Update: I’ve been running a two-month “program” with eight of the students who reached out to me! We’ve come up with research questions from my original list, and the expectation is that individuals work 9h/week as volunteer RAs. I’ve been meeting with each person / group for 30min per week to discuss progress. We’re halfway through this experiment, with a variety of projects and progress states—hopefully you’ll see at least one EA Forum post up from those students!
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I was quite surprised by the interest that this post generated; ~30 people reached out to me, and a large number were willing to do a volunteer research for no credit / pay. I ended up working with eight students, mostly based on their willingness to work with me on some of my short-listed projects. I was willing to have their projects drift significantly from my original list if the students were enthusiastic and the project felt decently aligned with risks from long-term AI, and that did occur. My goal here was to get some experience training students who had limited research experience, and I’ve been enjoying working with them.
I’m not sure about how likely it is I’ll continue working with students past this 2-month program, because it does take up a chunk of time (that’s made worse by trying to wrangle schedules), but I’m considering what to do for the future. If anyone’s interested in also mentoring students with an interest in longterm risks from AI, please let me know, since I think there’s interest! It’s a decently low time commitment (30m/student or group of students) once you’ve got everything sorted. However, I am doing it for the benefit of the students, rather than with the expectation of getting help on my work, so it’s more of a volunteer role.
Update: I’ve been running a two-month “program” with eight of the students who reached out to me! We’ve come up with research questions from my original list, and the expectation is that individuals work 9h/week as volunteer RAs. I’ve been meeting with each person / group for 30min per week to discuss progress. We’re halfway through this experiment, with a variety of projects and progress states—hopefully you’ll see at least one EA Forum post up from those students!
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I was quite surprised by the interest that this post generated; ~30 people reached out to me, and a large number were willing to do a volunteer research for no credit / pay. I ended up working with eight students, mostly based on their willingness to work with me on some of my short-listed projects. I was willing to have their projects drift significantly from my original list if the students were enthusiastic and the project felt decently aligned with risks from long-term AI, and that did occur. My goal here was to get some experience training students who had limited research experience, and I’ve been enjoying working with them.
I’m not sure about how likely it is I’ll continue working with students past this 2-month program, because it does take up a chunk of time (that’s made worse by trying to wrangle schedules), but I’m considering what to do for the future. If anyone’s interested in also mentoring students with an interest in longterm risks from AI, please let me know, since I think there’s interest! It’s a decently low time commitment (30m/student or group of students) once you’ve got everything sorted. However, I am doing it for the benefit of the students, rather than with the expectation of getting help on my work, so it’s more of a volunteer role.