I agree with you but for reasons that are more basic and more heretical than you’re going for. In general I’m critical that EA seems to have a prior that being in a relevant place at a relevant time is doing God’s work. It’s a little defensible from the viewpoint of early career path navigation, but now we’re talking about 3 year timelines and still saying things like “so I guess you should ‘work on’ AI safety”. I don’t really grasp why this argument is unfolding such that you have the burden of proof.
The real plan on a three year timeline is to hike the Patagonia or something. But that conclusion is too radical so we try to commit to the outcome space being selecting a job like we always do. If you’re early career you should probably assume AGI/SI won’t happen, to maximize utility.
People defending work at AI + 3 year timeline should probably be talking about how easy it is to get to a staff+ engineer position from start date.
I agree with you but for reasons that are more basic and more heretical than you’re going for. In general I’m critical that EA seems to have a prior that being in a relevant place at a relevant time is doing God’s work. It’s a little defensible from the viewpoint of early career path navigation, but now we’re talking about 3 year timelines and still saying things like “so I guess you should ‘work on’ AI safety”. I don’t really grasp why this argument is unfolding such that you have the burden of proof.
The real plan on a three year timeline is to hike the Patagonia or something. But that conclusion is too radical so we try to commit to the outcome space being selecting a job like we always do. If you’re early career you should probably assume AGI/SI won’t happen, to maximize utility.
People defending work at AI + 3 year timeline should probably be talking about how easy it is to get to a staff+ engineer position from start date.