EDIT: we are to be replaced by as-yet-unannounced orgs.
ALERT (the active longtermist emergency response team) is looking for a Director to lead the project.
The role is fully funded and we’ve organised fiscal sponsorship from a UK registered charity. We have a longlist of reservists and interest from people at Rethink Priorities, Our World in Data, Bluedot, ALLFED, and CEA.
Some good characteristics for the job:
Resilience. It’s possible that your decisions will have major consequences, in a relatively short time.
Ability to function well in crisis situations. Our impression is that this is a relatively stable trait in people—if you repeatedly find yourself, for example, being the first one to stop at a car accident, or dealing with first aid or work emergencies, you’re probably the right kind of person. If, on the other hand, you dread situations like this and hope someone else will respond, it’s probably not the role for you.
Excellent operations skills.
Experience with either research or research management.
And responsibilities:
Building readiness
You’ll build teams specialising in biosecurity, AI, great power conflict, and Other. Each to share ops, comms, software, and data science support.
Track team skills, encourage training to fill gaps
Responsible for activating teams in response to early warnings
Maintain a register of the team’s wider network
Liaise with related organisations
Commission relevant forecasts
Prepare annual horizon scanning report
Operations
Make the call to activate based on forecaster input
Co-organise an annual wargame for each team, likely in-person
Collect status reports from reservists
Deploy discretionary budget towards reservists (e.g. researchers, forecasters, ops), contractors, project management / HR software, etc. as needed.
Strategy
Leading ALERT strategy-setting, choice of triggers.
Despite my best efforts (and an amazing director candidate, and a great list of volunteers), this project suffered from the FTX explosion and an understandable lack of buy-in for an org with maximally broad responsibilities, unpredictable time-to-payoff, and a largeish discretionary fund. As a result, we shuttered without spending any money. Two successor orgs, one using our funding and focussed on bio, are in the pipeline though.
I’ll be in touch if either of the new orgs want to contact you as a volunteer.
Is there a physical location or office? Whom does the role report to?
What are example emergencies where reservists would be activated? What would they do when activated? Are there comparable orgs in other domains I should index to when thinking about ALERT?
How many hours / week, roughly? What does it mean that the role would not be on duty most days? Is there an existing staff or would one need to be hired?
When the National Guard is activated they are called away to a physical space to work with others, is it like that?
Great questions. Most of the below could be reshaped by the director:
No physical location—director has discretion. (One cool idea we had was to enlist existing teams at EA orgs, so that they’re constantly building readiness and already colocated or functionally remote.)
Role reports to the board, currently Jan Kulveit, Vishal Maini, Ales Flidr and me but likely to need more.
Some unvetted examples we came up with: COVID in late December 2019; Russia-Ukraine (minor investigation from December 2021, expanding to active nuclear risk forecasting by end January); nuclear explosion of any kind; new large leaks of Snowden type; new physics apparently discovered; someone attempts climate engineering; global stilling; volcano acting weird; etc.
See what we did during covid: massive fast data collection, fast great research, visualisation, pro bono consulting, serving on government advisory boards, policy design, making up for inadequate institutions of all kinds, coordination, countering bullshit. (This was all improvised; next time we’ll do better.) 1DaySooner are a big inspiration too.
Comparable orgs are Epidemic Forecasting, RAMP, MeSES, ALLFED, the strategic side of FEMA. None have this particular dormant structure, though ALLFED do vigilance and wargames.
Unclear to me (I’ve never set up a proper org or managed more than 4 people) but I guess during peacetime < 0.5 FTE. During a crisis, >1 FTE.
After setting up the organisation, hiring, designing processes, pulling together everyone’s skills and network and so on, and after the annual wargames are organised, the role consists of listening to the forecasters and deciding day to day whether to activate the reservists. So it’s an exaggeration to say “not on duty”; instead, often around 1 hour per day.
No existing staff, just the board duct-taping things together and a list of about 40 volunteers for reservists.
Co-location during the crisis could make sense, depends on the crisis.
Maybe they should, maybe the shouldn’t, but I don’t think Gavin was saying such things should be encouraged. I think he was saying that there should be some kind of response if such leaks happen.
How are reservists incentivized to prioritize ALERT over their other work when activated?
It’s a good question. I doubt that binding contracts are the right way to do this. We will probably do peacetime stipends and emergency pay. But I suppose it’s a matter of self-selection: we will be responding to the current most important thing in the world and, in this crowd, that should be enough.
After the director, what is the org most limited by?
Org strategy > org ops (existence, banking, authorisation, etc) > hiring > fundraising > wargame planning. Reservists and forecasters are fairly ready to go.
EDIT: we are to be replaced by as-yet-unannounced orgs.
ALERT (the active longtermist emergency response team) is looking for a Director to lead the project.
