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This post is co-authored with Ben Garfinkel. It is cross-posted from the CEA blog. A PDF version can be found here.
Summary: Some strategic decisions available to the effective altruism m...
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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.
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Biosecurity needs people (of any background) who are agentic and have a high execution velocity and track record....
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Making AI safe and good requires many people to be ready to address crucial problems. However, our current “pipelines” for finding, training, and accelerating talented individuals who could work on these problems are “leaky”, meaning there are many ways they can be improved. This post shows my full overview of the AI safety talent pipeline: where people come from, where they go to learn more, and why this is impactful. I also describe some “leaks” in the pipeline: stages that...
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The problem with answering this question is that it's very difficult to know what would have happened if some person did not exist. Some reasoning among similar lines can be found here.
This section from 80,000 hours career guide might also be relevant. I should note that a recent EA forum post questions whether Stanislav Petrov made the difference that 80,000 hours assume here. Some other people who plausibly saved many lives include Louis Pasteur, Maurice Hilleman, and Norman Borlaug. But increasing human population has many indirect effects and it's very difficult to evaluate them.