Thanks, Linda, that was very helpful. I really appreciate that you took the time to respond in such detail.
Quote 1: “Are you aware of Alignment Ecosystem Development? They have a list of potentially high impact community building projects. If anyone want to volunteer some time to help with AI Safety community building, you can join their discord”
No, thank you for sharing. I will check it out. My immediate thought is that 54 options is a lot so I’d like to know which ones are more promising, which sort of ties into my comments below!
Quote 2: “Regarding how to prioritise. I would be very worried if there where a consensus around how to rank what projects are highest priority, that would more likely be groupthink than wisdom. I think it’s much healthier for everyone form their own opinion. The sort of coordination I would like to see is different community builders getting to know each other and knowing about each others projects.”
I probably disagree with you here. I see EA as a well-functioning aggregator for the wisdom of well-calibrated crowds, and want to see something similar for AI Safety Movement building.
To explain: I wouldn’t want a world where we all formed our own opinions isolated from EA evidence and aggregate because I think that most people would end up with worse opinions. For instance, without 80k or GWWC I would not have as good opinions on career or donation impact. I think that there are simply too many things to learn and compare for it to be optimal for people to figure everything out by discussion and comparison. I think that any (large) marketplace of ideas will need ratings and various other differentiation signals to function well.
So I suppose I want a clearer consensus than what we have now and think that it would provide a lot of value.
I agree that we should watch out for group think, but I don’t see that as a sufficient risk that it is likely to outweigh the potential benefits of better information and decision-making. If I did then I probably would be against that the annual EA survey or similar initiatives.
I also think that the ideas I am suggesting (.e.g, collecting aggregating the predictions of AI safety researchers) will make group think easier to identify and challenge. It’s harder to address something that is mainly captured via comments across many different forum posts than something captures as an aggregated rating in a survey.
Quote 3: “Fractional Movement Building is a good idea. I’m doing this my self, and the same is true for about half of the AI Safety community builders I know. But I would not prescribe it as a one-size-fits-all solution. I am also not claiming that you are suggesting this, it’s unclear to me how far you want to take this concept.”
Thanks. I am also unsure about the right distribution here and will need to know more before I can be confident. Interesting to hear that you think that half of the CB you know are doing FMB. That’s more than I expected. I wonder if most think it is ideal or their best option though?
Quote 4: “You write about the importance of a shared language. This sems useful. Although if you want to contribute to this, maybe create a vocabulary list? In the section about shared language in you previous post you wrote:
This is why I wrote this series of posts to outline and share the language and understanding that I have developed and plan to use if I engage in more direct work.
However, your posts are really long. I’m not going to read all of them. I only read a few bits of your previous post that seemed most interesting. Currently I don’t know what vocabulary you are proposing.
Also regarding shared vocabulary, I’d be exited about that if and only if it doesn’t become too normative. For example I think that the INT framework is really good as a starting point, but since then has become too influential. You can’t make a singel framework that captures everything.”
Thanks, good point. I will need to pull out the vocabulary and concepts in a more concise post. I tend to disagree that INT is too influential. Perhaps because I think that the alternative of not using it is worse. Of course you might have evidence or insights that I am missing.
Quote 5: “In your previous post you also write
To determine if they should get involved, they ask questions like: Which movement building projects are generally considered good to pursue for someone like me and which are bad? What criteria should I evaluate projects on? What skills do I need to succeed? If I leave my job would I be able to get funding to work on (Movement Building Idea X)?
I know you are just describing what other people are saying and thinking, so I’m not criticizing you. But other than the last question, these are the wrong questions to ask. I don’t want community builders to ask what projects are generally considered good, I want them to ask what projects are good. Also, focus on evaluation early on seems backwards. Uncertainty about funding is a real issue though. It might be tempting to focus on the community building that is most ledigble good, in order to secure a career. But I think that is exactly the road that leads to potentially net negative community building. “
I think we slightly disagree here: You say “I don’t want community builders to ask what projects are generally considered good, I want them to ask what projects are good.”
