Limiting the discussion to the most impactful jobs from an EA perspective, I think it can be pretty hard for reasons I lay out here. I got lucky in many many ways, including that I was accepted to 80K coaching, turned out to be good at this line of work (which I easily could not have), and was in law school during the time when FHI was just spinning up its GovAI internship program.
My guess is that general credentials are probably insufficient without accompanying work that shows your ability to address the very unique issues of AGI policy well. So opportunities to try your hand at that are pretty valuable if you can find them.
That said, opportunities to show general AI policy capabilities—even on “short-term” issues—are good signals and can lead to a good career in this area!
Limiting the discussion to the most impactful jobs from an EA perspective, I think it can be pretty hard for reasons I lay out here. I got lucky in many many ways, including that I was accepted to 80K coaching, turned out to be good at this line of work (which I easily could not have), and was in law school during the time when FHI was just spinning up its GovAI internship program.
My guess is that general credentials are probably insufficient without accompanying work that shows your ability to address the very unique issues of AGI policy well. So opportunities to try your hand at that are pretty valuable if you can find them.
That said, opportunities to show general AI policy capabilities—even on “short-term” issues—are good signals and can lead to a good career in this area!