Content & Research Associate @ Giving What We Can
MSc in Social Science of the Internet Candidate @ University of Oxford
Ah. Duh. My bad!
Right now I'm an MSc student at the Oxford Internet Institute studying part-time for a degree in social science of the internet, with a focus on economics.
I also work on content & research at Giving What We Can, which mostly involves simplifying and translating core EA ideas to something that a general audience would like to read/watch.
This summer I will be self-studying AI governance and then joining GovAI as a summer research fellow. Provided this path seems promising for me, I'm hoping to work at the intersection of policy and research in the AI governance field for the foreseeable future.
I'd like to specifically get better at writing more clearly, critical/creative thinking (using helpful mental models, having better reasoning transparency, and generally being more rational), and researching (more specifically, better at reading/interpreting a lot of existing research and forming my own inside view more quickly). More generally, I think I could probably also use better quantitative skills (economic modelling plus interpreting/working with data/statistics). I could also be a more organised person.
I'd also like to start working on my leadership skills so I'm better prepared for later on when I become a more senior member of whatever team I'm on.
How important is compute for AI development relative to other inputs? How certain are you of this?
There have been estimates that there are around 100 AI researchers & engineers focused on AI alignment. This seems quite small given the scale of the problem. What are some of the bottlenecks for scaling up, and what is being done to alleviate this?
What opportunities, if any at all, do individual donors (or people who might not have suitable backgrounds for safety/governance careers) have to positively shape the development of AI?
I’m neither a software engineer nor on the job market, but I found myself reading to the end because of how much fun this post is. Well done!
Might also add my totally-completely-absolutely-unbiased opinion that working at CEA/other orgs in the CEA umbrella is amazing.
Thanks for the feedback! I agree, sometimes conveying the potential value of future generations to a general audience can be really tricky. We're currently working on improving our feedback solicitation process, precisely so we can get input from a wide range of people like you flagged — from highly engaged EAs to members of the general public.
I do think there is a tricky line to balance between going too high level and going too granular when creating longtermist content for a wide audience, but it's something I think is extremely valuable to figure out and would like for us to continually improve at doing a good job of.
Thank you!
My impression is that I will keep the application open until I'm satisfied that I've found a strong team of approximately 2-4 core writers. I'm not quite sure how long that will take, however.
I could also see a desire to scale in the future, so we could onboard on a rolling basis.
This is interesting, Adam. Thanks for sharing. I think you should consider posting this as a standalone piece on the forum, because I can imagine there will be a wide variety of opinions regarding the speed at which EA should grow. What I will say though is that I really like the idea of doing profiles on specific people — e.g., "How this software engineer approaches charity" — in order to relate to a wider audience. I think this is the exact kind of content we'd like to work with our members to produce, so thanks for sharing the idea!
Let's fulfil Mill's wishes by buying some coal mines.