Coach & AI Safety Field Builder, currently working on aisafety.berlin and exploring a match-making service idea (early stage, not yet public)
Formerly director of EA Germany, EA Berlin and EAGxBerlin 2022
Happy to connect with people with shared interests. Message me with ideas, proposals, feedback, connections or just random thoughts!
One additional reason:
If you get your (initial) training from a neutral-ish impact organisation, like some management consulting or tech companies, and then move on to a high impact job, you can add value right away with less ‘training costs’ for the high impact org = more impact.
All else equal, an EA org with staff with 1-3 years (non-EA) job experience can achieve more impact quicker than one with partly inexperienced staff.
That said, some things such as good epistemics or high moral integrity may be easier to learn at EA orgs (though they can definitely also be learned elsewhere).
I’ve supported >100 people in their career plans, and this seems pretty solid but underappreciated advice. Thanks for writing it up!
I think I made that mistake too. I went for EA jobs early in my career (running EA Berlin and then EA Germany 2019-22, funded by CEA grants). There were some good reasons: This work seemed particularly neglected in 2019-21, it seemed a good fit and three senior people I had in-depth career 1-1s with all recommended it. I learned a lot, met many inspiring people and I think I did had some significant positive impact as well, on the community overall (it grew and professionalized) and on some individual member’s careers.
However, I made a lot of mistakes too, had slow feedback loops (no manager, little mentorship), and I’m pretty sure I would have learned many (soft) skills faster and built overall better career capital (both in- and outside of EA), if I had first spent 1-2 years in management consulting or in a fast growing (non-EA) tech company with good management, and then went on to direct EA work.
I agree that it would be good to have citations. In case neither Ozzie nor anyone else here finds it a good use of their time to do it—I’ve been following OpenAIs and Sam Altman’s messaging specifically for a while and Ozzie’s summary of their (conflicting) messaging seems roughly accurate to me. It’s easy to notice the inconsistencies in Sam Altman’s messaging, especially when it comes to safety.
Another commenter (whose name I forgot, I think he was from CLTR) put it nicely: It feels like Altman does not have one consistent set of beliefs (like an ethics/safety researcher would) but tends to say different things that are useful for achieving his goals (like many CEOs do), and he seems to do that more than other AI lab executives at Anthropic or Deepmind.
This could be a community effort. If you’re reading this and have a spare minute, can you recall any sources for any of Ozzie’s claims and share links to them here? (or go the extra mile, copy his post in a google doc and add sources there?).
It’s easy to vote for something you don’t have to pay for. If we do anything like this, an additional fundraiser to pay for it might be appropriate.
Earning to Give still seems the best way to contribute for many people (e.g. people with exceptionally high earning potential, or people with decently paying jobs who aren’t a good fit for direct work or don’t want to switch jobs). I don’t think we should distance ourselves from it.
While I’m also interested in the finances, I fully understand if they prefer not to share all this info publicly. Afaik it’s not common to share such detailed financial statements publicly, even for non-profits.
+1, I’d find this very useful too!
For context: After working full-time in EA meta for >3 years, I’ve been thinking about renting or buying property in/near Berlin or in a cheaper place in Europe to facilitate EA/longtermist events, co-working and maybe also co-living. I know many others are thinking about this too, some of whom area already making plans, and such retrospectives would be really helpful to inform our decisions. If you prefer not to share it publicly, you can also email me.
From the limited info I have, Wytham Abbey seemed a good idea at the time, and I appreciate you going for it! The decision to sell was probably pretty hard to make, I hope all involved feel good about it now.
I like the idea but I also doubt a significant number of Palestinians from Gaza would accept that.
A more realistic option might be to try to make it easier for Palestinians to emigrate to any country that accepts them. Maybe Israel could offer everyone who successfully emigrates a $5-10k incentive / “starting budget for a new life abroad” and then maybe some other countries would be more interested in taking them if they have more money to spend. It might also help that most Gazans are young, speak Arabic and many also English, and could help fill labor shortages in other countries.
Which countries might be most open to accepting Palestinian migrants (as refugees, student migrants or work migrants)? Any effective pro-migration interventions there?
This is helpful, thanks!
I notice you didn’t mention fundraising for AI safety.
