I’m so extremely glad you wrote this! I recently wrapped up a year-long biosecurity project that started with an absolute barebones product demo on a reply to this post from Tessa Alexanian.
I wasn’t planning to work on biosecurity, but at each step of the way it surprised me how, for one of the areas most emphasized by biosecurity prioritization reports (customer screening of DNA orders), at most a handful of people were making it their priority to make progress on it, and many of them on top of a bunch of other demanding high-impact work.
With Hanna we were able to meet a bunch of important people and get their advice simply because they were so excited that someone was actually working on it.
And even if I might not stick to biosec longer-term (AI enablement at non-technical EA orgs feels currently even more neglected!), it was a wondrous learning experience to be in a fast-moving space with clear priorities. In the span of a year I got to see manyother people join the space, and learned a lot about strategy and picking angles of attack from seeing times when they quickly got traction on something we had been chewing at for months.
If you like doing stuff and seeing progress and moving fast I heartily recommend sending an email to Ayushmaan or me (alejoacelas@gmail.com) and we can help you figure out how to get started.
I’m so extremely glad you wrote this! I recently wrapped up a year-long biosecurity project that started with an absolute barebones product demo on a reply to this post from Tessa Alexanian.
I wasn’t planning to work on biosecurity, but at each step of the way it surprised me how, for one of the areas most emphasized by biosecurity prioritization reports (customer screening of DNA orders), at most a handful of people were making it their priority to make progress on it, and many of them on top of a bunch of other demanding high-impact work.
With Hanna we were able to meet a bunch of important people and get their advice simply because they were so excited that someone was actually working on it.
And even if I might not stick to biosec longer-term (AI enablement at non-technical EA orgs feels currently even more neglected!), it was a wondrous learning experience to be in a fast-moving space with clear priorities. In the span of a year I got to see many other people join the space, and learned a lot about strategy and picking angles of attack from seeing times when they quickly got traction on something we had been chewing at for months.
If you like doing stuff and seeing progress and moving fast I heartily recommend sending an email to Ayushmaan or me (alejoacelas@gmail.com) and we can help you figure out how to get started.