two primary risks. First is distribution: even if the tool is highly useful, it might simply fail to find its audience in the crowded internet landscape. Initial outreach may focus on communities already engaged in AI transition discussions (AI safety forums, tech-adjacent networks, university career centers, newsletters). The second risk is execution of the UI: translating a complex heuristic model into a simple interface is difficult. Given my preference for minimalist design, the resulting app might be functional but lack the mainstream visual polish needed for viral adoption. However, if the project fails to gain widespread traction, the outcome is still a net positive: the community receives a fully functional, open source codebase of the estimation engine that other researchers can fork or integrate into their own platforms.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

$0. This is currently an independent project.