The role is fully funded and we’ve organised fiscal sponsorship from a UK registered charity. We have a longlist of reservists and interest from people at Rethink Priorities, Our World in Data, Bluedot, ALLFED, and CEA.
Some good characteristics for the job:
Resilience. It’s possible that your decisions will have major consequences, in a relatively short time.
Ability to function well in crisis situations. Our impression is that this is a relatively stable trait in people—if you repeatedly find yourself, for example, being the first one to stop at a car accident, or dealing with first aid or work emergencies, you’re probably the right kind of person. If, on the other hand, you dread situations like this and hope someone else will respond, it’s probably not the role for you.
Excellent operations skills.
Experience with either research or research management.
And responsibilities:
Building readiness
You’ll build teams specialising in biosecurity, AI, great power conflict, and Other. Each to share ops, comms, software, and data science support.
Track team skills, encourage training to fill gaps
Responsible for activating teams in response to early warnings
Maintain a register of the team’s wider network
Liaise with related organisations
Commission relevant forecasts
Prepare annual horizon scanning report
Operations
Make the call to activate based on forecaster input
Co-organise an annual wargame for each team, likely in-person
Collect status reports from reservists
Deploy discretionary budget towards reservists (e.g. researchers, forecasters, ops), contractors, project management / HR software, etc. as needed.
Strategy
Leading ALERT strategy-setting, choice of triggers.
Apply here!
Despite my best efforts (and an amazing director candidate, and a great list of volunteers), this project suffered from the FTX explosion and an understandable lack of buy-in for an org with maximally broad responsibilities, unpredictable time-to-payoff, and a largeish discretionary fund. As a result, we shuttered without spending any money. Two successor orgs, one using our funding and focussed on bio, are in the pipeline though.
I’ll be in touch if either of the new orgs want to contact you as a volunteer.
Sorry to hear that this one didn’t work out! Kudos for staying motivated and continuing with other initiatives.
Is there a physical location or office? Whom does the role report to? What are example emergencies where reservists would be activated? What would they do when activated? Are there comparable orgs in other domains I should index to when thinking about ALERT? How many hours / week, roughly? What does it mean that the role would not be on duty most days? Is there an existing staff or would one need to be hired? When the National Guard is activated they are called away to a physical space to work with others, is it like that?
Great questions. Most of the below could be reshaped by the director:
No physical location—director has discretion. (One cool idea we had was to enlist existing teams at EA orgs, so that they’re constantly building readiness and already colocated or functionally remote.)
Role reports to the board, currently Jan Kulveit, Vishal Maini, Ales Flidr and me but likely to need more.
Some unvetted examples we came up with: COVID in late December 2019; Russia-Ukraine (minor investigation from December 2021, expanding to active nuclear risk forecasting by end January); nuclear explosion of any kind; new large leaks of Snowden type; new physics apparently discovered; someone attempts climate engineering; global stilling; volcano acting weird; etc.
See what we did during covid: massive fast data collection, fast great research, visualisation, pro bono consulting, serving on government advisory boards, policy design, making up for inadequate institutions of all kinds, coordination, countering bullshit. (This was all improvised; next time we’ll do better.) 1DaySooner are a big inspiration too.
Comparable orgs are Epidemic Forecasting, RAMP, MeSES, ALLFED, the strategic side of FEMA. None have this particular dormant structure, though ALLFED do vigilance and wargames.
Unclear to me (I’ve never set up a proper org or managed more than 4 people) but I guess during peacetime < 0.5 FTE. During a crisis, >1 FTE.
After setting up the organisation, hiring, designing processes, pulling together everyone’s skills and network and so on, and after the annual wargames are organised, the role consists of listening to the forecasters and deciding day to day whether to activate the reservists. So it’s an exaggeration to say “not on duty”; instead, often around 1 hour per day.
No existing staff, just the board duct-taping things together and a list of about 40 volunteers for reservists.
Co-location during the crisis could make sense, depends on the crisis.
One cool idea would be embedding a physical EOC into refuges, and calling reservists in once some crisis threshold was crossed.
“New large leaks of the Snowden type.”
I agree that effective altruists should do more to encourage these.
Maybe they should, maybe the shouldn’t, but I don’t think Gavin was saying such things should be encouraged. I think he was saying that there should be some kind of response if such leaks happen.
We can now sponsor US work visas.
Congrats!
More questions from offline:
It’s a good question. I doubt that binding contracts are the right way to do this. We will probably do peacetime stipends and emergency pay. But I suppose it’s a matter of self-selection: we will be responding to the current most important thing in the world and, in this crowd, that should be enough.
Org strategy > org ops (existence, banking, authorisation, etc) > hiring > fundraising > wargame planning. Reservists and forecasters are fairly ready to go.
Also a question about seniority:
Pardon: asks that it not be your first rodeo, that you can handle founding (especially hiring and culture-setting). But we don’t need VP or C-level.