Hey everyone, my name is Diego and I'm a freelance web developer based in Italy.
After years of working for a couple of companies with dubious goals I got fed up and decided that I want to change my career and do something good for the world. With my software engineering background I'm obviously drawn to the AI safety topic (but I won't shy away from other causes like animal welfare for example).
Since by trade I make websites and apps and I don't have formal training or experience in the AI space (bar a couple of chat bots integrations), I'm now on a quest to learn how this field works and how can I best apply my skills to safeguard our future from potentially catastrophic AI development.
I've been doing a lot of reading in the past month, and I'm looking for connections that can guide me in this process. Should anyone be in need of advice regarding web development don't hesitate to drop a message, I'll be glad to help!
As for my hobbies I'm into martial arts, role playing games, and music (I play the electric bass).
Looking forward to connect with like minded people and do some good :)
What is clean energy by your definition? I believe solar can be in the gray zone especially solar farm developments in LMIC countries, because for an example, here in North Macedonia, the regulations get bypassed by one council vote and there are solar parks on arable land. To make things worse, these solar farms don't manage the land under them properly, aka it's naked soil, no top-soil cover such as perennial grasses, so there is a net-negative effect on the environment when you consider that soil is irreplaceable in the long term.
I see that you are based and working just the US, in your US centric case I guess tumbleweeds might be the worst opponent, along with dust piling up on the panels.
For question number 4, I believe implementing solar in LMIC countries could prove most beneficial, transition them off of fossil fuels, and possibly build dams. Our yet to be constructed biggest dam would be Cebren Galishte, which would have an annual output of 1-1.2 TWh or around 20% of our annual electricity usage.
Hello everyone! I'm Alex, I found my way here through recommendations from contacts involved in AI safety.
I started thinking about how to have a more concrete impact while finishing my comp sci PhD (quantum cryptography and adversarial scenarios), so I pivoted to medicine. Stayed close to those "red team" roots by getting as much exposure as possible to CBRN-related fields, including nuclear medicine, Ebola preparedness, and got deployed in intensive care at peak-COVID.
I'm currently a postdoc scientist at Yale on AI+immunobiology, and interested in AI/bio safety as a long-term career.
On the less serious side, I do martial arts, rock climbing and strongman, and design board games as a hobby.
Has the forum team considered making a settings option to hide vote counts? The option to hide agree/disagree and reaction counts are something I would also appreciate.
I stayed away from this forum for over a year because of it being structured like Reddit, and have also heard concerns about vote counts anywhere influencing bias, as well as issues with like and dislike buttons in general. This post on LessWrong makes a more ambitious case for this, though I'm not campaigning here for any change affecting all users.
I understand the voting system is a necessary evil for maintaining the quality of what's read on the forum, and do think that users here are more responsible about vote count vs. agree count, as well as voicing why one personally disagrees with something, than is commonplace on Reddit. I just think it would be great for us not interested in rating and numbers in discourse to be able to opt out of seeing and indeed being influenced by them.
I do appreciate the removal of the downvote button on the front and user pages as well as the options already here for hiding usernames. Thank you for reading and considering all this! 👍
I couldn't get the free Claude to make one that works, and don't really care about this enough to pursue it further, at least for now. Thank you for the suggestion, though! 😁
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AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
Adapted from my Substack, Funding Anthropalypse.
Short version: if you want a share of the coming Anthropic and OpenAI windfall - the $37bn+ that could be in play next year - the way in is to become 'legibly excellent', so the evaluators and donors that frontier lab staff already trust point them to yo...
Disclaimer: Although I work on the Groups Team at CEA, I’m writing this in a personal capacity, and this post does not constitute an endorsement by CEA.
Agency - the realisation that you really can just do things.
TL;DR
Biosecurity needs people (of any background) who are agentic and have a high execution velocity and track record....
Hey everyone, my name is Diego and I'm a freelance web developer based in Italy.
After years of working for a couple of companies with dubious goals I got fed up and decided that I want to change my career and do something good for the world. With my software engineering background I'm obviously drawn to the AI safety topic (but I won't shy away from other causes like animal welfare for example).
Since by trade I make websites and apps and I don't have formal training or experience in the AI space (bar a couple of chat bots integrations), I'm now on a quest to learn how this field works and how can I best apply my skills to safeguard our future from potentially catastrophic AI development.
I've been doing a lot of reading in the past month, and I'm looking for connections that can guide me in this process. Should anyone be in need of advice regarding web development don't hesitate to drop a message, I'll be glad to help!
As for my hobbies I'm into martial arts, role playing games, and music (I play the electric bass).
Looking forward to connect with like minded people and do some good :)