I specified undergrads because I assume they're similar to me. This can of course apply to non-undergrads.

Also, I recommend checking prediction markets and prioritizing elections that are close calls (e.g. don't volunteer for a 90%-likely-to-win candidate, or a 10% one that is dwarfed by two other 40% candidates). Aim for 35-50% (judgement call)

More EA undergrads should do political volunteering. It's impactful AND fun.

Choose an election that's impactful (e.g. AI safety candidate) and neglected (e.g. primaries in always-blue/red places), couch-crash the weekend there, and volunteer with the campaign.

I say this after doing 15 hours of street canvassing myself. I was surprised by how anecdotally impactful and fun it was. If you like people-watching, talking to strangers, and/or joining passionate projects for a weekend, I think you'll also love this.

I wish I thought of this earlier.

Literature on the impact (Claude-generated): Kalla & Broockman's meta-analysis of 49 field experiments finds zero average persuasive effect in general elections, but effects do show up when voters lack a partisan cue (i.e. primaries and ballot measures). Mann & Haenschen (2024) find mobilization effects (e.g. canvassing) are 33-76% larger in low-attention races than in high-attention ones. Your marginal volunteer hour goes much further in a primary.

Thank you for the correction and apologies for the error.

I'm actually not sure where 0.75% came from now that I look at it. I wrote this a month ago and cannot remember my state of mind. I probably didn't double-check the number while Claude-source-finding.

I'm adding a disclaimer at the top of the post and will update the calculator. Thanks again.

Amazing post (loved the image)

To anyone from Darty who's reading this and is on the fence: I revived the EA group at UPenn and it's been one of my best decisions. It's easier than you think (& I'm saying this as a freshman). Shreya's very right that there is a lack of EA presence on campuses; if you're considering organizing and think "someone else will prob. do it" or "I'm not sure I'm qualified" I fully believe you're already in the top 10 people who can organize this, and that the most likely outcome is that all 10 don't do anything. Please change that!

It would be more useful to compare AI safety work vs. other longtermist interventions, since it's unlikely that donations to GiveWell would beat longtermist interventions from a longtermist POV

I agree that would be incredibly useful; maybe I'll do that next (20% chance). The same model can be used for pandemics and nuclear risk -- I'd just need to update (1) P(doom) for each, (2) tractability (for AI, that's the 'AI safety decreases risk by 7% per doubling of staff'), and (3) personal contribution. It could be a quick tool for anyone to realize how impactful longtermist careers are and, based on their beliefs about the world and their own ability, choose the career with the highest EV, though I'd only recommend acting on that comparison if the difference is quite large (my hunch is 5x or higher) given the uncertainty involved.

It would also force people to hold self-consistent beliefs. If there's a separate calculator for AI safety and one for biosecurity, someone could claim that non-[x-risk at hand] is much higher than [x-isk at hand] in each case, but that wouldn't be consistent across the two, cause each [x-risk at hand] would factor into the other's non-[x-risk at hand]. In other words, it can be used as a tool to calibrate beliefs about existential risks (I think it would do that for me, at least).

The biggest thing missing from the model is the possibility that safety research is net harmful.

This is quite interesting; I hadn't thought of this. Do you think it should be approximated as "% chance that AI safety is actually bad" and "increase in AI risk per doubling of staff"? e.g. it would look like this:

1. 90% chance AI safety reduces AI risk, decreasing it by 10% per doubling of staff
2. 10% chance AI safety increases AI risk, increasing it by 10% per doubling of staff

Or is that too rudimentary, you think?

I compared GiveWell to convince people who believe in global dev but are skeptical of AI risk. I could have kept the explanation of why dollars to GiveWell should be discounted and instead said "Donate [smaller yet still big amount] to AI safety / longtermist solutions" which would be equivalent to "Donate $5M to GiveWell" (assuming my discounting is accurate), but I feared it would sound circular. Some people's natural response would be "I already don't believe AI risk is that big of a deal!" even though the two framings are logically equivalent

Oh that was a complete misunderstanding on my part. Thank you

Your post (along with Anthropic's statement, and Sam Altman's tweet) convinced me to switch from ChatGPT Plus to Claude Pro.

I am not particuarly convinced by Bregman's reasoning. I think the frequent prompts (by your post, Anthropic's, and Altman's) to consider boycotting ChatGPT is probably what actually convinced me, which is not very rational to best honest.

My "rational" justification is that I think moving $20/month from OpenAI to Anthropic is most likely non-negative (and probably positive). I'm not sure it why I never thought of this before haha

Thank you!