Alice Hunsberger profile interview
Alice Hunsberger is the Head of Trust & Safety at Musubi. We recently asked Alice a few questions for our latest Responsible Tech Guide; read the full interview below.
“The biggest barrier I’ve encountered is a fundamental misunderstanding of Trust & Safety’s value from both within and outside of the industry.”
Describe your current role. How does your work address complex technology and society challenges?
As the Head of Trust & Safety at Musubi, I'm focused on integrating cutting-edge AI technology with real-world human needs and designing a more ethical and effective approach to online safety. I serve as a translator between the needs of Trust & Safety teams and users into the core design of our technology.
My daily work ranges from using precise language in prompt engineering, to building out educational resources for practitioners, to creating transparent and accountable systems. I am particularly passionate about designing human-in-the-loop systems that give human teams the tools and autonomy to focus on the most challenging, high-stakes cases and make systemic changes instead of moderating one-by-one.
Tell us about your career journey. What key steps brought you to your current role, and what guidance would you give someone following a similar path?
I started moderating online communities over 20 years ago and grew my career by consistently raising my hand for new projects. From frontline moderation at OkCupid to VP roles at Grindr and PartnerHero, and now Head of Trust & Safety at Musubi, I've learned that the most valuable skill is adaptability.
The Trust & Safety landscape has evolved dramatically. When I started, we were all figuring it out together on the frontier. Now there's established expertise, but entry-level roles have become more siloed.
My advice is to prioritize roles that reward curiosity, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration. Much of my work requires understanding multiple perspectives and finding pragmatic solutions, without forgetting the core values behind what I'm doing.
Small companies offer unique advantages. They provide opportunities to grow as the organization grows, with flexible scope and less bureaucracy. You can learn quickly from people with different skillsets and create best practices where none existed before. At smaller orgs, you're more likely to work across departments and tackle novel problems rather than maintaining existing systems.
The exact career path I took probably won't exist anymore, but the principles remain valuable. Lean into technological and social changes with curiosity. Volunteer for projects outside your comfort zone. Focus on roles where you can experiment and build, not just maintain.
This year's Responsible Tech Guide explores how different fields intersect - like Responsible AI and Trust & Safety. What disciplines or domains intersect in your work?
The most critical intersection in my work is between Trust & Safety and Responsible AI. Historically, these have been treated as separate functions within tech companies. Trust & Safety teams focused on the "what" (enforcing policy against bad actors) while Responsible AI teams focused on the "how" (ensuring the fairness and transparency of the technology itself). As AI gets integrated into our technology more deeply, it's critical that the two spheres of T&S and AI ethics are not siloed. They must be one and the same.
T&S teams are now at the forefront of AI governance, managing the systems that moderate users and creating guardrails for new generative AI products. At the same time, we are seeing a rise of AI-generated harms, and are struggling with societal issues around how AI is built and used, and the delicate balance between freedom of expression, safety, and privacy. How AI technology is built and deployed directly affects how it is received and how it must be governed. The risks and solutions are completely intertwined, and we need to work together to ensure ethical outcomes.
What are the biggest barriers you’ve encountered in advancing responsible technology within your field, and how have you addressed them?
The biggest barrier I’ve encountered is a fundamental misunderstanding of Trust & Safety’s value from both within and outside of the industry. Internally, T&S is often viewed as a cost center, leading to resource constraints that prevent teams from adopting the thoughtful, long-term solutions required for responsible technology. This makes it incredibly difficult to keep pace with bad actors who are increasingly using AI to scale their harms.
Externally, public discourse often simplifies the issue into a battle between platforms and users, failing to acknowledge that dedicated T&S professionals are fighting hard every day to protect communities and bridge that divide. Additionally, the role of societal and systemic issues outside of online platforms is often downplayed. This dual-sided challenge-- a lack of internal resources and a lack of external recognition-- makes it difficult to do the kind of proactive, long-term work needed to build safe, inclusive online spaces.
I try to address this by speaking up publicly about Trust & Safety and describing the nuanced tradeoffs and difficult decisions that T&S practitioners make every day. We need to have a more nuanced public conversation about Trust & Safety, and that means that T&S practitioners must be included in those discussions. We all believe in building safe, inclusive online spaces, and the more that people understand how we might get there and what resources we need, the better!