(Thanks for providing lots of details in the post. Standard disclaimer that you know the most about your strengths/weaknesses, likes/dislikes, core values, etc)
I recommend going for the job. It sounds like you have a uniquely good chance at getting it, and otherwise I’d assume it’d go to someone who wasn’t going to donate a lot of the salary.
After you get the job, I’d recommend thinking/reading/discussing a lot about the best way and time to give.
Regarding: > This may not be a claim that I would stand by upon reflection.
> my reason for making them is largely a deferral to people better informed on the subject than I
You say you’re not currently an expert, but I’d guess it wouldn’t take so long (100 hours, so maybe a few months of weekends) for you to become an expert in the specific questions that determine when and how you should donate. Questions like: - When will we develop superintelligence? - Given that we do, how likely are humans to stay in control? - Given that we stay in control, what would the economy look like? - Given that the future economy looks like [something], what’s the most impactful time and way to donate? - Wild guess that I haven’t thought about much: even if you’d be much richer in the future because the stock market will go up a lot, maybe it’s still better to donate all you can to AMF now. Reasoning: you can’t help someone in the future if they died of malaria before the AI makes the perfect malaria vaccine
Whatever your final beliefs are, having the high-paying job allows you to have a large impact.
It looks like the other path you’re considering is “mid to senior operations management roles at EA”. I would guess you could give enough money to EA orgs so they could hire enough ops people to do more work than you could have done directly (but maybe there’s some kind of EA ops work where you have a special hard-to-buy talent?)
I agree that my chances of getting a trader role are higher than average and whoever would get the job instead is almost certainly not going to donate appreciable sums. Naturally, I would devote a very large amount of time and energy to the decision of how to give away this money.
I’m very sceptical about my ability to become an “expert” on these questions surrounding AI. This is largely based on my belief that my most crippling flaw is a lack of curiosity but I also doubt that anyone could come up with robust predictions on these questions through casual research inside a year.
My intuition is strongly in the other direction regarding donating to AMF now (with the caveat that I have been donating to GiveWell’s top charity portfolio for years). I don’t have strong credence on how the cost of a DALY will change in the future, but I am confident it won’t increase by a greater percentage than tactful investments. It is a tragedy that anyone dies before medicine advances to the point of saving them but we must triage our giving opportunities.
I’d never been convinced that Earning To Give in the conventional sense would be a more impactful career for me than operations management work. My social network (which could be biased) consistently implies the EA community has a shortage of management talent. A large amount of money is already being thrown at solving this problem, particularly in the Bay Area and London.
(Thanks for providing lots of details in the post. Standard disclaimer that you know the most about your strengths/weaknesses, likes/dislikes, core values, etc)
I recommend going for the job. It sounds like you have a uniquely good chance at getting it, and otherwise I’d assume it’d go to someone who wasn’t going to donate a lot of the salary.
After you get the job, I’d recommend thinking/reading/discussing a lot about the best way and time to give.
Regarding:
> This may not be a claim that I would stand by upon reflection.
> my reason for making them is largely a deferral to people better informed on the subject than I
You say you’re not currently an expert, but I’d guess it wouldn’t take so long (100 hours, so maybe a few months of weekends) for you to become an expert in the specific questions that determine when and how you should donate. Questions like:
- When will we develop superintelligence?
- Given that we do, how likely are humans to stay in control?
- Given that we stay in control, what would the economy look like?
- Given that the future economy looks like [something], what’s the most impactful time and way to donate?
- Wild guess that I haven’t thought about much: even if you’d be much richer in the future because the stock market will go up a lot, maybe it’s still better to donate all you can to AMF now. Reasoning: you can’t help someone in the future if they died of malaria before the AI makes the perfect malaria vaccine
Whatever your final beliefs are, having the high-paying job allows you to have a large impact.
It looks like the other path you’re considering is “mid to senior operations management roles at EA”. I would guess you could give enough money to EA orgs so they could hire enough ops people to do more work than you could have done directly (but maybe there’s some kind of EA ops work where you have a special hard-to-buy talent?)
Thanks for the input, Theodore!
I agree that my chances of getting a trader role are higher than average and whoever would get the job instead is almost certainly not going to donate appreciable sums. Naturally, I would devote a very large amount of time and energy to the decision of how to give away this money.
I’m very sceptical about my ability to become an “expert” on these questions surrounding AI. This is largely based on my belief that my most crippling flaw is a lack of curiosity but I also doubt that anyone could come up with robust predictions on these questions through casual research inside a year.
My intuition is strongly in the other direction regarding donating to AMF now (with the caveat that I have been donating to GiveWell’s top charity portfolio for years). I don’t have strong credence on how the cost of a DALY will change in the future, but I am confident it won’t increase by a greater percentage than tactful investments. It is a tragedy that anyone dies before medicine advances to the point of saving them but we must triage our giving opportunities.
I’d never been convinced that Earning To Give in the conventional sense would be a more impactful career for me than operations management work. My social network (which could be biased) consistently implies the EA community has a shortage of management talent. A large amount of money is already being thrown at solving this problem, particularly in the Bay Area and London.