Spicy takes, but I think these are good points people should consider!
I’m also doing a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, and I would strongly agree with your footnote that:
“Final note: cellular/molecular neuroscience, circuit-level neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and computational neuroscience are some of the divisions within neuroscience, and the skills in each of these subfields have different levels of applicability to AI. My main point is I don’t think any of these without an AI / computational background will help you contribute much to AI safety, though I expect that most computational neuroscientists and a good subset of cognitive neuroscientists will indeed have AI-relevant computational backgrounds.”
A bunch of people in my program have gone into research at DeepMind. But these were all people who specifically focused on ML and algorithm development in their research. There’s a wide swath of cognitive neuroscience, and other neuro sub-disciplines you list, where you can avoid serious ML research. I’ve spoken to about a dozen EA neuroscientists who didn’t focus on ML and have become pretty pessimistic about how their research is useful to AI development/alignment. This is a bummer for EAs who want to use their PhDs to help with AI safety. So please take this into consideration if you’re an early stage student considering different career paths!
Spicy takes, but I think these are good points people should consider!
I’m also doing a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, and I would strongly agree with your footnote that:
“Final note: cellular/molecular neuroscience, circuit-level neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and computational neuroscience are some of the divisions within neuroscience, and the skills in each of these subfields have different levels of applicability to AI. My main point is I don’t think any of these without an AI / computational background will help you contribute much to AI safety, though I expect that most computational neuroscientists and a good subset of cognitive neuroscientists will indeed have AI-relevant computational backgrounds.”
A bunch of people in my program have gone into research at DeepMind. But these were all people who specifically focused on ML and algorithm development in their research. There’s a wide swath of cognitive neuroscience, and other neuro sub-disciplines you list, where you can avoid serious ML research. I’ve spoken to about a dozen EA neuroscientists who didn’t focus on ML and have become pretty pessimistic about how their research is useful to AI development/alignment. This is a bummer for EAs who want to use their PhDs to help with AI safety. So please take this into consideration if you’re an early stage student considering different career paths!