Jessica Wen
Bio
Participation3
Co-founder of High Impact Engineers. Background in materials science and mechanical engineering. Also chat to me about community building, career decisions, etc.
How others can help me
I'd like to connect to other physical (non-software) engineers or professional community builders. I am particularly interested in gathering data on what engineers think is missing in the EA community, and where the EA community is missing engineers. I would like to gather data on what physical technologies are being developed or have been developed for different EA cause areas.
How I can help others
Reach out if you have a non-software engineering background, especially if you're doing or would like to do direct work in EA. I can share resources to help with career planning, connections to people with similar backgrounds, and ideas for projects or other ways to contribute your skills.
Posts 10
Comments46
Congratulations George! After my recent visit to China (my first since I went vegan) I was truly blown away by how convincing a lot of the tofu meat substitutes are. Even my meat-eating brother was surprised. I'm glad that you're trying to bring this to Western audiences!
I will note that the UK e-book is not free, but I coughed up the £1.63 for it anyway ;)
Perhaps this isn't the place to discuss this, but despite the excellent fake meats in China, they really haven't taken off and meat consumption and production are at an all-time high. How much better do meat substitutes have to be for people to choose them over animal meat?
I was planning on writing something similar for my experience as a co-founder of High Impact Engineers, but your post covers a lot of my thoughts and experience. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Joshua,
Thanks for the information and the link to the report! Glad to hear that they are a part of the EA extended universe :)
I haven't heard anyone talk about the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) – it seems that their programmes/focus areas overlap with a few of EA's cause areas:
- Weapons of Mass Destruction: mainly nuclear non-proliferation, also biological and chemical weapons
- Security and Technology: AI, cybersecurity, and even brain-computer interfaces (mainly around how these interface with weapons systems)
- Space Security: space governance and norms
- Global Peace: especially around managing exits from armed conflict and building the Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone
- even Gender and Disarmament to tackle violence against women and girls
I was particularly impressed by their AI Policy Portal, which tracks each country’s approach to governance frameworks, practices, and cooperation.
Unfortunately, like most UN institutes, their fellowships and programmes tend to be unpaid. Could be worth applying to some if you can afford it, for the experience and connections!
These look like some interesting project ideas! Could you elaborate on why Reslab won't be prototyping any of these ideas? (Feel free to say that you'd rather not say as well!)
Doing some BOTECs and looking for the total number of attendees at EAG SF 2022, EAG DC 2022, EAGxVirtual 2022, and EAG London 2023. Does anyone happen to have these numbers?
As someone who studied materials science, I enjoyed this post and appreciated the effort you spent on making technical work legible for laypeople.
As a general comment, I would like to see a technical/mechanistic breakdown of other threat models for how AI could cause doom very soon – I would be surprised if this was the only example of a theoretical threat that is practically very unlikely/bottlenecked due to engineering reasons.