Your plan for a semester sounds excellent. Some questions I have are: To what extent are German university groups already doing these things? Are they running introductory fellowships, and if so, what are the main levers by which we can make these programs more successful? What is the most successful Germany EA university group, and how could other German uni groups replicate their success?
In the past year, I’ve had the honor of starting EA at Georgia Tech (in the United States), and its growth has exceeded anything I would have anticipated if you had asked me a year ago. I started off in April 2021 by advertising the virtual intro fellowship in lots of large group chats and on the university Reddit, and we had about eight people participating that round. Advertising the program again in the fall semester, both on mailing lists and in group chats, we had 35 participants that semester, six of whom joined our organizing team. This semester, we’ll have 62 participants in our intro program, 27 in our reading group of The Precipice, and 36 in AI Safety Fundamentals. I’m really excited for our group’s future, and I hope that my experience may be helpful for German uni groups as well.
I think our most important activities were advertising the intro fellowship (especially on lots of mailing lists and large group chats), and then running it. Everything else we did – general discussion meetings, free vegan lunches, a computer science careers workshop, etc. – was of secondary importance for the purpose of building up the group and having more organizer capacity. So if you have limited time, I would try to focus your efforts on helping the advertising reach an incredible number of university students, though the other activities seem helpful as well. Maybe have calls with the uni groups to try to help them make their advertising strategy the best that it can be. But take my thoughts with a grain of salt, as maybe Georgia Tech is very different from German universities.
Your plan for a semester sounds excellent. Some questions I have are: To what extent are German university groups already doing these things? Are they running introductory fellowships, and if so, what are the main levers by which we can make these programs more successful? What is the most successful Germany EA university group, and how could other German uni groups replicate their success?
In the past year, I’ve had the honor of starting EA at Georgia Tech (in the United States), and its growth has exceeded anything I would have anticipated if you had asked me a year ago. I started off in April 2021 by advertising the virtual intro fellowship in lots of large group chats and on the university Reddit, and we had about eight people participating that round. Advertising the program again in the fall semester, both on mailing lists and in group chats, we had 35 participants that semester, six of whom joined our organizing team. This semester, we’ll have 62 participants in our intro program, 27 in our reading group of The Precipice, and 36 in AI Safety Fundamentals. I’m really excited for our group’s future, and I hope that my experience may be helpful for German uni groups as well.
I think our most important activities were advertising the intro fellowship (especially on lots of mailing lists and large group chats), and then running it. Everything else we did – general discussion meetings, free vegan lunches, a computer science careers workshop, etc. – was of secondary importance for the purpose of building up the group and having more organizer capacity. So if you have limited time, I would try to focus your efforts on helping the advertising reach an incredible number of university students, though the other activities seem helpful as well. Maybe have calls with the uni groups to try to help them make their advertising strategy the best that it can be. But take my thoughts with a grain of salt, as maybe Georgia Tech is very different from German universities.