This is a great post. Way too many people in EA want to be able to do remote work behind a computer and not get into the thick of things that actually change things. I agree with your marathons and smores analogy; I donāt think I agree specifically with what you called the Levels for AI work but I digress since I like the main message.
Too often, I think people make the mistake that if they are working up the stack, they are getting a lot of leverage but we need 10x the amount of people at the lower trophic levels and without those, you donāt have any leverage at all. There are few exceptions to this of course, like MATS who produce a bunch of AI safety researchers but thatās directly increasing the number of ālevel 0ā people.
Yes, thatās a great insight! People assume that if theyāre high up the stack, then they must have a lot of leverageāand this can be true, sometimes. If you are the first person to run a study on which curable diseases are neglected, and there are a million doctors and nurses and epidemiologists who could benefit from the results of that study, your leverage is enormous.
However, itās not always true. If youāre the 200th person to run a study on the risks of AI, but there are only 60 AI advocates who can benefit from the results of that study, then your leverage is weak.
I donāt want to insist on any particular number of levels for any particular kind of workāthe key point is that on average, AI governance is way too high up the stack given our current staffing ratios.
This is a great post. Way too many people in EA want to be able to do remote work behind a computer and not get into the thick of things that actually change things. I agree with your marathons and smores analogy; I donāt think I agree specifically with what you called the Levels for AI work but I digress since I like the main message.
Too often, I think people make the mistake that if they are working up the stack, they are getting a lot of leverage but we need 10x the amount of people at the lower trophic levels and without those, you donāt have any leverage at all. There are few exceptions to this of course, like MATS who produce a bunch of AI safety researchers but thatās directly increasing the number of ālevel 0ā people.
Yes, thatās a great insight! People assume that if theyāre high up the stack, then they must have a lot of leverageāand this can be true, sometimes. If you are the first person to run a study on which curable diseases are neglected, and there are a million doctors and nurses and epidemiologists who could benefit from the results of that study, your leverage is enormous.
However, itās not always true. If youāre the 200th person to run a study on the risks of AI, but there are only 60 AI advocates who can benefit from the results of that study, then your leverage is weak.
I donāt want to insist on any particular number of levels for any particular kind of workāthe key point is that on average, AI governance is way too high up the stack given our current staffing ratios.