I’m a generalist and open sourcerer that does a bit of everything, but perhaps nothing particularly well. I’m also the Co-Director of Kairos, an AI safety fieldbuilding org.
I was previously the AI Safety Group Support Lead at CEA and a Software Engineer in the Worldview Investigations Team at Rethink Priorities.
I can vouch that Garrison’s work is solid, high-integrity, and mission-aligned, and I think this is a highly impactful opportunity. I’m also really excited about the book.
I’ve been very concerned that EA orgs, particularly the bigger ones, would be too slow to orient and react to changes in the urgency of AI risk, so I’m very happy that 80k is making this shift in focus.
Any change this size means a lot of work in restructuring teams, their priorities and what staff is working on, but I think this move ultimately plays to 80k’s strengths. Props.
Fixed!
There’s a lot in this post that I strongly relate to. I also recently left CEA, although after having worked for a much smaller period of time: only 6 months. To give some perspective on how much I agree with Lizka, I’ll quote from the farewell letter I wrote to the team:
While I will admit that it took some getting used to, I’m still surprised at how fast I started feeling part of the CEA team and, moreover, how much I came to admire its culture. If you had told me back then that this is what CEA was like, I don’t think I would have bought it. I mean, sure, you can put a lot of nice-sounding principles into your website, but that doesn’t mean you actually embody them. It turns out that it is possible to embody them, and it was then my turn.
I even remember Jessica trying to convince me during my work trial that CEA was friendly and even silly sometimes. To me, CEA was just the scary place where all the important people worked at. I now know what she meant. (...) It’s now gone from a scary place to my favorite team of people. It’s become much more special to me than I ever suspected.
So I want to second Lizka’s thoughts: I feel very honored to have worked with them.
SB 1047 is a critical piece of legislation for AI safety, but there haven’t been great ways of getting up to speed, especially since the bill has been amended several times. Since the bill’s now finalized, better resources exist to catch up. Here’s a few:
A four-page summary of the bill [written by bill proponents]
A recent post from Zvi Mowshowitz explaining the latest version of the bill
A summary of the latest round of amendments [written by bill proponents]
If you are working in AI safety or AI policy, I think understanding this bill is pretty important. Hopefully this helps.
I’m so excited about the risk-based portfolio builder!
This is one of the most exciting forecasting proposals I’ve read in some time. I’m thoroughly impressed, and I’m really eager to see more work building on top of this.
If someone ends up running an algorithmic forecasting tournament like the ones proposed in this article, count me in ;)
I’ll note that I think that choosing to prioritize resources (or support) for top universities doesn’t imply that one thinks that EAs need to be any less altruistic or truth-seeking. One can prioritize groups at top universities while (for example) maintaining the same threshold for what a good organizer or group member looks like. These kinds of strategies might result in less diversity overall, but I don’t think they result in having less altruistic people.
I’m playing my part by stirring drama on Twitter and tempting AI researchers with Factorio 🫡