I’ve left AI Impacts; I’m looking for jobs/projects in AI governance. I have plenty of runway; I’m looking for impact, not income. Let me know if you have suggestions!
(Edit to clarify: I had a good experience with AI Impacts.)
PSA about credentials (in particular, a bachelor’s degree): they’re important even for working in EA and AI safety.
When I dropped out of college to work on AI safety, I thought credentials are mostly important as evidence-of-performance, for people who aren’t familiar with my work, and are necessary in high-bureaucracy institutions (academia, government). It turns out that credentials are important—for working with even many people who know you (such that the credential provides no extra evidence) and are willing to defy conventions—for rational, optics-y reasons. It seems even many AI governance professionals/orgs are worried (often rationally) about appearing unserious by hiring or publicly-collaborating-with the uncredentialed, or something. Plus irrationally-credentialist organizations are very common/important, and may even comprise a substantial fraction of EA jobs and x-risk-focused AI governance jobs (which I expected to be more convention-defying), and sometimes an organization/institution is credentialist even when it’s led by weird AI safety people (those people operate under constraints).
Disclaimer: the evidence-from-my-experiences for these claims is pretty weak. This point’s epistemic status is more considerations + impressions from a few experiences than facts/PSA.
Upshot: I’d caution people against dropping out of college to increase impact unless they have a great plan.
(Edit to clarify: this paragraph is not about AI Impacts — it’s about everyone else.)
Might be out-of-scope for this shortform, but have you considered/are you able to go back to Williams? My impression is that you did well there and (unlike many EAs) you enjoyed your experience so it’d be less costly than for many.
I’ve left AI Impacts; I’m looking for jobs/projects in AI governance. I have plenty of runway; I’m looking for impact, not income. Let me know if you have suggestions!
(Edit to clarify: I had a good experience with AI Impacts.)
PSA about credentials (in particular, a bachelor’s degree): they’re important even for working in EA and AI safety.
When I dropped out of college to work on AI safety, I thought credentials are mostly important as evidence-of-performance, for people who aren’t familiar with my work, and are necessary in high-bureaucracy institutions (academia, government). It turns out that credentials are important—for working with even many people who know you (such that the credential provides no extra evidence) and are willing to defy conventions—for rational, optics-y reasons. It seems even many AI governance professionals/orgs are worried (often rationally) about appearing unserious by hiring or publicly-collaborating-with the uncredentialed, or something. Plus irrationally-credentialist organizations are very common/important, and may even comprise a substantial fraction of EA jobs and x-risk-focused AI governance jobs (which I expected to be more convention-defying), and sometimes an organization/institution is credentialist even when it’s led by weird AI safety people (those people operate under constraints).
Disclaimer: the evidence-from-my-experiences for these claims is pretty weak. This point’s epistemic status is more considerations + impressions from a few experiences than facts/PSA.
Upshot: I’d caution people against dropping out of college to increase impact unless they have a great plan.
(Edit to clarify: this paragraph is not about AI Impacts — it’s about everyone else.)
Might be out-of-scope for this shortform, but have you considered/are you able to go back to Williams? My impression is that you did well there and (unlike many EAs) you enjoyed your experience so it’d be less costly than for many.
I appreciate it; I’m pretty sure I have better options than finishing my Bachelor’s; details are out-of-scope here but happy to chat sometime.