Many people said they wanted to work for METR. I made what I thought was a good offer: take one of the benchmarks we give AIs; if you get a good score then I guarantee that I will fly you out for an interview, even if you have no work history, have no money to pay for the trip, or any other barrier one might have to employment.
How is it possible for there to be sky-high rejection rates yet also zero people sending me applications?
I think the answer is that raw rejection rates arenât a very useful metric. After all, an 80% rejection rate means that the AI safety jobs are 1/â10th as selective as Walmart!
I would suggest ignoring raw rejection rates in favor of just looking at the criteria for the jobs you want. Particularly for something like s-risks the criteria are going to be unusual and specific, meaning that even generically qualified people will often have to dedicate substantial time to skilling up, but if youâre able to do so, then your odds are pretty good.[2]
I wouldnât be surprised to learn that some people tried this, failed, and then were too embarrassed about failing to tell me. But, to the best of my recollection, literally zero people have told me that they even attempted this task.
I say this even with the knowledge that you are 19. I donât want to pretend that the deck isnât stacked against younger peopleâit totally isâbut we employ some 19 year olds, as do other AI safety orgs. If a 19 year old had sent me a good solution to that METR challenge, for example, I would have been happy to hire them.
Yeah I agree that if you only have one bit of detail that you can store, then saying it is âhardâ rather than âeasyâ is probably the correct bit. However I would suggest that for something as important as your career you should investigate in substantially more detail. If you do so I expect you will come up with a range of needed skills/âattributes for these jobs, some of which you might find easy, others of which you might find hard.
Youâve linked to some EA Forum comment sandwiched dead in the middle of a really long thread, which itself links only to some unverified Twitter account with only 418 followers.
This is like whispering in the wind and expecting the wind to carry your speech down a mile, then blaming people in the town a mile away for not responding to your whisper.
Why are you surprised that nobody contacted you? How is this example in any way rebutting the post?
Sure, âhiring managers being bad at marketing is the bottleneck, not fundingâ is at least partially true. It still implies that if you happen to stumble across a poorly advertised position, you shouldnât expect the acceptance rate to be low!
âPoor advertisingâ would imply that you stuck official-looking posters of your job offer in the wrong places, like inside alleyways.
But posting your job offer on a Twitter profile that looks like one of a million bot accounts is actually more the equivalent of leaving unmarked USB sticks in public restrooms and expecting people to plug them into their computers.
Sure, not the metaphor I would use but I broadly agree that applicants who are willing to plug the metaphorical USB stick into their computer (e.g. by following people they want to work with and applying to the jobs that they post) have a much lower rejection rate.
Many people said they wanted to work for METR. I made what I thought was a good offer: take one of the benchmarks we give AIs; if you get a good score then I guarantee that I will fly you out for an interview, even if you have no work history, have no money to pay for the trip, or any other barrier one might have to employment.
Exactly zero people took me up on this.[1]
How is it possible for there to be sky-high rejection rates yet also zero people sending me applications?
I think the answer is that raw rejection rates arenât a very useful metric. After all, an 80% rejection rate means that the AI safety jobs are 1/â10th as selective as Walmart!
I would suggest ignoring raw rejection rates in favor of just looking at the criteria for the jobs you want. Particularly for something like s-risks the criteria are going to be unusual and specific, meaning that even generically qualified people will often have to dedicate substantial time to skilling up, but if youâre able to do so, then your odds are pretty good.[2]
I wouldnât be surprised to learn that some people tried this, failed, and then were too embarrassed about failing to tell me. But, to the best of my recollection, literally zero people have told me that they even attempted this task.
I say this even with the knowledge that you are 19. I donât want to pretend that the deck isnât stacked against younger peopleâit totally isâbut we employ some 19 year olds, as do other AI safety orgs. If a 19 year old had sent me a good solution to that METR challenge, for example, I would have been happy to hire them.
Is this offer still open? Iâll try it next weekend.
I no longer work at METR. I would guess that theyâd be excited about applicants who have done this, but donât want to speak for them.
I think itâs fair to say that entry into AI/âML is difficult. I just checked recently if 80k themselves acknowledge this, and they do!
Yeah I agree that if you only have one bit of detail that you can store, then saying it is âhardâ rather than âeasyâ is probably the correct bit. However I would suggest that for something as important as your career you should investigate in substantially more detail. If you do so I expect you will come up with a range of needed skills/âattributes for these jobs, some of which you might find easy, others of which you might find hard.
Youâve linked to some EA Forum comment sandwiched dead in the middle of a really long thread, which itself links only to some unverified Twitter account with only 418 followers.
This is like whispering in the wind and expecting the wind to carry your speech down a mile, then blaming people in the town a mile away for not responding to your whisper.
Why are you surprised that nobody contacted you? How is this example in any way rebutting the post?
Sure, âhiring managers being bad at marketing is the bottleneck, not fundingâ is at least partially true. It still implies that if you happen to stumble across a poorly advertised position, you shouldnât expect the acceptance rate to be low!
âPoor advertisingâ would imply that you stuck official-looking posters of your job offer in the wrong places, like inside alleyways.
But posting your job offer on a Twitter profile that looks like one of a million bot accounts is actually more the equivalent of leaving unmarked USB sticks in public restrooms and expecting people to plug them into their computers.
Sure, not the metaphor I would use but I broadly agree that applicants who are willing to plug the metaphorical USB stick into their computer (e.g. by following people they want to work with and applying to the jobs that they post) have a much lower rejection rate.