Here are five ideas, each of which I suspect could improve the flow of EA talent by at least a few percent.
1. A top math professor who takes on students in alignment-relevant topics
A few years ago, this was imperative in CS. Now we have some AIS professors in CS, and a couple in stats, but none in pure math. But some students obsessed with pure math, and interested in AIS, are very bright, yet don’t want to drop out of their PhDs. Thus having a top professor could be a good way to catch these people.
2. A new university that could hire people as professors
Because some academics don’t want to leave academia.
3. A recruitment ground for politicians. This could involve top law and policy schools, and would be not be explicitly EA -branded.
Because we need more good candidates to support. And some distance between EAs and the politicians we support could help with both epistemic and reputational contamination.
4. Mass scholarships for undergrads at non-elite, non-US high-schools/undergrad, based on testing. This could award thousands of scholarships per year.
A lot of top scientists study undergrad in their own country, so it would make sense to either fund them to move to a better-connected environment, or to try to reach them in situ. (I think Atlas is higher-touch, and pitched younger than this would be.)
5. Internship & scholarship programs for German and Australian medical programs to transition into biosecurity.
Germany and Australia give school-leavers a singular score that determines what university programs they can enter, and medical programs are the most competitive, so a ton of EAs from those countries are medical undergrads. We could lean into this. Probably some other countries are the same.
(Edit, 2022: a sixth idea would be to start a teaching-focused university, and to offer scholarships to that same school. It’s unclear how one would compete against existing universities, so one option would be to teach a short two year associate-degree, from which students would transfer into regular universities, as with Deep Springs College. But this might decrease the density of EAs at other top schools, which might be net bad. Another option—offer merit-based scholarships, predominantly to international students who have fewer opportunities.)
A new EA university would also be useful for co-supervising PhDs for researchers at EA nonprofits, analogously to how other universities have to participate in order for researchers to acquire a PhD on-the-job in industry.
Five recruitment ideas.
Here are five ideas, each of which I suspect could improve the flow of EA talent by at least a few percent.
1. A top math professor who takes on students in alignment-relevant topics
A few years ago, this was imperative in CS. Now we have some AIS professors in CS, and a couple in stats, but none in pure math. But some students obsessed with pure math, and interested in AIS, are very bright, yet don’t want to drop out of their PhDs. Thus having a top professor could be a good way to catch these people.
2. A new university that could hire people as professors
Because some academics don’t want to leave academia.
3. A recruitment ground for politicians. This could involve top law and policy schools, and would be not be explicitly EA -branded.
Because we need more good candidates to support. And some distance between EAs and the politicians we support could help with both epistemic and reputational contamination.
4. Mass scholarships for undergrads at non-elite, non-US high-schools/undergrad, based on testing. This could award thousands of scholarships per year.
A lot of top scientists study undergrad in their own country, so it would make sense to either fund them to move to a better-connected environment, or to try to reach them in situ. (I think Atlas is higher-touch, and pitched younger than this would be.)
5. Internship & scholarship programs for German and Australian medical programs to transition into biosecurity.
Germany and Australia give school-leavers a singular score that determines what university programs they can enter, and medical programs are the most competitive, so a ton of EAs from those countries are medical undergrads. We could lean into this. Probably some other countries are the same.
(Edit, 2022: a sixth idea would be to start a teaching-focused university, and to offer scholarships to that same school. It’s unclear how one would compete against existing universities, so one option would be to teach a short two year associate-degree, from which students would transfer into regular universities, as with Deep Springs College. But this might decrease the density of EAs at other top schools, which might be net bad. Another option—offer merit-based scholarships, predominantly to international students who have fewer opportunities.)
A new EA university would also be useful for co-supervising PhDs for researchers at EA nonprofits, analogously to how other universities have to participate in order for researchers to acquire a PhD on-the-job in industry.