MATS Residency applications close this Friday, Oct 31. The Residency is built for experienced researchers with an established track record, ready to do independent, full-time AI safety work.

Residents get:
• $155k–$285k compensation
• Abundant compute
• Support from leading AI safety researchers

If you know someone with a strong research background who's been thinking about AI safety, please send this their way. Apply: matsprogram.org/residency

Humans have actively worked against promoting the welfare of wild city rats throughout history. Aside from primates, they are some of the most closely related non-human animals to H. sapiens, yet we know very little about how they live outside of laboratory settings (i.e., often dystopian, prison-like conditions). In order to enhance their welfare in the wild and in laboratories, there is a huge need to develop and deploy technologies to study their behavior. Such studies would also benefit global human health and biosecurity efforts because rats can serve as vectors of disease, sources of infrastructural damage, and pose a threat to stored foods. 

There are very few researchers working in this space across the globe, and I am one of the few (pre-PhD, looking for programs where I can complete my doctorate) who has the experience with + concern for rats and software/hardware/IoT development & design skills necessary to push this area of research further in a manner that embraces total harm-reduction (as opposed to eliminationist) thinking/strategies.  Am I in the right place for starting conversation(s) on this topic? Should I repost this some other way?

Hopefully I'm posting this in the correct context + idea development status, it's my first post on the site. I found out about the potential for research funding opportunities last weekend while attending a conference at GWU Law School and figured it is worth a shot, given the sad state of affairs with research funding lately. 

For my SPAR project of "Hiring resources for new AI Safety orgs", this past week I've been scheduling meetings with hiring managers, and have spoken to some fantastic recruiters on the issues they are experiencing in AI Safety hiring. Here's a couple of interesting things I've learned this week:

- Screening call questions are not consistant, and feedback from canditates is that it's more a test about their alignment (and understanding) of AI Safety vs. using a common set of questions every time that screen someone that asks instead about their career goals, what they are good at, what they are not interested in doing, and what their previous peers/managers/co-workers would rate their work performance. 

- There also seems to a disconnect on how hiring managers are determining work tests for non-researcher or technical roles. This is an uncertainity that I want to explore more, as I'm unsure who is creating these work tests and who is grading them?

- A theme that keeps on coming up is the need for a "shared database" of canditates between AI Safety organizations. I heard this today from a recruiter, as a best practice from an outside field, and have a central theme on this forum for the need. 

- Most AI Safety orgs are ramping up hiring right now and include "HR" type roles (generally called generalist) that mention that they want to scale 2x in headcount this year. I had an interesting conversation with a recruiter that there is a difference in company culture, skill set, etc. for a canditate who can scale a business or team of 1-15 people vs. scaling from 20+people. When you're a smaller org, everyone is "all hands on deck", but when your organization grows, that tactic becomes unmanagable and unaligned with both what the individual contributors are focusing on, and what your organization needs. It's the understanding that it's two very different types of leaders who run those orgs. 

- I continue to build out my contact list of hiring managers and companies in AI Safety. I'm focusing on newer organizaitions - potentlally less than 10 people, and I'm looking for help with recommendations on who to speak to. Please reach out if you can help, thanks!

Help The Unjournal prioritize AI economics and governance research

(https://uj-prioritization-dashboard.netlify.app/ai-governance/)

The Unjournal (https://info.unjournal.org/) is prioritizing research on AI economics, governance, social and economic impacts, and risks from increasingly capable AI. (NB: We're not covering technical/CS/ML/AI-safety research.). We want to commission expert public evaluations and help synthesize, disseminate, and curate this work.

Much of this research seems 1) important/impactful/influential, (2) involves considerable 'firepower' from prominent researchers and practitioners, (3) not 'obviously true', and (4) time-sensitive: relevant for funding, policy, and research-steering now, but not after the "six months to six years" required for the traditional (economics) journal process

Our preliminary shortlist page (https://uj-prioritization-dashboard.netlify.app/ai-governance/) includes paper summaries, AI-generated audio walkthroughs, and an interface for giving feedback. We also invite suggestions fr other research (please check the broader list/interface to avoid duplication).

Especially looking for your input on:

• Usefulness and accuracy:* Is this useful? How could we improve it? What have we got wrong?
• Impact: Which research do you use, or think others use or should use?
• Scrutiny What claims and approaches need careful experts and practitioners critique? What sorts of experts? If you're that expert, please dm and join our pool.
• Participation: Who should be part of this discussion (nominate and nudge)?
• Gaps: What's missing (research, claims, etc.)?

Timing and next steps (our plan)

• Finalize an initial shortlist of at least three research outputs before the end of October, with more depending on interest and funding.
• Commission rapid, public, impact-focused evaluations/reviews by experts and practitioners, aiming for a first public evaluation within about two weeks of commissioning.
• Over the following two to four weeks, invite author and stakeholder responses and follow-ups, and facilitate private and public discussion

If it this works well, we hope to scale up and continue in the following months.

Alongside the evaluations, we want to help people find and use this research, and to help shape its direction. I hope the prioritization itself will be useful to students, researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders. (NB: the "prioritization" here is mainly about "potential for impact and value for evaluation"; assessing the research credibility is for the evaluation part).

I wanted to share this quickly; planning a fuller post soon. (Feedback on this post itself is helpful too.)

