Great post! I agree with your core point about a shortfall in non-researcher pipelines creating unnecessary barriers and I really appreciated how well you’ve articulated these issues. Excited to see any future work!
But I spent the next 6 months floundering; I thought and thought about cause prioritisation, I read lots of 80k and I applied to fellowship after fellowship without success
Were you mostly applying to the highly competitive paid fellowships? I don’t exactly know what Nontrivial entails (though my impression was that it covered a few different cause areas), but I’d expect the route after that to look like the following: do an AI safety specific intro course (BlueDot or CAIS), apply to competitive paid fellowships just to check you can’t get in directly, apply to the less competitive unpaid opportunities (SPAR, AI safety camp), then apply again to the more competitive paid opportunities. This path would typically include continuing their studies at university, which would also provide an additional (and typically much less competitive) path for gaining relevant research experience.
Insofar as this is what the journey more typically looks like, it’s shame that this wasn’t made legible to you after Non-Trivial (then again, it is hard for programs to convey this knowledge given that there’s been limited research on what a typical path into AIS looks like).
I think this is generally a reasonable path for junior folks who want to become researchers, however (as you say), we shouldn’t expect those who don’t want to become researchers to have to run this gauntlet.
So what should the path for non-researchers look like? I’d suggest that we probably want them to do one of the intro courses for context. After that, it likely makes sense for the default path for junior talent to be a part-time non-research project. I think SPAR and AIS Camp have offered these types of projects—but I’d love to see more programs in this space given the scalability of these kinds of programs.
Bootcamps seem like they could be valuable for more senior talent, or tail-end talent at the junior level, however 6 hours personally feels far too short for me. I’d prefer longer bootcamps both in terms of providing more context and also in terms of completion signaling more commitment.
I expect it would likely make sense to have more paid talent development programs for non-researchers, although I don’t have a good idea of what such programs should look like.
Great post! I agree with your core point about a shortfall in non-researcher pipelines creating unnecessary barriers and I really appreciated how well you’ve articulated these issues. Excited to see any future work!
Were you mostly applying to the highly competitive paid fellowships? I don’t exactly know what Nontrivial entails (though my impression was that it covered a few different cause areas), but I’d expect the route after that to look like the following: do an AI safety specific intro course (BlueDot or CAIS), apply to competitive paid fellowships just to check you can’t get in directly, apply to the less competitive unpaid opportunities (SPAR, AI safety camp), then apply again to the more competitive paid opportunities. This path would typically include continuing their studies at university, which would also provide an additional (and typically much less competitive) path for gaining relevant research experience.
Insofar as this is what the journey more typically looks like, it’s shame that this wasn’t made legible to you after Non-Trivial (then again, it is hard for programs to convey this knowledge given that there’s been limited research on what a typical path into AIS looks like).
I think this is generally a reasonable path for junior folks who want to become researchers, however (as you say), we shouldn’t expect those who don’t want to become researchers to have to run this gauntlet.
So what should the path for non-researchers look like? I’d suggest that we probably want them to do one of the intro courses for context. After that, it likely makes sense for the default path for junior talent to be a part-time non-research project. I think SPAR and AIS Camp have offered these types of projects—but I’d love to see more programs in this space given the scalability of these kinds of programs.
Bootcamps seem like they could be valuable for more senior talent, or tail-end talent at the junior level, however 6 hours personally feels far too short for me. I’d prefer longer bootcamps both in terms of providing more context and also in terms of completion signaling more commitment.
I expect it would likely make sense to have more paid talent development programs for non-researchers, although I don’t have a good idea of what such programs should look like.
I believe SPAR is no longer less competitive
I find that surprising.
The latest iteration has 80+ projects
But why do you say that?