I don’t think the “Volunteer” section features any of the things that are like what I’m thinking about. And the same is true of anything that would reasonably fit on the board.
Like, here are some things I think people who are just starting out could easily help with:
Spell-checking
Citation-finding
Cross-referencing
Signal-boosting
Data entry
Cleaning up images, text, etc.
Centralizing some bits of information
Off the top of my head. Things a twelve-year-old could do. Things someone can do when they’re a little bit drunk. Things tired people who like the idea but are trying to throw this in between their two jobs or something can do. Low barrier of entry. Easy. Individual tasks you can finish in an hour.
Here are some things when you filter for volunteer:
Write entire articles for this magazine you are not eligible to write for!
Help us design and pursue creative impact litigation for animals and help us RUN A WHOLE NON-PROFIT
“Analysis and communications” but don’t worry, [you don’t NEED to have in-depth knowledge of biosecurity and pandemics! ]<- Intimidating to the insecure anxious person, who seems rather common around here
An internship to the Office of the Secretary of Defense / Washington Headquarters Services.
An accountability buddy system for people who are largely independently pursuing upskilling in the realm of AI safety
Independent AI Safety Distillation, in which you’re basically a science communicator but about AI.
Research, Communications, Operations, or Resilience jobs.
Writer a newsletter.
A fairly vague fellowship that seems like it’s supposed to be prestigious and hard to get but the application is kind of weird so I’m not sure what to think about this one but it’s a 1-year commitment, which is part of my point here.
Help coordinate locally around effective giving projects, work closely with fellow ambassadors, undergo training.
I could go on. The next ten are not radically different from the first ten. All of these things are big commitments. Most of them are basically jobs. Which is, to my understanding, what the board is for, right? So that makes sense. None of these are a thing a person could do to “test the waters” for 20 minutes every night for a week, or every other thursday.
The closest thing to this that I can think of is the wiki, insofar as people can edit it. It seems to be well-maintained, and doesn’t have an easily-available “this article is a stub, you can help by expanding it” shortlist. That would be an obvious low-hanging-fruit here.
Maybe after I’ve spent more time here, I can more reasonably do something like that myself, but it seems like something that requires a much more comprehensive understanding of current ongoing projects than I have, and a much more “inside” view so to speak. A lot of these tasks seem to be getting done by having people whose job it is to do them, given the proliferation of personal assistant / executive assistant stuff going on. But once again, those are jobs, there isn’t exactly a pipeline in which you can get involved by slowly increasing the extent of your participation, beyond maybe making arguments here.
I’m comfortable doing that, because I like arguing and am not very invested in this community yet. But that’s because I got lucky. If I was more anxious and insecure, I probably would not be interacting, and as there is no clear and obvious way of participating on the smaller scale, I would not be able to “build up to” interacting.
I don’t think the “Volunteer” section features any of the things that are like what I’m thinking about. And the same is true of anything that would reasonably fit on the board.
Like, here are some things I think people who are just starting out could easily help with:
Spell-checking
Citation-finding
Cross-referencing
Signal-boosting
Data entry
Cleaning up images, text, etc.
Centralizing some bits of information
Off the top of my head. Things a twelve-year-old could do. Things someone can do when they’re a little bit drunk. Things tired people who like the idea but are trying to throw this in between their two jobs or something can do. Low barrier of entry. Easy. Individual tasks you can finish in an hour.
Here are some things when you filter for volunteer:
Write entire articles for this magazine you are not eligible to write for!
Help us design and pursue creative impact litigation for animals and help us RUN A WHOLE NON-PROFIT
“Analysis and communications” but don’t worry, [you don’t NEED to have in-depth knowledge of biosecurity and pandemics! ]<- Intimidating to the insecure anxious person, who seems rather common around here
An internship to the Office of the Secretary of Defense / Washington Headquarters Services.
An accountability buddy system for people who are largely independently pursuing upskilling in the realm of AI safety
Independent AI Safety Distillation, in which you’re basically a science communicator but about AI.
Research, Communications, Operations, or Resilience jobs.
Writer a newsletter.
A fairly vague fellowship that seems like it’s supposed to be prestigious and hard to get but the application is kind of weird so I’m not sure what to think about this one but it’s a 1-year commitment, which is part of my point here.
Help coordinate locally around effective giving projects, work closely with fellow ambassadors, undergo training.
I could go on. The next ten are not radically different from the first ten. All of these things are big commitments. Most of them are basically jobs. Which is, to my understanding, what the board is for, right? So that makes sense. None of these are a thing a person could do to “test the waters” for 20 minutes every night for a week, or every other thursday.
The closest thing to this that I can think of is the wiki, insofar as people can edit it. It seems to be well-maintained, and doesn’t have an easily-available “this article is a stub, you can help by expanding it” shortlist. That would be an obvious low-hanging-fruit here.
Maybe after I’ve spent more time here, I can more reasonably do something like that myself, but it seems like something that requires a much more comprehensive understanding of current ongoing projects than I have, and a much more “inside” view so to speak. A lot of these tasks seem to be getting done by having people whose job it is to do them, given the proliferation of personal assistant / executive assistant stuff going on. But once again, those are jobs, there isn’t exactly a pipeline in which you can get involved by slowly increasing the extent of your participation, beyond maybe making arguments here.
I’m comfortable doing that, because I like arguing and am not very invested in this community yet. But that’s because I got lucky. If I was more anxious and insecure, I probably would not be interacting, and as there is no clear and obvious way of participating on the smaller scale, I would not be able to “build up to” interacting.