In contrast, I do want new entrants to AISMB to ask what projects are generally considered good and have answers. I want that in the same way that I want new graduates to the workforce think about career impacts and be able to look at the 80k website. Or new donors to think about charities and be able to check GWWC. Then I want them to think about what they agree with.
You say: A focus on evaluation early on seems backwards.
However, I want people to arrive to an evaluation by an expert, not to be expected to be the expert on arrival or to do huge amounts of work to collect and assess opportunities and become an expert. Realistically, if no-one evaluate the impact of charities and careers I and most people would never do it and our subsequent decisions would probably be much less impactful.
Anyway, I hope that some of this was helpful in explaining where I am coming from! I am not confident in any of it, so I welcome more thoughts and feedback. Please don’t put yourself under pressure to reply though.
As far as I can tell, Fractional Movement Building is the norm almost everywhere. In academia, most workshops are run by researchers for researchers. All hobby movements I’ve been a part of events are run by hobbyist for hobbyists. Unfortunately I don’t have this sort of knowledge of other professional networks, other than EA and Academia.
I also think that some amount of FMB is necessary to keep the movement building grounded in what is needed among practitioners. A lot of us organisers end up becoming organisers because we where researchers or aspiring researchers and notice an organisational need. I don’t know of any successful movement building that don’t have some of this grounding. However I also don’t have intimate enough knowledge of all successful movement building to be sure there are no exception.
Yes, this is a good point and something that I could/should probably mention when I make the case for more fractional movement building. I’ll have to think more about the specifics as I get more engagement and experience.
It’s also a long list, so your point stands. But it’s a list of projects not a list of groups. I would not send the list of communities to someone new, that’s for when you know a bit more what you want to do and what community you are looking for.
I would give the list of project to someone looking to help with community building, but more importantly, I’d point them to the discord. Which I did successfully link above. https://discord.gg/dRPdsEhYmY
I’m not saying there is a perfect system for onboarding community builder, just saying that there is something, and you should know about it. There are always more organising work to do, including meta organising.
Although in the spirit of FMB, it might be a good idea to do some regular movement building before you do meta movement building?
Although in the spirit of FMB, it might be a good idea to do some regular movement building before you do meta movement building?
Yes, this seems right. I have done a lot of EA movement building and a little AI Safety movement building. I suspect that there is a still a lot to be learned from doing more movement building. I plan to do some in a few months so that should help me to revalidate if my various model/ideas make sense.
@PeterSlattery I want to push back on the idea about “regular” movement building versus “meta”. It sounds like you have a fair amount of experience in movement building. I’m not sure I agree that you went meta here, but if you had, am not convinced that would be a bad thing, particularly given the subject matter.
I have only read one of your posts so far, but appreciated it. I think you are wise to try and facilitate the creation of a more cohesive theory of change, especially if inadvertently doing harm is a significant risk.
As someone on the periphery and not working in AI safety but who has tried to understand it a bit, I feel pretty confused as I haven’t encountered much in the way of strategy and corresponding tactics. I imagine this might be quite frustrating and demotivating for those working in the field.
I agree with the anonymous submission that broader perspectives would likely be quite valuable.
I don’t want to discourage you in any way. The best person to solve a problem is often the one to spot that problem, so if you see problems and have ideas you should go for it.
However, a consistent problem is that lots of people don’t know what recourses that exist. I think a better recommendation than what I wrote before, is to find out what already exist, and then decide what to do. Maybe add more missing recourses, or help signal boosting, which ever make sense.
Also, I’m not calming to be an expert. I think I know about half of what is going on in AI Safety community building.
There are some different slacks and discords too for AIS community building but not any central one. Having a central one would be good. If you want to coordinate this, I’d support that, conditioned on you having plan for avoiding this problem: xkcd: Standards
Thanks, Linda, that was very helpful. I really appreciate that you took the time to respond in such detail.
Quote 1: “Are you aware of Alignment Ecosystem Development? They have a list of potentially high impact community building projects. If anyone want to volunteer some time to help with AI Safety community building, you can join their discord”
No, thank you for sharing. I will check it out. My immediate thought is that 54 options is a lot so I’d like to know which ones are more promising, which sort of ties into my comments below!
