NickLaing
Bio
Participation1
I'm a doctor working towards the dream that every human will have access to high quality healthcare. I'm a medic and director of OneDay Health, which has launched 53 simple but comprehensive nurse-led health centers in remote rural Ugandan Villages. A huge thanks to the EA Cambridge student community in 2018 for helping me realise that I could do more good by focusing on providing healthcare in remote places.
How I can help others
Understanding the NGO industrial complex, and how aid really works (or doesn't) in Northern Uganda
Global health knowledge
Posts 25
Comments1615
Thanks @mal_graham🔸 this is super helpful and makes more sense now. I think it would make your argument far more complete if you put something like your third and fourth paragraphs here in your main article.
And no I'm personally not worried about interventions being ecologically inert.
As a side note its interesting that you aren't putting much effort into making interventions happen yet - my loose advice would be to get started trying some things. I get that you're trying to build a field, but to have real-world proof of this tractability it might be better to try something sooner rather than later? Otherwise it will remain theory. I'm not too fussed about arguing whether an intervention will be difficult or not - in general I think we are likely to underestimate how difficult an intervention might be.
Show me a couple of relatively easy wins (even small-ish ones) an I'll be right on board :).
I think its incredibly hard to determine, but probably negative EV, as has been the history (IMO) of many (perhaps even most?) EA AI safety interventions. Well intended but for-the-worse-in-the-end. As a side note, I think the history of EA intervention in AI is a great example of just how hard it is to intentionally positively influence even the mid-term future.
It would only be positive if it actually contributed to some kind of slowdown or policy change, which seems pretty unlikely to me. I don't think an eval reslut will ever sound an alarm bell, that would only come from some kind of obvious capability shift or warning shot that affected the general public.
More likely is that it slightly speeds up AI development basically like @MichaelDickens said.
1. Adding to the race dynamic with the clear targets and competition to be at the 'top'
2. Giving AI companies better tools to measure progress
3. Incentivising investment
Thanks Isabel! I still think you could perhaps have some soft recommendations? We are thinking of ditching our red and green plastic containers (which bits of plastic are often flaking off from) and replacing them with aluminium ones. I figure if the water is not hot that's surely safer? I think consumers can do something here to lower risk. We can't figure out what is contaminated but we can know which is more likely at least?
Yeah pregnant women eating soil a thing and some people do but I honestly don't know how much is ingested here so can't help you I'm afraid. That won't be the easiest question to answer. I would have thought the best way to answer directly would just be to take blood lead levels of say 100 women late in pregnancy and compare that with 100 not-pregnant woman to directly see if there's a difference. That wouldn't prove causality but if there was no difference you could discount the problem.
"I was actually wondering about how many nematode-years were affected by 1 kcal just a few days ago, although not in the context of love". This is part of what makes @Vasco Grilo🔸 unique. Can anyone else on the forum claim to have been thinking about this a few days before this post?
Thanks for this great first post. I agree with your main point "We are not getting through". There's a weird disconnect with the public knowing more about AI safety and getting more concerned, while people in power and AI industry leaders seem less worried than ever. Claude is really nice to talk to so its fine right alignment solved?
I like your bent towards action too.
I'm not sure the correct answer is that we should "ALL" be out there lobbying, but yes there's no reason why someone shouldn't talk to every MP in their office hours. Unfortunately my brief experience has been that the personality of the average EA (especially in AI safety) isn't inclined towards getting out there and having awkward conversations with people who don't think like them.
I wonder sometimes whether AI safety people could "hire" a team from the Humane league or something who have proved themselves to be good at this kind of thing.
I feel like even if this is largely true, it doesn't negate the part of the OPs point of which is something like there a mismatch with communicating "the world needs you working on AI" and "there don't seem to be enough jobs for half of good people that want to work on AI"
On your second point "We need more people working on these neglected issues" doesn't necessarily mean that orgs have the "management capacity to absorb more people".
if that's true then in practical sense do we actually need more people working on these neglected issues? Or do we need more jobs first before we push for more people? Or like the OP suggested could there be more junior hires then effort building people up through the system?
And are orgs like 80,000 hours being honest enough about the job market in their communication?
Me: "Well at least this study shows no association beteween painted houses and kids' blood lead levels. That's encouraging!"
Wife: "Nothing you have said this morning is encouraging NIck. Everything that I've heard tells me that our pots, our containers and half of our hut are slowly poisoning our baby"
Yikes touche...
(Context we live in Northern Uganda)
Thanks @Lead Research for Action (LeRA) for this unsettling but excellently written report. Our house is full of aluminium pots and green plastic food containers. Now to figure out what to do about it!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pqRUeejiRCX2bXekeZnL0zGi34zbK23w/view
Wow this is brilliant thank you!
To add to this problem, I think that more uncertain causes are more likely to have overestimated point-estimates even errors non-withstanding. This is for a few reasons, one because we are by nature more optimistic than reality about small probabilities, and that lower quality studies such as cross sectional studies and cohort tend to overestimate effects. When better studies like RCTs or even larger cohorts are done effects often become smaller or disappear.
Unfortunately for many interventions the best data we have is low quality data, and we anchor on those likely overestimated values.
Thanks for the update, and the reasons for the name change make s lot of sense
Instinctively i don't love the new name. The word "coefficient" sounds mathsy/nerdy/complicated, while most people don't know what the word coefficient actually means. The reasoning behind the name does resonate through and i can understand the appeal.
But my instincts are probably wrong though if you've been working with an agency and the team likes it too.
All the best for the future Coefficient Giving!