I am aware of the reasons, and I still think it has been focused on to the neglect of other things. Perhaps I should have said extreme focus instead. Maybe that is budget consciousness (uni groups have in the past been run by free and cheap volunteers), but it doesn’t seem that should have been a strict consideration for a couple of years now. I’m not saying student groups aren’t good but that given bottlenecks and given CEA’s limited bandwidth, I don’t think it warrants the extreme focus and bullishness I see from many these days, to, I can only assume, the detriment of other programs and other experimentation. Almost all of those students will still be recommended to enter regular careers and gain career capital before they can be competitive for doing direct work, and it is unclear how many students from these groups are even going for direct work on longtermist areas. I think perspectives here might depend on AGI timelines.
Let me also clarify that I am talking about uni groups, as opposed to targeted skilling-up programs hosted at universities. I’m also guessing that that 2015 stanford group was a lot different than the uni groups today. 8 week intro fellowships didn’t exist then
I am aware of the reasons, and I still think it has been focused on to the neglect of other things. Perhaps I should have said extreme focus instead. Maybe that is budget consciousness (uni groups have in the past been run by free and cheap volunteers), but it doesn’t seem that should have been a strict consideration for a couple of years now. I’m not saying student groups aren’t good but that given bottlenecks and given CEA’s limited bandwidth, I don’t think it warrants the extreme focus and bullishness I see from many these days, to, I can only assume, the detriment of other programs and other experimentation. Almost all of those students will still be recommended to enter regular careers and gain career capital before they can be competitive for doing direct work, and it is unclear how many students from these groups are even going for direct work on longtermist areas. I think perspectives here might depend on AGI timelines.
Let me also clarify that I am talking about uni groups, as opposed to targeted skilling-up programs hosted at universities. I’m also guessing that that 2015 stanford group was a lot different than the uni groups today. 8 week intro fellowships didn’t exist then