I left my 6-figure job and unvested stock at Google to join the AI safety movement. It was a hard decision. (www.businessinsider.com)

Jen Baik, a 28-year-old former Google product operations manager, left a six-figure job and unvested equity to dedicate herself full-time to the AI safety and effective altruism (EA) movements. After co-leading a grassroots EA club at Google and saving enough to cover family needs, she decided the ethical stakes of advanced AI — influenced by scenarios like Scott Alexander’s “AI 2027” and Tristan Harris’ warnings about AI causing harms beyond social media — warranted direct action. Baik tried to move into AI roles internally but found transfers competitive, so she’s relocating to San Francisco to live in an intentional community, pursue inner work, support Charity Entrepreneurship, and apply to the BlueDot Impact AI safety program. Her story matters to the AI/ML community because it exemplifies a growing flow of technical and product talent toward governance, safety research, and nonprofit incubation rather than purely commercial roles. That shift can accelerate capacity for rigorous, mission-aligned work on failure modes like loss of human control or systemic manipulation. Practically, Baik’s move highlights career trade-offs (forgoing large financial upside for mission focus), the role of community and incubation programs in building safety-focused expertise, and how grassroots EA organizing inside tech firms can translate into sustained contributions to AI safety ecosystems.