Jessica and SAIGE have been a north star for me and my work with AI Safety Tokyo (AIST).

I had a chance to speak with Jessica one-on-one at EAG London. I reached out to her because I've also been working on field-building and running a local AI safety community in Japan.

What struck me most was learning that SAIGE had accomplished so much, including running fellowships, despite having started with just Jessica herself. This was honestly shocking to me, as AIST has been around for a few years but we've struggled to scale up our activities. Seeing what Jessica has achieved gave me a lot of hope that we could do something similar in Japan.

Jessica was incredibly generous with her time. She listened carefully and patiently answered all my naive questions. She even shared her personal diary documenting her thoughts from the very early stages of building SAIGE, including decisions about its name and logo! It was fascinating and encouraging to see how it all started.

I also think Germany and Japan have a lot in common, including strong STEM talent pools and similar economic structures. That makes SAIGE's experience particularly relevant to what we're trying to build in Japan.

I hope AIST can follow in SAIGE's footsteps, and I'm personally very grateful to Jessica for showing what's possible. That's why I wanted to support SAIGE with this donation. I'm excited to see what comes next!