I have the worry that people will see Forethought as “the Will MacAskill org”, at least to some extent, and therefore think you’ve got to share my worldview to join. So I want to discourage that impression! There’s lots of healthy disagreement within the team, and we try to actively encourage disagreement. (Salient examples include disagreement around: AI takeover risk; whether the better futures perspective is totally off-base or not; moral realism / antirealism; how much and what work can get punted until a later date; AI moratoria / pauses; whether deals with AIs make sense; rights for AIs; gradual disempowerment).
I think from the outside it’s probably not transparent just how involved some research affiliates or other collaborators are, in particular Toby Ord, Owen Cotton-Barratt, and Lukas Finnveden.
I’d in particular be really excited for people who are deep in the empirical nitty-gritty — think AI2027 and the deepest criticisms of that; or gwern; or Carl Shulman; or Vaclav Smil. This is something I wish I had more skill and practice in, and I think it’s generally a bit of a gap in the team.
While at Forethought, I’ve been happier in my work than I have in any other job. That’s a mix of: getting a lot of freedom to just focus on making intellectual progress rather various forms of jumping through hoops; the (importance)*(intrinsic interestingness) of the subject matter; the quality of the team; the balance of work ethic and compassion among people — it really feels like everyone has each other’s back; and things just working and generally being low-drama.
Thanks for writing this, Lizka!
Some misc comments from me:
I have the worry that people will see Forethought as “the Will MacAskill org”, at least to some extent, and therefore think you’ve got to share my worldview to join. So I want to discourage that impression! There’s lots of healthy disagreement within the team, and we try to actively encourage disagreement. (Salient examples include disagreement around: AI takeover risk; whether the better futures perspective is totally off-base or not; moral realism / antirealism; how much and what work can get punted until a later date; AI moratoria / pauses; whether deals with AIs make sense; rights for AIs; gradual disempowerment).
I think from the outside it’s probably not transparent just how involved some research affiliates or other collaborators are, in particular Toby Ord, Owen Cotton-Barratt, and Lukas Finnveden.
I’d in particular be really excited for people who are deep in the empirical nitty-gritty — think AI2027 and the deepest criticisms of that; or gwern; or Carl Shulman; or Vaclav Smil. This is something I wish I had more skill and practice in, and I think it’s generally a bit of a gap in the team.
While at Forethought, I’ve been happier in my work than I have in any other job. That’s a mix of: getting a lot of freedom to just focus on making intellectual progress rather various forms of jumping through hoops; the (importance)*(intrinsic interestingness) of the subject matter; the quality of the team; the balance of work ethic and compassion among people — it really feels like everyone has each other’s back; and things just working and generally being low-drama.