Quote 2: “Regarding how to prioritise. I would be very worried if there where a consensus around how to rank what projects are highest priority, that would more likely be groupthink than wisdom. I think it’s much healthier for everyone form their own opinion. The sort of coordination I would like to see is different community builders getting to know each other and knowing about each others projects.”
I probably disagree with you here. I see EA as a well-functioning aggregator for the wisdom of well-calibrated crowds, and want to see something similar for AI Safety Movement building.
To explain: I wouldn’t want a world where we all formed our own opinions isolated from EA evidence and aggregate because I think that most people would end up with worse opinions. For instance, without 80k or GWWC I would not have as good opinions on career or donation impact. I think that there are simply too many things to learn and compare for it to be optimal for people to figure everything out by discussion and comparison. I think that any (large) marketplace of ideas will need ratings and various other differentiation signals to function well.
So I suppose I want a clearer consensus than what we have now and think that it would provide a lot of value.
I agree that we should watch out for group think, but I don’t see that as a sufficient risk that it is likely to outweigh the potential benefits of better information and decision-making. If I did then I probably would be against that the annual EA survey or similar initiatives.
I also think that the ideas I am suggesting (.e.g, collecting aggregating the predictions of AI safety researchers) will make group think easier to identify and challenge. It’s harder to address something that is mainly captured via comments across many different forum posts than something captures as an aggregated rating in a survey.
Quote 3: “Fractional Movement Building is a good idea. I’m doing this my self, and the same is true for about half of the AI Safety community builders I know. But I would not prescribe it as a one-size-fits-all solution. I am also not claiming that you are suggesting this, it’s unclear to me how far you want to take this concept.”
Thanks. I am also unsure about the right distribution here and will need to know more before I can be confident. Interesting to hear that you think that half of the CB you know are doing FMB. That’s more than I expected. I wonder if most think it is ideal or their best option though?
Quote 4: “You write about the importance of a shared language. This sems useful. Although if you want to contribute to this, maybe create a vocabulary list? In the section about shared language in you previous post you wrote:
This is why I wrote this series of posts to outline and share the language and understanding that I have developed and plan to use if I engage in more direct work.
However, your posts are really long. I’m not going to read all of them. I only read a few bits of your previous post that seemed most interesting. Currently I don’t know what vocabulary you are proposing.
Also regarding shared vocabulary, I’d be exited about that if and only if it doesn’t become too normative. For example I think that the INT framework is really good as a starting point, but since then has become too influential. You can’t make a singel framework that captures everything.”
Thanks, good point. I will need to pull out the vocabulary and concepts in a more concise post. I tend to disagree that INT is too influential. Perhaps because I think that the alternative of not using it is worse. Of course you might have evidence or insights that I am missing.
Quote 5: “In your previous post you also write
To determine if they should get involved, they ask questions like: Which movement building projects are generally considered good to pursue for someone like me and which are bad? What criteria should I evaluate projects on? What skills do I need to succeed? If I leave my job would I be able to get funding to work on (Movement Building Idea X)?
I know you are just describing what other people are saying and thinking, so I’m not criticizing you. But other than the last question, these are the wrong questions to ask. I don’t want community builders to ask what projects are generally considered good, I want them to ask what projects are good. Also, focus on evaluation early on seems backwards. Uncertainty about funding is a real issue though. It might be tempting to focus on the community building that is most ledigble good, in order to secure a career. But I think that is exactly the road that leads to potentially net negative community building. “
I think we slightly disagree here: You say “I don’t want community builders to ask what projects are generally considered good, I want them to ask what projects are good.”
In contrast, I do want new entrants to AISMB to ask what projects are generally considered good and have answers. I want that in the same way that I want new graduates to the workforce think about career impacts and be able to look at the 80k website. Or new donors to think about charities and be able to check GWWC. Then I want them to think about what they agree with.
You say: A focus on evaluation early on seems backwards.
However, I want people to arrive to an evaluation by an expert, not to be expected to be the expert on arrival or to do huge amounts of work to collect and assess opportunities and become an expert. Realistically, if no-one evaluate the impact of charities and careers I and most people would never do it and our subsequent decisions would probably be much less impactful.
