The motivation behind strategy 2 seems pretty clear; are you emphasising strategy 1 (become a great engineer) for its instrumental benefit to strategy 2 (become useful to EA orgs), or for some other reason, like EtG?
Strongly agree that some of the best engineers I come across have had very broad, multi-domain knowledge (and have been able to apply it cross-domain to whatever problem they’re working on).
One factor here is that a lot of AI safety research seems to need ML expertise, which is one of my least favorite types of CS/​engineering.
Another is that compared to many EAs I think I have a comparative advantage at roles which require technical knowledge but not doing technical research day-to-day.
I’m emphasizing strategy 1 because I think that there are EA jobs for software engineers where the skill ceiling is extremely high, so if you’re really good it’s still worth it for you to try to become much better. For example, AI safety research needs really great engineers at AI safety research orgs.
This is an awesome answer; thanks Buck!
The motivation behind strategy 2 seems pretty clear; are you emphasising strategy 1 (become a great engineer) for its instrumental benefit to strategy 2 (become useful to EA orgs), or for some other reason, like EtG?
Strongly agree that some of the best engineers I come across have had very broad, multi-domain knowledge (and have been able to apply it cross-domain to whatever problem they’re working on).
(Notably, the other things you might work on if you weren’t at MIRI seem largely to be non-software-related)
I hadn’t actually noticed that.
One factor here is that a lot of AI safety research seems to need ML expertise, which is one of my least favorite types of CS/​engineering.
Another is that compared to many EAs I think I have a comparative advantage at roles which require technical knowledge but not doing technical research day-to-day.
I’m emphasizing strategy 1 because I think that there are EA jobs for software engineers where the skill ceiling is extremely high, so if you’re really good it’s still worth it for you to try to become much better. For example, AI safety research needs really great engineers at AI safety research orgs.