Congratulations on the quant trading firm offer! It sounds like right now you’re in a great overall position, and that you’re thinking things through really sensibly. A few thoughts:
With regard to earning to give, I’m sorry to hear that it doesn’t feel high impact. Do you think that might be better once you have money to donate, and are spending time carefully thinking through where that could do the most good? Or perhaps if you spent quite a bit of time chatting to other people earning to give, and so had more of the sense of being in a community doing that? If you haven’t yet, I wonder if it’s worth your chatting to some other people who have been earning to give for a while about how they’ve found it. Likewise talking to someone who has been a software engineer for a longish while about how they’ve found it over time sounds like it could be useful.
On going into AI, I don’t know that I’d be worried about having negative effects if you don’t work in AI safety, because I’d expect if you didn’t go into AI safety there would be other roles in things like medical tech AI which would useful rather than neutral in expectation. On the other hand, it does sound kind of worrying to me for this path that you like the idea of research but don’t sound keen on the day-to-day. I think everyone finds research frustrating some of the time, so that seems totally fine, but I think if your overall sense is that you wouldn’t enjoy doing the research needed for a PhD, probably that wouldn’t be a great path for you.
I’m guessing it’s pretty hard to turn down the quant firm offer, given that it’s a great job. If you decide you’re actually keen to see how you can do with publishing more in AI, I wonder if it’s worth asking them about pushing the offer for a while? They might be fine with you spending a few months or more publishing before coming to them.
I imagine that right now this is feeling like a stark crossroads, where you have to go one direction or the other for life. That doesn’t sound right to me—I know various people who have worked at a hedge fund for a few years and then gone into AI safety. Likewise if you do an AI PhD and decide against research, you’ll be in a great position to earn to give afterwards. So to the extent you can think of this decision as just one step forward, and as a further test of what you might like to do over the longer term, I think that sounds like a more accurate framing and one which will take the pressure off. It seems useful to remember that you’re in a great position, even if things are a bit intimidating right now!
Congratulations on the quant trading firm offer! It sounds like right now you’re in a great overall position, and that you’re thinking things through really sensibly. A few thoughts:
For examples of data drive policy roles, I wonder if you’d be interested in the type of research that the Center for Security and Emerging Technology does?
With regard to earning to give, I’m sorry to hear that it doesn’t feel high impact. Do you think that might be better once you have money to donate, and are spending time carefully thinking through where that could do the most good? Or perhaps if you spent quite a bit of time chatting to other people earning to give, and so had more of the sense of being in a community doing that? If you haven’t yet, I wonder if it’s worth your chatting to some other people who have been earning to give for a while about how they’ve found it. Likewise talking to someone who has been a software engineer for a longish while about how they’ve found it over time sounds like it could be useful.
On going into AI, I don’t know that I’d be worried about having negative effects if you don’t work in AI safety, because I’d expect if you didn’t go into AI safety there would be other roles in things like medical tech AI which would useful rather than neutral in expectation. On the other hand, it does sound kind of worrying to me for this path that you like the idea of research but don’t sound keen on the day-to-day. I think everyone finds research frustrating some of the time, so that seems totally fine, but I think if your overall sense is that you wouldn’t enjoy doing the research needed for a PhD, probably that wouldn’t be a great path for you.
I’m guessing it’s pretty hard to turn down the quant firm offer, given that it’s a great job. If you decide you’re actually keen to see how you can do with publishing more in AI, I wonder if it’s worth asking them about pushing the offer for a while? They might be fine with you spending a few months or more publishing before coming to them.
I imagine that right now this is feeling like a stark crossroads, where you have to go one direction or the other for life. That doesn’t sound right to me—I know various people who have worked at a hedge fund for a few years and then gone into AI safety. Likewise if you do an AI PhD and decide against research, you’ll be in a great position to earn to give afterwards. So to the extent you can think of this decision as just one step forward, and as a further test of what you might like to do over the longer term, I think that sounds like a more accurate framing and one which will take the pressure off. It seems useful to remember that you’re in a great position, even if things are a bit intimidating right now!