Hello,
My name is Arthur, and i am a high school student in France. I am sending this question to the EA forum because i would greatly benefit from some advice and help surrounding the opic of AI, and particularity, AGI safety. I am part of a section in my school called OIB/BFI (if anyone knows of it), which is basically double nationality studies between France and the US. We study US history, literature, etc… A specific subject we have is called “Global Affairs”. In this course, we must, durinf the entirety of the year, focus on a topic we deem relevant to the world today, do extensive research on it, and finally, at the end of the year, present it to a group of examiners as part of our final high school exams.
The topic which i have chosen is “The fast development of AGI by private companies, and its potential threats/problems to society as we know it today”. I am very interested by AI, and dug into the subject before even being assigned this work, so naturally i followed it into Global Affairs.
Now, we absolutely need as part of our work, a foreign partner from the US, which guides us in our work, awnsers questions, etc...
This why i ask this question to EA today; would any of you, who are qualified/competent enough in the field (through their job, or just knowledge of the subject) like to help me out on this project ? I will not be asking a lot, maybe just a few exchanges by messages/mail to awnser questions, breakdown complex systems, and help me in general better understand the complex topic which is AGI. (in a hopefully pedagogic manner that could help a 16 year old person by the way haha)
Let me know by awnsering this message, or sending me a mail at arthurbilla33@gmail.com !
Thank you for your time,
have a nice rest of the day, whoever you are.
Hey Arthur! I don’t have any valuable advice to give you, but I just wanted to say I was also a BFI student in France who finished their Global Affairs project and graduated just last year. I didn’t really know what project idea to pick and wish I would’ve had the foresight to pick AGI since it would’ve been a lot more interesting than what I picked, so good for you! Good luck on your search for your Global Partner, good luck on your baccalaureate and try not to stress too much despite French schools being very stressful as we know :)
Thanks for your message @bluballoon it’s very kind of you, and its the little words that keep me motivated :) I was losing hope for partners but fortunately, things are starting to look better !
By curiosity, do you have any tips and tricks for the Global Affairs project which you wished you had known during the year ?
My teachers always told us to be as specific as possible when choosing the research question and topic. For example, instead of picking AGI as a topic which is very general, it would be something much more specific like “How has recent developments in AI research affected AGI timelines?” This way you can go into detail and cover everything in your presentation instead of needing to quickly summarise a very broad topic.
Of course this is just an example and you can pick something different, but as advice I would say try to be as specific as you can in your research question, and don’t be afraid to pivot slightly if your research leads you to finding a more interesting question.
Hopefully that’s helpful!