RE direct work, I would generally think of the described role as still a form of “leadership” — coordinating actors in the present — unlike “writing research papers” or “writing code”. I expect Holden to have a strong comparative advantage at leadership-type work.
FWIW, I think this could also make a lot of sense. I don’t think Holden would be an individual contributor writing code forever, but skilling up in ML and completing concrete research projects seems like a good foundation for ultimately building a team doing something in AI safety.
RE direct work, I would generally think of the described role as still a form of “leadership” — coordinating actors in the present — unlike “writing research papers” or “writing code”. I expect Holden to have a strong comparative advantage at leadership-type work.
Yes, it would be very different if he’d said “I’m going to skill up on ML and get coding”!
(I work at Open Phil, speaking for myself)
FWIW, I think this could also make a lot of sense. I don’t think Holden would be an individual contributor writing code forever, but skilling up in ML and completing concrete research projects seems like a good foundation for ultimately building a team doing something in AI safety.
I don’t think Holden agrees with this as much as you might think. For example, he spent a lot of his time in the last year or two writing a blog.