• disclosure: I used an LLM assistant to revise the clarity and grammar of this post.

Hi everyone! I am an italian fourth-year medical student who recently discovered the field of AI interpretability through the Effective Altruism community, and I am writing to ask for your advice.

I was originally interested in doing pure neuroscience research, but reading more about this field, in particular the paper 'Zoom In: An Introduction to Circuits'  by Chris Olah, made me realise that the kind of study of complex systems I dream of is far more alive in AI interpretability than in the biology-constrained neuroscience I encountered in medical school. This has led me to seriously consider transitioning into this field after graduating, roughly two years from now. While I know resources exist to learn and I am keen on starting, I have deliberately held off. I want a clearer sense of whether someone with my background— no experience in advanced mathematics or programming — has a realistic path before investing serious time. If you think this is the case, what might this path look like? Also, do you see significant career risks in attempting such a transition? If so, would you still recommend trying, or are there alternatives worth considering?  Thank you in advance