All too often we (at least myself) deliberate over which high-hanging fruit to pluck, when there’s low-hanging fruit right in front of us. Talking with more people at happy hours is a low-hanging fruit. If you’re newer to AI safety and are invited to a happy hour, you should talk with more people outside your social circle at happy hours.
Much of the most recent strategic thinking in this space isn’t written down, and if it is, it’s in private Slack channels. Events are where the private Slack channels turn semipublic. You’re able to tap into insights that are otherwise expensive to get outside (email fancy person, hope they read your message) or from your unknown unknowns (you’ve already grokked the takes of people in your milieu).
You can laser in on relevant information when conversing to a greater degree than skimming through someone’s writing. Consider each individual’s mind to correspond to a library of experiences. Skimming their LessWrong is like browsing some of the shelves. Talking face-to-face is like chatting with the librarian that knows the catalogue and can recommend you to resources (although in many cases they don’t need to, because they can summarize the exact content).
If you’re in SF/Berkeley, it’s likely that you’ve become desensitized to the fortune you have to be there. It might be motivating to reflect on what you would do earlier on in your AI safety journey if you had the chance to attend these events.
When you strip away the familiarity we have with many AIS professionals by virtue of the efforts they make to be available, you come up with a list that newbies to other industries would kill to meet their equivalents of. Here are people that I talked to today:
- The AI safety YouTuber who made the first AI safety content I ever saw/read
- CEO of the org that founded the world’s largest AI safety space and pioneered one of the major research directions in technical AIS
- Grantmakers who move more per year than I could earn in dozens of lifetimes
- CEO of the OG AI safety org
- Researcher at one of the handful of labs building superintelligence, which on the default path will succeed within 5-10 years
Most of these facts are in the “well, duh” category. My point with adding these is to get you to take a step back and notice, not to make some claim that these are the most important details or the most important people to talk to. In fact, some of the most valuable conversations were with others who had similar context levels to me and we could work through a crux together.
By this point, I hope you’re seeing the value in the thesis here. But what if you’re anxious about this whole thing? A few recommendations:
- Go over to the event in a group and chat with your friends beforehand. This helps you warm up and discuss the things that really are more fun to talk about with those you already have rapport with.
- Find a group of 5+ people and hang around the edges. No one will care if you come or go.
- For any group where the participants are outward-facing or there’s a gap, it’s fair play to just walk up and start listening in. There are two outcomes: 1) The group notices, they introduce themselves, and you’re off to the races; or 2) The group continues chatting, you get to listen in, and they don’t mind your presence.
- Identify a major question you have about your project and someone who has moderate background on the area you’re working in. People are normally happy to spitball on things they have some knowledge of, and you can choose topics that you naturally have a lot of experience in.
- Consider that you don’t have to suddenly gain all the courage you’ll need. Value your decisions by the end world they lead to, not the immediate one. Even if you just gain 10% more confidence each happy hour, after about 7 times you will have doubled your confidence.
Something that has held me back earlier is that I feel like I’m detracting from more senior people’s experience at these events.
- It might very well be the case that you are detracting from their experience! But in the long run, you will sooner get to the point where you are actively contributing to strategic discussion, putting you on the path to more effectively reducing x-risk.
- Consider the case where someone brand new to AI safety strikes up a conversation with you and is curious and attentive. My guess is that you will enjoy this conversation.
- More established people have had more reps than you politely making moves to exit conversations, and in my experience you don’t need to worry much about them holding a silent grudge over an unproductive conversation.
