An AI safety researcher in Singapore, a visit to an elderly woman’s home, and a small reminder of what it means to belong.
She kept thanking us.
When Hunter and I visited an elderly woman’s home in Singapore to help with some cleaning, I expected the usual volunteer work: moving things around, tidying up, and lending a hand wherever needed. What stayed with me, though, was how often she apologised.
“Sorry for troubling you,” she kept saying.
We had come willingly. Yet she seemed uncomfortable receiving help from two young volunteers. She had originally sought a professional cleaner; perhaps she hadn’t expected strangers to offer their time without payment.
When I brought this up with Hunter later, he didn’t talk about how generous we had been. Instead, he imagined himself growing older, perhaps living alone, and being in the same position.
“That might be me in the future,” he said.
He had volunteered with seniors facing very different circumstances. During one earlier visit, he encountered a woman whose home was so severely cluttered that she could barely get past the entrance. Cockroaches had infested the space, and the situation required substantial help.
The woman we visited together needed a little assistance, too, though her circumstances were less severe. Perhaps that was what made the encounter so personal: needing help did not have to mean being in crisis. It could be an ordinary part of growing older.
For Hunter, helping an elderly person clean her home and working in artificial intelligence are connected by a concern for how people live.
Originally from Calgary, Canada, Hunter studied at the University of Toronto, spent time at the University of Tokyo, and completed a master’s degree at Sciences Po in France. Interested in peacekeeping and public policy, he once imagined becoming a United Nations diplomat. He began his career working in diplomacy for the Canadian government.
“I had a big dream of changing the world,” he told me.
But government work left him searching for a more direct way to influence people’s lives. As technology became increasingly central to everyday life, he began to see another possibility.
Today, he works at ByteDance in Singapore as an AI alignment researcher, focusing on AI safety. His interest is not simply in what technology can accomplish, but in how it shapes people’s relationships and sense of connection.
Artificial intelligence, he explained, can affect millions of lives. It can improve someone’s day, but it can also deepen social isolation.
His volunteering asks a similar question on a much smaller scale: what would actually make someone’s life better?
His understanding of belonging began taking shape long before he moved to Singapore or started working in artificial intelligence.
When Hunter first left Calgary to attend university in Toronto, he was frightened. The day before his departure, he remembers not wanting to leave at all. His first year living independently was difficult. Making friends took time, and beginning again in an unfamiliar place proved harder than he had expected.
Over the following years, he moved between countries and cities, repeatedly leaving behind the people and routines that had made each place familiar.
Through those departures, he began to understand what made a place feel like home.
“That’s what makes a place feel like it’s your home,” he said, speaking about relationships with people he trusted and enjoyed spending time with.
That understanding deepened through his relationship with his grandmother.
After his grandfather died, she lived alone in a rural area of Canada. Hunter tried to visit whenever he could and to call when he couldn’t. Their conversations brought them closer, but they also taught him something about growing older: the loss of a partner, distance from family, and fewer opportunities for everyday companionship can make life increasingly isolated.
When he later came across a poster for Lions Befrienders, a Singapore organisation supporting seniors, its emphasis on companionship reminded him of her.
Yet his grandmother’s story is not simply about needing care.
Now approaching 85, she continues to volunteer in her own community, visiting other seniors, bringing gifts, checking on them, and helping organise activities.
Even at an age when others might expect her to be receiving assistance, she is still offering it.
Hunter’s volunteer visits have also shown him how much older people have to share.
On one occasion, he accompanied a senior on a wellness walk along a park connector in Singapore. As they passed familiar buildings, she told him what had stood there decades earlier.
He was seeing the Singapore of today. She was showing him the Singapore she remembered.
“I didn’t know the Singapore of her generation,” he recalled.
For a man who had travelled across continents in search of new experiences, some of the most unfamiliar stories were waiting in the neighbourhoods around him.
Singapore’s rapid technological development has created opportunities for many people, but Hunter has also noticed how easily older residents can feel left behind. From scanning QR codes to accessing services online, everyday tasks increasingly require a level of digital confidence that not everyone possesses.
He worries that technology may make society more connected overall while leaving some people less able to take part in everyday life.
But the issue goes beyond learning to use a smartphone.
When I asked whether a society focused on innovation and economic achievement sometimes overlooks older generations, Hunter spoke about the tendency to assume that once people retire, they have little left to contribute.
He disagreed with the premise.
Older people still have futures, he argued. They can continue learning, building relationships, experiencing joy, and looking forward to things. Their worth does not disappear when their working lives end.
“Their lives can be inherently meaningful.”
If someone’s right to companionship depends on what they can contribute economically, what happens when they no longer work? And why should being unable to reciprocate make receiving care feel embarrassing?
Hunter does not pretend that volunteering alone can answer these questions.
When I asked whether a few hours of cleaning could meaningfully address a problem as widespread as elderly isolation, he remembered something his parents taught him as a child.
His family had a habit of taking in animals that needed homes. Over the years, they adopted cats, a snake, salamanders, and even a ferret. Their house, he joked, was almost a zoo.
But there were always more animals than they could help.
His parents reminded him that they could not rescue every stray animal. Still, for the one they did bring home, the difference was enormous.
He has carried that lesson into his volunteering.
“I don’t think I can solve the problem of elderly loneliness,” he said, “but I think for one or two or three seniors, maybe I can make them feel less lonely.”
That is not an argument for leaving social problems to individual generosity. Hunter acknowledges that community networks, material conditions, and institutional support have an enormous influence on people’s lives. A cleaner home or a friendly conversation cannot replace the services and support that older residents may need.
But practical support and a sense of belonging are not quite the same thing.
Hunter is equally reluctant to describe volunteering as a sacrifice made entirely for other people.
Through Lions Befrienders, he has met people whose lives are remarkably different from his own: seniors, young volunteers, and even a former ship captain. These are encounters he might never have had within his usual professional circles.
He learns from them. He enjoys their company. He comes away with stories and relationships of his own.
When our conversation turned to the value of time, he recalled another lesson from his parents. They disliked the expression “finding time,” because people, they believed, chose how to spend their time.
Hunter does not deny the importance of work, achievement, or financial security. But he questions what those achievements are ultimately for if they do not help us build lives worth living.
For him, participating in a community is not something reserved for the years after a successful career. It is part of the life that success is supposed to make possible.
Near the end of our interview, I asked Hunter what he hoped the woman we had visited would remember about us.
He returned to her embarrassment. He hoped she understood that we had genuinely enjoyed helping her, that our visit had not been a burden, and that there were people around her she could turn to.
Then we remembered something else.
Before we left, the woman had given each of us a bracelet from a temple.
During the interview, Hunter mentioned that he still had his.
So did I.
I don’t know what she remembers most clearly about that afternoon. Perhaps the cleaning, perhaps our conversation, or perhaps two young volunteers who arrived when she had expected a professional cleaner.
But Hunter’s hope was simple.
“I hope she remembers that she’s not alone.”