You yourself probably know better than ASB or anyone else what are the specific boring areas in which you could become an expert that would be useful and impactful.
Or maybe you already are an expert in a boring area and just need to build on that.
For example, a chemical engineer will already have studied areas like explosion risk-management, quality control/assurance and safety. An engineer with Pharma experience might also have had extensive dealings with the FDA and their audits. To you, this might seem obvious—but you can be sure that your knowledge represents a vast, complex and yes, boring field of knowledge to someone who hasn’t had your experience and learning.
It feels like these all provide important perspective to any discussions on AI Safety, Safety verification, etc., that probably most of the people working on this topic will not have. There are so many comments like “we need an agency like the FDA or the IAEA” from people who only have a superficial notion of how these agencies operate. So if you have a deep understanding, that could be valuable, impactful knowledge. In a policy discussion, it is powerful perspective if you can argue that “this is how the FDA does it”.
One area where there seems to be a huge lack of expertise among the EA community is China. I don’t know how many discussions I’ve had about AI Safety and Governance in the context of China, but almost nobody (certainly not me!) has been in the discussions providing perspective of how things actually work in China, how policies can be influenced, how corporations and government actually influence each other (i.e. who meets whom, when, where, what flexibility do they have, …). So this could be a great area for someone who has worked in that kind of area in China, or who has a network of people in that area.
I mostly agree with this, with one addition.
You yourself probably know better than ASB or anyone else what are the specific boring areas in which you could become an expert that would be useful and impactful.
Or maybe you already are an expert in a boring area and just need to build on that.
For example, a chemical engineer will already have studied areas like explosion risk-management, quality control/assurance and safety. An engineer with Pharma experience might also have had extensive dealings with the FDA and their audits. To you, this might seem obvious—but you can be sure that your knowledge represents a vast, complex and yes, boring field of knowledge to someone who hasn’t had your experience and learning.
It feels like these all provide important perspective to any discussions on AI Safety, Safety verification, etc., that probably most of the people working on this topic will not have. There are so many comments like “we need an agency like the FDA or the IAEA” from people who only have a superficial notion of how these agencies operate. So if you have a deep understanding, that could be valuable, impactful knowledge. In a policy discussion, it is powerful perspective if you can argue that “this is how the FDA does it”.
One area where there seems to be a huge lack of expertise among the EA community is China. I don’t know how many discussions I’ve had about AI Safety and Governance in the context of China, but almost nobody (certainly not me!) has been in the discussions providing perspective of how things actually work in China, how policies can be influenced, how corporations and government actually influence each other (i.e. who meets whom, when, where, what flexibility do they have, …). So this could be a great area for someone who has worked in that kind of area in China, or who has a network of people in that area.