Anyway, I hope that some of this was helpful in explaining where I am coming from! I am not confident in any of it, so I welcome more thoughts and feedback. Please don’t put yourself under pressure to reply though.
As far as I can tell, Fractional Movement Building is the norm almost everywhere. In academia, most workshops are run by researchers for researchers. All hobby movements I’ve been a part of events are run by hobbyist for hobbyists. Unfortunately I don’t have this sort of knowledge of other professional networks, other than EA and Academia.
I also think that some amount of FMB is necessary to keep the movement building grounded in what is needed among practitioners. A lot of us organisers end up becoming organisers because we where researchers or aspiring researchers and notice an organisational need. I don’t know of any successful movement building that don’t have some of this grounding. However I also don’t have intimate enough knowledge of all successful movement building to be sure there are no exception.
Yes, this is a good point and something that I could/should probably mention when I make the case for more fractional movement building. I’ll have to think more about the specifics as I get more engagement and experience.
Thanks for all the useful input!
That’s why there are also a discord and regular calls.
I gave the wrong link before. I menat to post this one:
alignment.dev projects · Alignment Ecosystem Development (coda.io)
But instead posted this one
aisafety.community · Alignment Ecosystem Development (coda.io)
I’ve fixed my previous comment now too.
It’s also a long list, so your point stands. But it’s a list of projects not a list of groups. I would not send the list of communities to someone new, that’s for when you know a bit more what you want to do and what community you are looking for.
I would give the list of project to someone looking to help with community building, but more importantly, I’d point them to the discord. Which I did successfully link above.
https://discord.gg/dRPdsEhYmY
With the list of projects, it looks like most of them are launched or soft launched and so don’t require further assistance?
Some yes, but some still need more work. I hear some more will be added soon, and others are welcome to add too.
There is also a related monthly call you can join for more details.
Alignment Ecosystem Development
Alignment Ecosystem Dev (google.com)
I’m not saying there is a perfect system for onboarding community builder, just saying that there is something, and you should know about it. There are always more organising work to do, including meta organising.
Although in the spirit of FMB, it might be a good idea to do some regular movement building before you do meta movement building?
Oh, no. I’m still sharing the wrong link.
This one is the right one: Alignment Ecosystem Development
Thanks there are a lot of good ideas in here!
Ok, that’s fair.
Although in the spirit of FMB, it might be a good idea to do some regular movement building before you do meta movement building?
Yes, this seems right. I have done a lot of EA movement building and a little AI Safety movement building. I suspect that there is a still a lot to be learned from doing more movement building. I plan to do some in a few months so that should help me to revalidate if my various model/ideas make sense.
@PeterSlattery I want to push back on the idea about “regular” movement building versus “meta”. It sounds like you have a fair amount of experience in movement building. I’m not sure I agree that you went meta here, but if you had, am not convinced that would be a bad thing, particularly given the subject matter.
I have only read one of your posts so far, but appreciated it. I think you are wise to try and facilitate the creation of a more cohesive theory of change, especially if inadvertently doing harm is a significant risk.
As someone on the periphery and not working in AI safety but who has tried to understand it a bit, I feel pretty confused as I haven’t encountered much in the way of strategy and corresponding tactics. I imagine this might be quite frustrating and demotivating for those working in the field.
I agree with the anonymous submission that broader perspectives would likely be quite valuable.
Thanks for the thoughts, I really appreciate that you took the time to share them.
I don’t want to discourage you in any way. The best person to solve a problem is often the one to spot that problem, so if you see problems and have ideas you should go for it.
However, a consistent problem is that lots of people don’t know what recourses that exist. I think a better recommendation than what I wrote before, is to find out what already exist, and then decide what to do. Maybe add more missing recourses, or help signal boosting, which ever make sense.
Also, I’m not calming to be an expert. I think I know about half of what is going on in AI Safety community building.
If you want to get in touch with more community builders, maybe join one of these calls?
Alignment Ecosystem Dev (google.com)
There are some different slacks and discords too for AIS community building but not any central one. Having a central one would be good. If you want to coordinate this, I’d support that, conditioned on you having plan for avoiding this problem: xkcd: Standards