Jamie is a Program Associate at Polaris Ventures, doing grantmaking to support projects and people aiming to build a future guided by wisdom and compassion for all. Polaris’ focus areas include AI governance, digital sentience, plus reducing risks from fanatical ideologies and malevolent actors.
He also spend a few hours a week as a Fund Manager at the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund, which aims to increase the impact of projects that use the principles of effective altruism, by increasing their access to talent, capital, and knowledge.
Lastly, Jamie is President of Leaf, an independent nonprofit that supports exceptional teenagers to explore how they can best save lives, help others, or change the course of history. (Most of the hard work is being done by the wonderful Jonah Boucher though!)
Jamie previously worked as a teacher, as a researcher at the think tank Sentience Institute, and as co-founder and researcher at Animal Advocacy Careers, which helps people to maximise their positive impact for animals.
Maybe. To take cause prio as an example, my impression is that the framing is often a bit more like: ‘here are lots of cause areas EAs think are high impact! Also, cause prioritisation might be v important.’ (That’s basically how I interpret the vibe and emphasis of the EA Handbook / EAVP.) Not so much ‘cause prio is really important. Let’s actually try and do that and think carefully about how to do this well, without just deferring to existing people’s views.’
So there’s a direct ^ version like that that I’d be excited about.
Although perhaps contradictorily I’m also envisaging something even more indirect than the retreats/fellowships you mention as a possibility, where the impact comes through generally developing skills that enable people to be top contributors to EA thinking, top cause areas, etc.
Yeah I think this is part of it. But I also think that they help by getting people to think carefully and arrive at sensible and better processes/opinions.