Kaleem Ahmid.
Previously an Entrepreneur in Residence at Effective Ventures Foundation, Community Builder at Northeastern University and in Boston, a Visiting Scholar at JHU Center for Health Security, and a EAGxBoston 2022 and EAGxNYC 2023 organiser.
I’m early-ish in the application pipeline for a non-EA job and they’re asking me to do a 20-HOUR UNPAID work test where they explicitly want to own and use the product of my “work test” ….
oh okay I think the misunderstanding was that by “in space” you mean something like “everywhere/on planets that aren’t earth” and not just “in space stations/on spacecraft”
I’m probably missing something but why would this be worth doing ?
Hopefully this answers the question: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/D2wfYhB4rAMPkSnPt/kaleem-s-shortform?commentId=T2WzbqBLRTF5TJ43r
I find it icky/disappointing when things like this end up on the 80k job board. Can someone make a case why this is a high-impact job worth advertising on the job board?
Hi Michael. Since writing this I finished the paper for OP which I can share with you if you’d like to read it. I’d say that the research found almost no existing FAW interventions in Muslim countries that leverage Islamic principles: the handful that exist (cage-free campaigns in Turkey, the Gulf, Indonesia, Malaysia) are mostly EA/welfare driven and don’t really engage with Islamic theology. The most promising intervention identified is working within the halaal certification ecosystem, since there are ~400 certification bodies globally with huge variation in standards and significant profit incentives that could be redirected toward welfare. Layer hen welfare was flagged as the most immediately tractable target. Longer term, getting ahead of lab-grown meat’s halaal status could be valuable. Overall the biggest surprise was how little information there was about industries or consumer attitudes in this space.
Afterwards I ran a n~6000 person survey of Muslims from 15 countries to fill in some gaps regarding our understanding of what Muslims think about industrial agriculture and slaughter in relation to their religious and moral beliefs—that survey is finished and I’m working on sharing the results publicly within the next month or so (as well as open-sourcing the dataset).
I sometimes worry that I’m still super persuadable/impressionable when people with e.g. upper-class British accents or who speak very well or who’re affectively agreeable say things vs e.g. American Southerners or more abrasive debaters but… I found this BBC discussion between Lady Hale and Archbishop Williams to be such a heartwarming/encouraging example of how people can disagree with each other on a very contentious/important topic in the most gentle/humble/polite way.
Shoutout to LEEP for (being recognized for) their great work in South Africa !
Hi—thanks for the reply ! Yeah sorry, I made a typo—we’ve tried Postily and Survation (claimed to be able to do it but it’s like ~5x Positly?). Thanks for your help !
Hi—thanks for writing this/thinking about it—I feel like it’s very “old school EA” and maybe we don’t see/do enough of this type of investigation anymore on the forum ?
I want to note that I think this post would be improved quite a bit by having a more defined “what’s the issue/how is this bad?” type section—I had to read it twice to find that info, and I feel like it could be expanded-upon
Idk how to make the right people at CEA see this but: I thought the theme/header at the top of the forum during Giving Season has been unbelievably good-looking ! The orange, the yellow, the images ! Would be kinda sick for it to have something like that all the time
I don’t think I feel strongly either way, but why is this something that should posted on the EA Forum ? I don’t think its obvious/clear how someone should view this other than just random AI-industry news ?
Hi @joey and @MCF—just wanted to point out that on more than one occasion when I’ve been reviewing someone’s grant proposal, they thought “clear passes” in the “what do we mean by meta?” section meant something like “things we’d pass on funding”/”things we wouldn’t consider funding” rather than “things which pass our test for fundability/things we defs want to fund”. Maybe not a huge issue but probably worth making a small edit for clarity.
Thanks !
maybe a dumb question, but why do you (feel the need to) reward your LLM ?
I’ve shared this with the Muslims for EA group
besides this obviously being really cringey and maybe illegal (?) it was a good reminder for me of how unpaid work tests are just a massive hinderance to potential applicants—who the heck has 20 hours of unpaid work to donate unless they’re unemployed?