Chris Leong
Bio
Participation7
Currently doing local AI safety Movement Building in Australia and NZ.
Posts 72
Comments1285
Topic contributions2
I would like to suggest that folk not downvote this post below zero. I'm generally in favour of allowing people to defend themselves, unless their response is clearly in bad faith. I'm sure many folk strongly disagree with the OP's desired social norms, but this is different from bad faith.
Additionally, I suspect most of us have very little insight into how community health operates and this post provides some much needed visibility. Regardless of whether you think their response was just right, too harsh or too lenient, this post opens up a rare opportunity for the community to weigh in.
I suspect people are downvoting this post either because they think the author is a bad person or they don't want the author at EA events. I would suggest that neither of these are good reasons to downvote this specific post into the negative.
Should our EA residential program prioritize structured programming or open-ended residencies?
There's more information value in exploring structured programming.
That said, I'd be wary duplicating existing programs; ie. if the AI Safety Fellowship became a knock-off MATS.
What the School of Moral Ambition has achieved is impressive, but it's unclear whether EA should aim for mainstream appeal insofar as SoMA could potentially fill that niche.
"~70% male and ~75% white" — I'm increasingly feel that the way to be cool is to not be so self-conscious about this kind of stuff. Would it be great to have more women on our team? Of course! And for EA to be more global? Again, that'd be great! But talking about your demographics like it's a failure will never be cool. Instead EA should just back itself. Are our demographics ideal? No. But if circumstances are such that we need to get the job done with these demographics, then we'll get the job done with these demographics. And honestly, the less you need people, the more likely they are to feel drawn to you, at least in my experience.
"Please, for God’s sake, hire non-EA creative talent" — I suspect this is very circumstantial. There are circumstances where you'll be able to delegate to non-EA creative talent and it'll work fine, but there will be other circumstances where you try this and you find that they just keep distorting the message. It's harder than you might think.
I agree re: 4 though. The expectations re: caveats depend heavily on the context of the post.
Create nice zones for spontaneous conversations (not sure how to do this well)
I've tried pushing for this without much success unfortunately.
It really is a lot more effort to have spontaneous conversations when almost all pairs are a one-on-one and almost all people by themselves are waiting for a one-on-one.
I've seen attempts to declare a space an area that's not for one-on-ones, but people have one-on-ones there anyway. Then again, organisers normally put up one or two small signs.
Honestly, the only way to stop people having one-on-ones in the area for spontaneous conversation might be to have an absurd number of big and obvious signs.
For most fellowships you're applying to a mentor rather than pursuing your own project (ERA is an exception). And, on the most common fellowships of a few months it's pretty much go, go, go, with little time to explore.
Very excited to read this post. I strongly agree with both the concrete direction and with the importance of making EA more intellectually vibrant.
Then again, I'm rather biased since I made a similar argument a few years back.
Main differences:
I also agree with the "fuck PR" stance (my words, not Will's). Especially insofar as the AIS movement has greater pressure to focus on PR, since it's further towards the pointy end, I think it's important for the EA movement to use its freedom to provide a counter-balance to this.