# Now <div class="pills-container"> <span class="pill">Last Updated: Jul 1, 2026</span> <span class="pill">Location: Metro Manila, PH</span> <span class="pill">Inspired by <a href="https://nownownow.com/about">Derek Sivers</a></span>. </div> ## What's keeping me busy Most of my time right now is split between AI safety work and a few side things I can't seem to stop doing (having side quests keep me sane, I think). Here's the rough breakdown. - I spend 80% of my time doing AI safety-related work. - Lobbying for policy reforms that prepare the Philippine industry and workforce for transformative AI at [AI4PH](https://ai4ph.substack.com/about). - Facilitating the [Technical AI Safety Course](https://bluedot.org/courses/technical-ai-safety) at [Bluedot Impact](https://bluedot.org/). - Facilitating the [Introduction to Cooperative AI Course](https://www.cooperativeai.com/curriculum) at [Cooperative AI Foundation](https://www.cooperativeai.com/). - Researching how AI impacts women-led MSMEs in Southeast Asia at [The Asia Foundation](https://asiafoundation.org/). - Organizing and facilitating the [AI Governance Accelerator](https://www.aisafetydiliman.com/program/ai-governance) at [AI Safety Diliman](https://www.aisafetydiliman.com/). - Independently upskilling in cooperative AI, reading papers, and helping people find opportunities in AI safety. - I spend 10% of my time doing other work outside of AI safety. - Building the [Policy Observatory](http://policyobservatory.org/) out of frustration with how inaccessible government documents are. I think policy input should be more democratized, and this is my attempt at doing something about it. - Researching grad schools, mostly to figure out whether doing one is even the right call given how urgent the field is right now. - Independently upskilling in economics, business, and linguistics (mostly because I keep running into gaps in these areas when doing governance work). - I spend the other 10% of my time on things that keep me sane. - Going to the gym, watching movies, and having coffee chats with different folks. - I've learned over the past year that intentionally making space for learning, through things I read or people I talk to, has accelerated my upskilling more than grinding alone ever did. ## What's shaping my thinking right now A running list of what I've been reading or rewatching lately that's changing how I see things. 1. AI systems do not need to be very very smart in order to disrupt the world to an irreversible scale: [What Multipolar Failure Looks Like, and Robust Agent-Agnostic Processes (RAAPs) (Critch, 2021)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LpM3EAakwYdS6aRKf/what-multipolar-failure-looks-like-and-robust-agent-agnostic) 2. Most of the time, it's better to have a general direction than a specific goal: [Explore More: A Bag of Tricks to Keep Your Life on the Rails (Tekofsky, 2024)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uwmFSaDMprsFkpWet/explore-more-a-bag-of-tricks-to-keep-your-life-on-the-rails) 3. Related, on the same theme: [Don't just have a job role. Have a movement role. (Balderson, 2026)](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Poc5zPAnCwwPKuXe7/don-t-just-have-a-job-role-have-a-movement-role) 4. Success means being at the top 1% of what you do among others at your level, and you get there by never letting yourself work within silos: [Tips for Empirical Alignment Research (Perez, 2024)](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/dZFpEdKyb9Bf4xYn7/tips-for-empirical-alignment-research) 5. Anything I do, especially learning, should not be done passively: [Social Tinkering: Why Collaborative Curiosity Beats Vibe-Coding (Morris, 2025)](https://blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/social-tinkering-why-collaborative) 6. Taking time to process stuff isn't necessarily bad and could be a superpower if utilized correctly: [You're a Slow Thinker. Now What? (Hatta, 2025)](https://youtu.be/WsKi3DMqi2g) --- [CV](https://bit.ly/ld_cv) · [Substack](https://halfbakedtheories.substack.com/) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/llenzl/) · [GitHub](https://github.com/ramennaut) · [Feedback](https://www.admonymous.co/lenz)