Aspiring EA from Netherlands (Indian by birth)
agent18
[Question] Examples of people who didn’t get into EA in the past but made it after a few years
A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained
[Question] Examples for impact of Working at EAorg instead of ETG
Lifetime Impact of a GiveWell Researcher?
Hi thank you for this. Very much appreciate the effort. Is it possible to answer these questions?
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Of the 82, how many people were of the “level” where you would want to hire them? But couldn’t due to “lack of funding”, “wanting to grow slowly”, “don’t want to overwhelm the management” (how good was the talent pool)
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Why are you not able to hire more than 2 people? (Are you low on funding or wanting to grow slowly, don’t want to overwhelm the management etc...)
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Did you get the type of candidates you set out to hire? Or did you have to settle for someone with “lesser experience” than you wanted?
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I think that EAs, especially on the EA Forum, are too welcoming to low quality criticism.
can you show one actual example of what exactly you mean?
[Question] Examples of loss of jobs due to Covid in EA
Mortals working in California in Data Science or Computer Science can earn 300k in a matter of <4-6 years of experience. Donating 30% of it is 100k$/year “counterfactually” (There are people who donate 50%). (Although I don’t agree with the way they derived at this number, and just looking at it as a start point) Starting your charity with Charity entrepreneurship however is estimated to “counterfactually” account for a 100k$ donation/year. GW researcher in the first year is estimated to contribute “counterfactually” 97k$.
A better way would be to perform life time calculations it appears to truly compare the TOTAL impact.
On the other hand, if you really want to get a “tony stark” job, how about grinding and getting the skills to be THE TONY STARK: It’s called Deliberate Practice. “There is in fact a path leading from the state of our own abilities to that of the greats. The path is extremely long and demanding, and only a few will follow it all the way to its end. ”
It appears you are extremely good in your field (16th out of 6000). A heart surgeon in the US has a median salary of 448k dollars. As much as 80k claims that being a doctor is pointless, Imagine the ETG as a result of this. This is close to avg expected salaries of top traders (600k dollars) in the game.
[Question] Net Salary after Tax deductions US
[Question] Is Giving Tuesday only for the US and Canada? Are they tax-deductible?
Hi Jamie,
Thank You for your comment.
Isn’t TC in the movement just the aggregation of TC in relevant orgs and actors?
Yes it seems to be. All I wanted was to avoid a level of abstraction. “AI strategy is TC in DR” vs “FHI is TC in DR”. I really feel confused thinking about the former. The later is so concrete. I can test it. I can go in depth in that ONE EXAMPLE. The former is too broad. I find it easier to think in concrete examples.
There’s a tradeoff between specificity/concreteness and representatives/unreliability, and for most purposes, the latter seems more useful to me?
Interesting! Would you be able to give me a real example to satisfy your claim? I claim that concreteness seems useful to me and if I get an example I hold on to it for dear life and test all claims atleast against that one example.
Claim: Concreteness seems useful.
Example: Consider: “Many community members should seek positions in government, academia, and other existing institutions.”
I am lost. What is “MANY”? What does a “position in government” even look like. All this until I saw this beautiful example: “DoD’s new Joint AI Center alone is apparently looking to hire up to 200 people.”. I understand finally what many and position in government is.
Animal Advocacy Careers will be offering one-to-one advising soon. Before it is officially launched, people can sign up to express their interest here.
That’s great. I subscribed already. Thank You very much Jamie.
Thank You for acknowledging this post. I very much appreciate your reply.
We’ve been trying to do a better job communicating our uncertainty in the new key ideas series, for instance by releasing: advice on how to read our advice
I really wish you can put more of your evidence out there instead of sentences that are a summary of the evidence you have. “Another bottleneck to progress on GPR might be operations staff” (GPR Key-ideas). Is it a bottleneck or is it not? I don’t know what to make of “might be”. In this case if you presented your evidence that helps conclude this, say in a footnote, I think it will be more useful. People can then draw the conclusion for themselves.
To be specific, I think it’s longtermist organisations that are most talent constrained. Global health and factory farming organisations are much more constrained by funding relatively speaking (e.g. GiveWell top recommended charities could absorb ~$100m). I think this explains why organisations like TLYCS, Charity Science and Charity Entrepreneurship say they’re more funding constrained (and also to some extent Rethink priorities, which does a significant fraction of its work in this area).
I am glad you clarify about your position that you are focused on longtermism TC. I only know of two cases where longtermism positions are TC. Disentanglement research as informed by Carrick Flynn in Sep 2017 and AI Policy in US in Jan 2019 article). It still stands that Open Phil in GR seems to be not TC. (“The pool of available talent is strong, … more than a hundred applicants had very strong resumes… but … (to) deploy this base of available talent is weak”)
I think what helps is to keep the TC debate focused on to specific cases. And this can be done with providing evidence as done in AI Policy in US.
Even within longtermist and meta organisations, not every organisation is mainly skill-constrained, so you can find counterexamples, such as new organisations without much funding. This may also explain the difference between the average survey respondents and Rethink Priorities’ view.
Claims: Average Survey respondents feel they are TC more than RP because they have less funding needs than RP (and is “new”).
