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Arb is a new research consultancy led by Misha Yagudin and Gavin Leech.
In our first 6 months we've worked on forecasting, vaccine strategy, AI risk, economics, cause prioritisation, grantmaking, and large-scale data collection. We're also working with Emergent Ventures and Schmidt Futures on their AI talent programme.
Consulting is reactive, but we have lots of ideas of our own which you can help shape.
We're looking for researchers with some background in ML, forecasting, technical writing, blogging, or some other hard thing. We only take work we think is important. Get in touch!
EDIT: we are to be replaced by as-yet-unannounced orgs.
ALERT (the active longtermist emergency response team) is looking for a Director to lead the project.
The role is fully funded and we've organised fiscal sponsorship from a UK registered charity. We have a longlist of reservists and interest from people at Rethink Priorities, Our World in Data, Bluedot, ALLFED, and CEA.
Some good characteristics for the job:
And responsibilities:
Building readiness
Operations
Strategy
Apply here!
Despite my best efforts (and an amazing director candidate, and a great list of volunteers), this project suffered from the FTX explosion and an understandable lack of buy-in for an org with maximally broad responsibilities, unpredictable time-to-payoff, and a largeish discretionary fund. As a result, we shuttered without spending any money. Two successor orgs, one using our funding and focussed on bio, are in the pipeline though.
I'll be in touch if either of the new orgs want to contact you as a volunteer.
Sorry to hear that this one didn't work out! Kudos for staying motivated and continuing with other initiatives.
Is there a physical location or office? Whom does the role report to? What are example emergencies where reservists would be activated? What would they do when activated? Are there comparable orgs in other domains I should index to when thinking about ALERT? How many hours / week, roughly? What does it mean that the role would not be on duty most days? Is there an existing staff or would one need to be hired? When the National Guard is activated they are called away to a physical space to work with others, is it like that?
Great questions. Most of the below could be reshaped by the director:
One cool idea would be embedding a physical EOC into refuges, and calling reservists in once some crisis threshold was crossed.
"New large leaks of the Snowden type."
I agree that effective altruists should do more to encourage these.
Maybe they should, maybe the shouldn't, but I don't think Gavin was saying such things should be encouraged. I think he was saying that there should be some kind of response if such leaks happen.
We can now sponsor US work visas.
Congrats!
More questions from offline:
It's a good question. I doubt that binding contracts are the right way to do this. We will probably do peacetime stipends and emergency pay. But I suppose it's a matter of self-selection: we will be responding to the current most important thing in the world and, in this crowd, that should be enough.
Org strategy > org ops (existence, banking, authorisation, etc) > hiring > fundraising > wargame planning. Reservists and forecasters are fairly ready to go.
Also a question about seniority:
Pardon: asks that it not be your first rodeo, that you can handle founding (especially hiring and culture-setting). But we don't need VP or C-level.