A Field Guide to AI Fellowships

Policy and Governance

3 min read

Policy and Governance

In one line

You shape the rules, institutions, and incentives around AI — how it’s regulated, deployed, and governed. The technology is only half the story; this track is the other half.

What it actually is

AI governance is the work of making sure powerful technology lands well in the real world: drafting policy, advising governments, designing standards, analyzing strategic questions (“how do export controls affect compute access?”), and building the institutions that will steer AI over decades. You don’t have to be a coder. You do have to be a clear thinker and an excellent writer, with enough technical literacy to not get fooled.

It splits roughly into two flavors, and most programs reflect this:

  • Research track — you produce analysis: reports, papers, strategic memos. Closer to a think tank.
  • Applied / practitioner track — you work inside the machine: policy roles, communications, advocacy, program management, operations. Closer to a government office or an org’s policy team.

(That research-vs-applied split is exactly how GovAI structures its fellowship, for example.)

What you actually do day to day

  • Research track: read widely, interview experts, write a rigorous report that changes how someone thinks.
  • Applied track: brief a policymaker, draft a response to a regulation, run a program, coordinate stakeholders.
  • Both: write, write, write — and translate between technical people and decision-makers.

What you have to do to get in

The path

The credential here is demonstrated thinking and writing, not code. The strongest applications show you can take a messy AI-policy question and produce something clear and useful about it.

On-ramps: BlueDot’s Governance course (free, foundational), then a fellowship — GovAI Summer Fellowship (research or applied), Horizon Institute for Public Service (US policy placements), RAND TASP, ERA (governance stream). A standout writing sample or a published analysis is your portfolio.

Skills required

See Career and Communication Skills for depth. Core:

  • Exceptional writing. This is the single most important skill in the track. Clear, structured, persuasive prose.
  • Technical literacy. You don’t code, but you must understand what a model is, what training and compute mean, and where the real risks and bottlenecks are — enough to not be snowed.
  • Systems & strategic thinking. Incentives, institutions, second-order effects.
  • Domain knowledge in at least one of: law, economics, international relations, public policy, security studies.

Is this you?

Signs you lean policy/governance

  • You’re the person who writes the clearest email in the group.
  • You think about systems and incentives, not just the tech itself.
  • You want impact through decisions and institutions, not through code.
  • You can hold “the technology” and “the politics” in your head at once.

For a technical person reading this

Don’t dismiss policy because you can code. People who genuinely understand the technology and can write for policymakers are rare and incredibly valuable. The translation layer is understaffed.

Pointers & extra resources

Field-building and Comms · Alignment and AI Safety · Career and Communication Skills · Tracks Overview

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