I’m on an (unintended) Gap Year at the moment and will study maths at university next year. Right now I’m exploring cause prioritisation.
Previously I was focused on Nuclear War, but I no longer think it’s worth me working on, because it’s very intractable and the extinction risk is very low. I’ve also explored AI Safety (doing the AI Safety Fundamentals Course) but my coding really isn’t up to scratch at the moment.
The main thing I’m focusing on right now is cause prioritisation—I’m still quite sceptical of the theory of working on extinction risks.
Things I’ve done:
Non Trivial Fellowship. I produced an explainer of the risks posed by improved precision in nuclear warfare.
AI Safety Fundamentals. I produced this explainer of superposition: https://chrisclay.substack.com/p/what-is-superposition-in-neural-networks
This discussion comes at a really good time for me! I’m actually working on a project in this area.
For the past month(ish) I’ve been researching and building a post (or series of posts) about the AI Safety Pipeline—i.e. how we direct talent most effectively into and between organisations. My main goal is to get more people talking about this in public—a goal that many people I’ve talked to seem to share!
In particular:
1. How can we improve pipelines and encourage demand for non-technical support roles (e.g. People Management and Operations) in AI Safety?
2. How can we improve resources for the ‘other 95%’ who struggle to get roles within AI orgs but still want to make an impact?
I’m still deciding which of these areas to prioritize for the final post. I’ve had more conversations about #1, but I’m personally more excited by the potential impact of #2. I’d be very grateful to hear which of these you think is more pressing.
I’m writing to see if anyone else is thinking along these lines. If you’d like to have a conversation about the pipeline, or are even working on the same thing and would like to collaborate, please reach out to me! I have a low bar, and have spoken to people at all levels within the ecosystem.
I’m looking to publish towards mid-august.