Gaurav Yadav
Lead @ Bristol AI Safety Centre—bristolaisafety.org
Prev. @ CEA/EV.
Do you think working in the Civil Service has given you a good skillset that you could transfer over to other EA career paths?
Hey Kerry!
Good question. I included this disclaimer because to me it seems very hard to define what we exactly mean by an “AI weapon”, which makes a complete ban, like the one the BWC has, implausible.
Thanks for writing this!
I broadly agree that starting an EA Chapter isn’t very hard. Though your point on the amount of time one may sink into being an organiser might be missing some nuance. In speaking to other uni groups and from personally helping run the Bristol group, if you really want your group to do well it’s going to come at some cost to your time. For example, you are going to have to put in effort to get the most out of really promising folks in your university groups with 1-1s; it can often take you some time to figure out how to set up an introductory fellowship the first time around.
There is a bunch of help available with GCP and funding for stuff like productivity tools to save you time, but if you really want to get a lot out of your group you should be okay with the fact that it’s going to take up time and effort.
This is great! Thanks for writing a review on this.
Well done on getting a post out on the forum about your experience Olivia!
Why might you stop cross posting to the forum?
Ah. So you don’t want to clog up the forum with something people aren’t interested in?
Thanks for linking this Matthew!
Thanks for writing this! Especially this part:
I strongly recommend you aim to decouple your self-worth from your productivity and impact — to internalise that you have intrinsic worth no matter how productive you are or how much impact you have.
I was lucky to have a therapist who was able to help me internalise this, and I think it has been incredibly valuable in helping me break some of my negative thought patterns and self-deprecating tendencies.
I note down certain lines my therapist tells after a session. I look over them from time to time. One that’s stuck with me is “You don’t need everything to fall in place for you to be okay. You don’t need everything to fall in place for you to love yourself.” These act as good reminders for me when things aren’t going so well in my life.
But other than that, I’ve found reading things like what Luisa has put out to be very useful. For example, someone sent me this essay by a law professor that was super valuable to read.
I’ve also found self-hypnosis and meditation helpful but I think these can have varying degrees of usefulness for people.
I think EA Grants is different from EA Funds. EA Grants was discontinued a while back—https://www.effectivealtruism.org/grants
“ Since 1980, the country’s animal product consumption has been on a downward trend”
Is there a source for this? (I might have missed out on it from the post. )
Good post!
I really liked the idea of a rejection doc when I first came across it. I have one with my brother, and it’s been super helpful in keeping us motivated.
Thanks for creating this! I thought it was really useful and easy to read.
Minor point here, but I think phrases like “soldier mindset” and “high-fidelity” could have been hyperlinked to relevant definitions or articles for clarity.
This is exciting! Thank you for your and LIC’s hard work!!
Thanks for sharing this!
I don’t think using “optics” as a reason to shift away from the Bay is great. Many of the critiques you seem to be gesturing at would still ham away at EA regardless (potentially because it’s an easy narrative to pick on or because it’s easy to associate the movement’s funding with Silicon Valley).
I also think using the association between EA and Oxford Uni seems counterintuitive to me; people seem to often associate Oxford with “elitism”.
I’d be curious to know if anyone got hired through this.
Yeah, I thought this too.
Thanks for this!