There’s no need to shut down the AI Alignment Slack.
Moderation hasn’t been too much of a burden, but it could be better. Would be good to find someone else to take ownership of this.
JJ Hepburn
Karma: 783
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I was getting this error a week ago and still getting it today.
What do you think we do?
This is a bit of a side note on my last shortform.
There are (at least) three versions of what we or any project/org does.
What we think we do
What you think we do
What we actually do
Hopefully these three have a lot of over lap. Even 1 and 3 can have a lot of a gap between what you were wanting to deliver and what actually happens.
I occasionally like to ask people that I haven’t interacted with before what they think we do at AISS. I like this to be early in the conversation so that it is their raw belief. Though a little too often people actually start answering as if I’d ask what they think we should do.
On Naming Projects
My general rules or thoughts around naming projects is to avoid trying to give them a name that describes what the project is. The problem is mainly that you end up with lock-in and lose control over how your project is perceived.
People are very good at taking the name of something and using that to build a model of what they think the project is. We have this problem with AI Safety Support and the word “camp” in “AI Safety Camp” has caused confusion too. When talking to people about what we do we have to remove their beliefs in what we do before building up a more accurate picture.
OpenAI has big problems with this in that outsiders have their own model of what the founders were thinking when they came up with the name. They are often criticised for not living up to their name.
I’d prefer a mostly meaningless name where people have to ask what you do and you get to control the message. People start with a blank slate with no misconceptions that you have to deal with first. You get to build up the picture of what you do your own way. My default example of this is “Uber” which you would have a hard time coming up with your own picture of what they do. I also really like “Redwood Research” they obviously do research but I struggle to come up with an assumption of what that could be.
There are of course plenty of exceptions where a descriptive name is appropriate. This seems to be the default though and it is worth questioning. If you are struggling to come up with a name that you are really happy with and confident it describes your vision then consider a less descriptive name.
I love anything that helps to reduce administrative load, duplication of work and friction to get started. So pretty excited about this idea and the hiring agency Nonlinear are incubating.
Yes, I’d be happy to spend time talking to this person. Should you have a sign-up form or something?
I would recommend using a custom domain instead of the proy.app subdomain. Even if you just have the custom domain redirect to the pory.app so that you can share the link around and if you change away from Pory then you control the domain and don’t have dead links everywhere.
… Yes, I have made this mistake.
An event for everyone is an event for no one.
Note:
This is just a small thing so I feel like I’m being annoying mentioning it. “Summer” doesn’t mean the same thing for those in the Southern hemisphere, in particular, but also those in the tropics. Months are much more universal.
I’d be keen to see an EAG Virtual as well and would prefer this over hybrid.
I have many thoughts and always keen for a call.
calendly.com/jj-hepboin/
A Careers Fair
Not just lots of orgs inviting people to come work for them but lots of workshops.
I often suggest people at the very least daft an application.
Some people I talk to say that they are intending to apply “later” and when I check back in on them they still tell me “later”. I now suggest people draft that application now even if they plan on finishing and submitting it later. This takes what is otherwise a daunting and mysterious task and makes it much clearer what it is you are so hesitant about.
I’ve already started doing this. Will get in contact with you.
Yep, always tricky here. I was actually just reading Reversing Advice just before posting this but wasn’t sure how I should manage this.
Advice is like medication. It should come with similar rules, regulations, restrictions and warnings.
Some advice is over the counter and can be used by almost everyone. Advice should be used in moderation, do not take more than the recommended dose. Prescription medicine is illegal to advertise for (in Australia) because it is not useful for everyone and should only be recommended by a health care professional. Some advice does not mix well with other advice and care should be taken when mixing advice. Do not take advice that has been recommended to someone else as it may not apply to you. A particular problem may have several different advice that is helpful for it but each does not work for everyone, so you may need to try a few before you find the one that works for you.
Having said that I think I would default to aiming for the higher thing when you are not sure. If you aim high you may fall short and if you aim low you can still only fall short. So if you’re on the margin, start with a deep RL project. You might quickly find that its hard to do and fall back to doing Spinning Up.
If symptoms persist, please consult your health care professional.
Might be worth looking into 180 Degrees Consulting, the low cost consultancy for non-profits. Either to use them directly or learn from their model.
My understanding of their model is that they use volunteer university students to do most of the work and they are mentored by the big consultancy firms. Students get experience and career capital, consultancies get exposure to future grads and non-profits get low cost consulting.
I’m not sure what “low cost” is but looking at their 2020 report they ran 550+ projects form 166 branches in 36 countries with $117,300 total contribution from clients.
This seems achievable to replicate this model in some ways for EA. Already have lots of university groups and would be clients.
The best thing to do is the thing that works for YOU.
Yes, reimplementing existing papers is great. Talking to others in the community for ideas is great if you can.
I don’t think there is a right way for everyone. So if you are already making learning a lot through re-implementing or something else then just ignore most of my advice. Also, if my advice isn’t helpful for you then try one of the other ideas.
Easy steps could be to add a “red team” tag on the forum and point to this post to encourage people to do this.
I have at times given advice to early career EA’s mostly in AI Safety similar to this. When people have trouble coming up with something they might want to write about on the forum, I encourage them to look for the things they don’t think are true. Most people are passively reading the forum anyway but actively looking for something the reader doesn’t think is true or is unconvinced by can be a good starting point for a post. It may be that they end up convinced of the point but can still write a post making is clearer and adding the arguments they found.
Having said this, most peoples first reaction is a terrified look. Encouraging someone’s first post to be a criticism is understandably scary.
It may be hard to get both the benefit to the participants and to the orgs. Anyone not intimidated by this might already have enough experience and career capital. To give juniors the experience you might have to make it more comfortable school work where the paper is written but only read by one other person. This makes it harder to capture the career capital.
I’d expect this to be unlikely for someone to do individually and of their own accord. At the very least best to do this in small groups to create social accountability and commitment pressures. While also defusing the intimidation. Alternately part of an existing program like an EA Fellowship. Even better as it’s own program, with all the overhead that comes with that.
I really don’t like writing about myself in a CV. I find it hard to try to talk about how amazing I am. Writing in the third person certain helps (“JJ is amazing” vs “I am amazing”) but even better is having someone else write about how amazing I am. So, it’s even better if you and your buddy can write for each other.
I still have plans to setup a research org in the UK