Example: Open Phil is an average survey respondent (I presume). Open Phil has funding. Open Phil does not seem to feel TC in GR though.
It looks like the example does not satisfy the claim. So now I don’t really know what you are talking about. I don’t have one example of an org and a position that is skill-constrained in research in GPR. I keep hearing you saying that “research is the biggest need right now” (key-ideas post) but when I look in Open Phil it doesn’t seem to be so. They are unable to absorb more researchers. So what exactly are you talking about?
You might wonder why I am quoting the same Open Phil example like a parrot. That is because that is one of the few hiring rounds available. And trying to ask companies like FHI or Open Phil etc., for more info on this or dollars moved by researcher or about replaceability does not seem to produce results unfortunately.
It doesn’t seem to me that looking at whether lots of people applied to a job tells us much about how talent constrained an organization is.
The definition for TC is that an org is unable to find “skilled people” despite hiring actively. I agree that number of people applied is not a measure for TC. But the number of people in the last round (after 4 other rounds) seems to suggest something regarding if orgs are able to find skilled people or not. Even if that is not the case --> When you look at what Open Phil says, I can’t imagine that they are TC in GR based on the numbers of people who they thought had good resumes. In fact it seems like a bad idea to push for research at Open Phil (GPR) in GR considering replaceability atleast. And the more I talk to people like Peter Hurford (about replaceability) the more I feel like there is less point in being a GR.
Some successful applicants might have still been much better than others, or the organisations might have preferred to hire even more than they were able to.
About “successful applicants might have been still much better” (due to the potential log-normal distribution of candidates ability), I would also like one example for a case where this is true. I don’t think that is the case with Open Phil in GR based on their hiring round.
Aaron also raised this point as well. Yes that is definitely a possibility that people would still be hired but the organization would continue to be TC. Seems like a reasonable hypothesis but still needs evidence (one example at least) to support it I think. Nevertheless, I don’t think that is the case with Open Phil in GR based on their hiring round.
Something else I think is relevant to the question of whether our top problem areas are talent constrained is that I think many community members should seek positions in government, academia and other existing institutions. These roles are all ‘talent constrained’, in the sense that hundreds of people could take these positions without the community needing to gain any additional funding. In particular, we think there is room for a significant number of people to take AI policy careers, as argued here.
AI policy careers in the US seems to match the definition of TC. “80,000 Hours has attended, speakers have lamented the government’s lack of expertise on AI, and noted the substantial demand for such expertise within government. For example, DoD’s new Joint AI Center alone is apparently looking to hire up to 200 people.”. I didn’t know this before. This is so clear for me now, that I have an example for what you mean with “significant number of people”. I wish the same was available for other top problem areas.
Thanks for this.
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I very much appreciate it. I would really appreciate more evidence displayed for claims and less generalization with 80khours blogs.
P.S
If you already know many opportunities are high-impact, I expect that you have looked at the value contributed by several people, and factored things like replaceability etc., before you came to a decision. Why not just publish it? Asking companies doesn’t seem practical and no one seems to be giving out such information. One author even suggested that only if I am writing an academic paper he would be able to help otherwise he didn’t find time for it.
The title sounds like a “good idea” for an EA org. Something that is missing. An organization that ranks the cost-effectiveness of different jobs (aka ranking).
Thanks Khorton. I agree that we should not just look at orgs identifying as EA.
There are many organizations doing research work on different projects, such as GiveWell, OPP, CE, ACE, 80k etc… Why not stand on their shoulders? Instead of doing more research? Or fund researchers specially to work in these organizations (as they already have the way of work sorted)?
For instance, both an advising programme aimed at undergraduates
Small Clarification: It doesn’t seem to look like it is aimed at undergraduates (alone) (as shown below). I acknowledge you didn’t say “alone”, but it feels like it when I read it.
We now offer career mentoring to recent graduates and students at a variety of university groups… --- EASCM ‘About’
Can you please let us now when the latest survey coming out?
P.S
Very much appreciate the effort to give examples for many of your claims. Thanks. For example (in the spirit of the game of concrete thinking)
Many of our interviews are also exploratory or of general interest (e.g. Bryan Caplan on the value of education, or David Chalmers on philosophy of mind).
May I ask why you think these are good? Do you know anyone who did it and got “ahead” in their career or?
Thanks.
Hi Aaron, Can you also answer the following for me please?
So, in addition to hiring a candidate, I’ve also kept a record of the other applicants who most >impressed me, so that I can let them know if I hear about promising opportunities. I’ve already >referred a few candidates for different part-time roles at other EA orgs, and I anticipate more >chances to come.
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How many people “most impressed you”?
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How many people have you already referred for different part-time roles at other EA orgs?
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How many people do you think EA orgs are hiring in this job type currently or within the last year?
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How many people in your list who didn’t get hired, do you expect to get hired else where in EA orgs? (gut feel, guess, based on past experiences, anything)
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@Carrickflynn,
It’s been 3 years now. Is it possible to do a retake evaluating the current situation of the Disentanglement and if there has been growth in possibilities to work in AI strategy & policy (be in implementation or research)?
Thanks.