Related: We’re also exploring sponsorship of evaluations/themes/questions (https://uj-prioritization-dashboard.netlify.app/sponsor/). Looking for feedback: Would this be useful, would you sponsor or recommend others to do so? Would sponsorship affect your trust in the evaluations (given the rules and safeguards mentioned in the link)?

I'm currently hiring. Come and help me address the suffering of animals. At Rethink Priorities:

Senior Research Manager – To lead a new Animal Welfare Strategy Team. This team will focus on supporting and accelerating funders and organizations toward achieving accelerating the end of low-welfare farming. The team lead will have to manage a team to do consulting for animal organisations, in-house research projects, and coordinate the Animals Advocacy strategy Forum. Salary: $98,500–$125,000. Deadline: Monday 19 October.
https://careers.rethinkpriorities.org/en/postings/bc1c94f2-31d6-4e04-817c-ab1e7e6c26c9

(Senior) Neglected Animals Program Officer – Working to improve the welfare of terrestrial invertebrate, both farmed and wild. The role will be a mix of research and coordination and involve doing analysis, commissioning and overseeing external contractors, and coordinating with organizations working on shared problems. Salary: $79,000–$98,500. Deadline: Sunday 11 October.
https://careers.rethinkpriorities.org/postings/a7f585b8-7c7f-4748-b9eb-3d836ffc3683

How impactful would it be to copies of @Garrison's new book Obsolete to elected officials who belong to its political target audience (Dems, particularly left ones) and might not have been responsive to traditional x-risk-centric comms (e.g. IABIED)?

As someone who hires people (I am hiring right now, see bottom of the post), I often get emails asking whether someone should apply for a role I've listed.
If you're considering contacting a hiring manager to ask if you're a good fit for the role, you should just apply.

Why?

• Job descriptions are wish lists.
  Everyone wants someone who checks all the boxes. If the dream candidate applies, you'll probably get rejected. In reality, everyone has weaknesses, and an 80% match candidate is highly competitive.
• Self-skepticism correlates with candidate quality.
  Applicant pools are filled with people who can't do the job but don't understand their abilities well enough to realize it. Conversely, many highly competent professionals self-select out. If you are humble and self-reflective enough to consider your chances honestly, you are probably more competitive than you think.
• You probably won't get a response.
  Hiring is always a busy time, and hiring managers don't have time to review every email. Often, you'll receive nothing, leaving you with wasted effort. I try to reply as much as I can, but there's only so much that can be done.
• Any response you get is biased toward yes.
  If an org has a good filtering process, the biggest determinant in hire quality is whether good candidates apply. More "bad fit" candidates pose little strain, while one more "great fit" candidate could double the success of the hiring round. The incentive is always to get more people to apply.
  It's unclear whether a seeming good fit is a great fit who is overly worried about their weaknesses or a bad fit exaggerating their strengths, but it doesn't matter. Hiring managers are better off if both apply so they encourage them to do so. As a result, you spend some time writing an email, the hiring manager spends some time reviewing your email, they take time to send a response, and you receive the answer that you probably should apply, so all that effort led to nothing. Skipping the email saves you (and me) time in the long run.
• The information transmitted in an email is not always in your favor.
  The fact that someone sent an email can suggest self-reflectiveness (good), but it can also be a sign of a lack of confidence (bad). It can suggest thoughtfulness about time management (good), but it can also signal a lack of agency and autonomy (bad). These signals are very small in magnitude, so I don't, and I hope others don't, read into this too much. However, it's worth realizing what you might be accidentally communicating.

Notable exceptions, where you should email:

• You require something from the job that the description doesn't specify.
  If you need to know whether a job will meet your needs, that's fully worth checking before applying. That's very different from asking a hiring manager to evaluate your fit for the role over email.
• You are fully confident that you do not fit a logistical requirement of the role but you have a creative work around that you want to propose to the organization.
  Hiring is always trying to solve a problem. A good hiring manager will recognize that hiring for the specific role isn't the only solution. If you can solve the problem (e.g. you are unable to work full-time but believe you could still own the key components of the role as a part-time worker), you should consider reaching out.
• You find the job just after the deadline has passed and you need the form re-opened for you.
  Expect a no, but there's very little harm in asking. Note that this is different from if you found the job before the deadline and forgot to apply in time.
• The first stage of the application process is particularly onerous.
  We try to keep our first stage applications at 30 minutes or less, and that's where I'm basing my conclusions. If an application takes multiple hours, you're still likely to receive a yes, but a tiny chance of saving 3 hours of work might be worth a few minutes.

To be clear, the urge to send an email to check if you should apply is totally normal (I have done it before), and anyone who has done this has nothing to worry about. However, I would strongly recommend applying despite your reservations. You can just do things!

Also, if you want to apply to become Access to Medicines Initiative's Head of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Data, JOB DESCRIPTION AND APPLICATION HERE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nqOz2a5bTQs5W361G5gpJ3brLEf6xuG0

Hey all -- our experimental microgranting app no hotdog is now accepting submissions for our first $250 grant. The theme is Solarpunk, meant to include anything related to nature, technology, and animals. 

Potentially a good opportunity for student groups and young people for whom $250 might make a bigger difference (and who might be excited about the app concept). Please share with anyone who might be interested! The project budget need not be limited to the $250 you receive from us, and both new and ongoing projects are welcome.

More details here: https://nohotdog.love/grant