Jordan (Jojo) Pieters. I currently work on EA movement building in Oxford.
I’m from South Africa :)
jwpieters
Karma: 609
Is the survey data closed access? If so, would it be possible to request access? I have a few questions of my own I’d like to try answer
Some very belated updates on this project:
In case it’s not obvious, we didn’t end up running this. There were a couple of reasons for that:
I personally didn’t have the capacity to run a project of this size. Other residencies I attended required multiple staff members to run well
The Mexico EA Fellowship was targeting roughly the same demographic and happening at the same time. I didn’t want to create competition for this and I think they had an advantage anyway (a more established LatAm community, coinciding with a local EAGx, and a strong team)
I probably wouldn’t consider running it now:
Obviously, the funding situation in EA has changed significantly since the time we came up with this idea (FTX crash).
I’m also not sure how cost-effective/useful other residencies have been (Prague, Mexico City, Zanzibar). I would want some more data on these previous residencies before moving forward with more.
Wasn’t sure where else to mention this – the search feature on the forum is pretty bad. I tried finding a post from Claire Zabel by searching “Claire Zabel”. I couldn’t find it because her username is actually “ClaireZabel”
I had previously decided to work on EA community-building full-time, and have now mostly changed my mind. I want to write up my reasoning for this. I don’t think this will be entirely relevant to general movement strategy, but I think it’s worth making legible for others
the question of whether we (i.e. anyone) should be doing mass outreach on the topic of AI Safety is over. It is happening.
This feels like a very hostile statement. It’s not at all obvious that this question is over.
I personally feel a lot more cautious about doing mass outreach. I think there’s a decent chance people could accidentally do significant harm to future efforts. Policy, politics and advocacy are complicated—regardless of the area you’re working in.
For what it’s worth, I’ve spoken to Nik and I think some of the work he’s doing is great. I’m especially excited about narrative testing.
Thank you for being open about this Max. I’m sorry to hear that it’s been tough. I think this post in itself is really valuable. I imagine myself using it as a good example in the future to encourage people to prioritize their mental health.
I appreciate the work you’ve done to make CEA into an organisation that I really admire. I’m sure you’ll do great things in the future. Best wishes!
I often use charity and thrift shops. The other day I was thinking about how it would be cool to have one that donates to GiveWell or something.
Good job on trying this!
I’m optimistic about this test. Even as a community builder, I find all the community discussion overwhelming. The Forum has become a place I’m less likely to visit because something like half of the discussions don’t feel productive for me to engage in.
Flagging that I may be interested in helping run both EA Infrastructure and AI safety versions of this
This seems great. This org has ties to pretty influential people. A couple of things I’m curious about:
What influenced this direction? (they mentioned the doomsday clock, but I imagine lots of other sources of influence)
Could we piggyback off of this to increase buy-in for x-risk reduction from people in their network? Maybe getting some of their high net-worth supporters to start moving money towards these causes?
There are some EAs hanging out in CDMX until the end of Jan (and maybe some after)
Agree that having a nomad friendly community near the US would be great
I think this is a nice simple breakdown of the concept.
A nitpick—I think having digital graphs rather than these photos would be a big improvement
[Epistemic status: I’ve never done recruiting, I don’t run or have a position at an ‘EA org’ - feel free to ignore anything I say]
But, a couple of thoughts:Your branding and copywriting could use a lot of work. It’s not immediately clear to me that this organisation is legitimate.
I’m highly unlikely to apply for a job if I don’t know who the hiring organisation is. The organisation and their mission is one of the primary reasons I’ll apply anywhere. If you’re doing “blind” hiring rounds, you’ll need to accrue a lot more trust amongst top talent.
These roles all seem fairly junior? I don’t see much need for a recruiting agency working on junior roles. Main bottleneck seems to be finding a good fit for senior/management roles, and professional recruiters should rather spend their time on this
I think the series Next did a pretty good job of making me scared. It’s not an amazing production in itself, but worth watching.
Related thought: should we be trying harder to do outreach to early stage startup founders? Could potentially be very high-EV from a funding perspective
It’s a rough estimate. I think it’s difficult to quantify the value of a conference for one individual
The idea of there being increased financial barriers to attending conferences concerns me a lot.
I’d hate to end up in a situation where lower income people or students are discouraged from even applying because they know they won’t be able to afford it. I know it would be soul crushing for many people to receive an email saying they’ve been accepted, but be unable to consider attending due to financial barriers.
I’d have a preference for smaller events where people are guaranteed funding if they need. I think that looking after a smaller group of people very well can be better than a large group of people having a worse experience.
There’s a chance that these increased financial barriers could negatively affect the geographic and socioeconomic diversity in EA that some people have been working hard to improve.
I’d be excited about CEA hosting or supporting more virtual conferences. These are far cheaper than in-person events, are more accessible in many ways, and I’d estimate they capture about 60% of the value for an individual attendee that an in-person event does.
I could imagine 2-3 of these happening in 2023, perhaps including some for more specific audiences like the previous student summit. These would have the advantage of being able to have a much lower bar for entry (since costs don’t increase as linearly as in-person conferences). They could therefore be a place to absorb all those who won’t be accepted to conferences or won’t be able to travel.
[I was on the organising team for EAGxVirtual 2022]
I definitely agree with these points! The delay is entirely a failure on my part . This is definitely not the only event of its kind that will be run though and I anticipate another one will happen very soon after.
Hello forum, just checking in as the EAGxLondon team lead. A couple of things I’d like to say:
As Ollie notes, we had some problems with the venue. We’re hoping to have a time in early April locked in soon and will send out an announcement when we do.
Why an EAGx in London? EA Globals have a high bar for admissions, but the UK has a large number of students who are newer to EA. We want to create an opportunity for them to attend an EA event this year and EAGx will be much more accessible for them.