Humans seem to be notoriously bad at predicting what will make us most happy, and we don’t realize how bad we are at it. The typical advice “Pursue your passion” seems like a bad advice since our passion often develops parallel to other more tangible factors being fulfilled. I think 80,000 Hours’ literature review on “What makes for a dream job” will help you tremendously in better assessing whether you would enjoy a career in AI alignment.
A better question would be my effectiveness rather than my passion. How much more effective would I have to be in other cause areas and low in alignment related skills such that it would be good to select other activities (or vis versa)? Over time, I can keep asking the questions with new information.
Ahh yes this is also a good question which I don’t have a good answer to, so I support your approach in revisiting this question over time with new information. With very low confidence, I would expect that there would become more ways to aid with AGI alignment indirectly as the space grows. A broader variety of ways to contribute to AGI alignment would then make it more likely for you to find something within that space that matches your personal fit. Generally speaking, examples of ways to indirectly contribute to a cause could be something like operations, graphic design, project management, software development, and community building. My point is that there are likely many different ways to aid in solving AGI alignment, which increases the chances of finding something you have the proper skills for. Again, I place very low confidence on this since I don’t think I have an accurate understanding of the work needed within the space of AGI alignment at all. This is more meant as an alternative way of thinking about your question.
Humans seem to be notoriously bad at predicting what will make us most happy, and we don’t realize how bad we are at it. The typical advice “Pursue your passion” seems like a bad advice since our passion often develops parallel to other more tangible factors being fulfilled. I think 80,000 Hours’ literature review on “What makes for a dream job” will help you tremendously in better assessing whether you would enjoy a career in AI alignment.
A better question would be my effectiveness rather than my passion. How much more effective would I have to be in other cause areas and low in alignment related skills such that it would be good to select other activities (or vis versa)? Over time, I can keep asking the questions with new information.
Ahh yes this is also a good question which I don’t have a good answer to, so I support your approach in revisiting this question over time with new information. With very low confidence, I would expect that there would become more ways to aid with AGI alignment indirectly as the space grows. A broader variety of ways to contribute to AGI alignment would then make it more likely for you to find something within that space that matches your personal fit. Generally speaking, examples of ways to indirectly contribute to a cause could be something like operations, graphic design, project management, software development, and community building. My point is that there are likely many different ways to aid in solving AGI alignment, which increases the chances of finding something you have the proper skills for. Again, I place very low confidence on this since I don’t think I have an accurate understanding of the work needed within the space of AGI alignment at all. This is more meant as an alternative way of thinking about your question.