This is a very understandable and relatable complaint, you're not alone in having it!

The true answer is that, yeah, you're right. Saving the world is not something that has been institutionalised into low-risk, comfortable, compensated and legible work positions (mostly). There is no simple playbook, list of steps to follow. I wish there was.

This is one of the great promises of a representative democracy. It shouldn't have to be up to each citizen to deal with societal-scale issues. They should have a minimum set of civic duties (such as voting, and informing and pressuring their representatives), but beyond that not HAVE to worry about the details of these complex issues, and instead be able to rest comfortably knowing that "adults are in the room", that experts and policy makers will handle it.

Of course, that's not always how things work out. (though it is worth appreciating that for many problems that our ancestors used to have to deal with, this does happen!)

So the first thing is: One more voice, one more protestor, one more vote, does matter. That's the promise of democracy.

But that's an unsatisfying answer, of course, because you want to do more.

So, very concretely speaking:

- The field of AI policy is extremely money constrained, and most of the money that is present is controlled opposition. As such, if you have ways of pushing significant amounts of funds (>$100K) into the field (by giving to an existing org, or starting a new one yourself), whether by donating yourself or activating sources of funding you have access to, that's a very useful thing to do and feel free to get in touch with me if you want to do that!

- Due to the lack of funding, if you can't activate your own funding, there are very few jobs at very few orgs that are worth doing. You should apply, but are likely out of luck if you want to do this full time and get paid.

- As such, you likely will want to keep a day job, and from there the minimum you can do is sign up for microcommit.io and if you want to do more than that, check out torchbearer.community

Good luck!