Recently, many have mentioned that the funding bar for AI safety projects has increased quite a bit (especially for projects not based in the Bay and not already well connected to funders) and response times from funders such as EA Funds LTFF can be very long (median 2 months afaik), which suggests we should look for more additional funding sources such as new high net worth donors, governments, non-EA foundations etc.
Do you have any thoughts on that? How valuable does this seem to you compared to your ideas?
Agree. Inviting at least one person from a major neartermist organisation in EA such as Charity Entrepreneurship would have been helpful, to represent all “non-longtermists” in EA.
(disclaimer: I’m friends with some CE staff but not affiliated with the org in any way, and I lean towards longtermism myself)
Also appreciate the transparency, thanks Bastian!
TLDR: Recent funding decline seems unfortunate (for EA Berlin specifically), slightly updated that relying on one major doner is riskier than I thought and that groups should maybe diversify funding sources more.
Thanks for sharing!
Some anecdotal data: From EA Berlin’s perspective, the sudden decline in funding earlier this year seemed particularly unfortunate.
I understand why funders were hesitant to fund city groups after the sexual harassment cases that came out in February, but it still seemed unfortunate that CEA withdrew the previously committed funding for EA Berlin, especially as (to my knowledge) none of the sexual harassment cases happened in Berlin or Germany, and both German and international movement builders (CEA staff etc) have said they consider the German EA community particularly friendly and healthy (I think there’s still room to improve but overall community health seems good, based on what I’ve seen).*
I’ve updated that fully relying on CEA for funding is riskier than I thought before, and diversifying funding should probably be a higher priority for city and national groups.
(I think it’s fair to fund groups less when total funding volume decreased and there are strong cases to fund cause/career groups more and broad EA groups less. Still, having the 7th largest city EA group with 100s of engaged members run by volunteers only and not even fund a part-time position seems suboptimal)
*(I was told that CEA withdrew EA Berlin funding mainly because they downprioritised city groups after the sexual harassment cases. There might be more reasons I’m not aware of)
Disclaimer: I ran EA Berlin 2019-21, funded by a CEA grant. The 2023 funding withdrawal did not affect me personally as I stopped doing paid EA meta work last year and have since only supported and advised the group. The top candidates of the “EA Berlin Community Manager” hiring round where unexpectedly left without funding, though, and the position was canceled (for now))
Thanks for doing that survey and sharing it. This seems potentially quite helpful for EA meta workers & funders, much appreciated!
Minor question (feel free to ignore if busy): Results of EA surveys (both this one and others) seem to often be shared >6 months after the data was collected, and to me it feels at least somewhat outdated by then. Curious to hear if you have any thoughts on that and benefits/costs of sharing sooner.
TLDR: Agree with the risks, unsure if it’s better to restrict flirting for “x weeks” or for “however long there’s a power dynamic and/or vulnerability etc”
Thanks for sharing! Good to be reminded that this is a risk in any community (especially communities with both personal and professional relationships) and that others may have thought more about this and found better solutions.
This seems most risky in situations in which:
- Alice is new to EA (still in the “orientation phase”) and looking for jobs.
- Bob is an experienced (paid or volunteer) EA group organiser, could help Alice professionally (knows people who might have jobs for Alice etc) and also finds Alice attractive.
The risk seems to come from a perceived [1]or actual power dynamic, and this is exacerbated if one person is somehow “vulnerable”, like when they’re new to the community and don’t yet know the norms, or do not yet feel comfortable expressing boundaries or reaching out to other community members to ask for advice or support. @Severin Would you agree?
If that’s the case, would it make sense to discourage/ban flirting not for x amount of weeks but for however long there’s a (perceived or actual) power dynamic and/or “vulnerability”? This might then vary between one week (?) and forever.
Note that a perceived power difference is sufficient—if Alice thinks that Bob has the power to help or hinder her career (maybe because he mentioned he knows influential person x personally), that will make her hesitant to express boundaries when she receives unwanted attention from Bob, even if it’s not actually true.
I feel like you’re being unfair here.
The EA community engages quite a lot with its critics, more than the average movement. Of course reactions will differ in a community of ~10k active members, but the most upvoted posts & reactions I read are usually very empathetic and caring.
Also this post is about the Rationality community, and I think it’d be better to keep the discussion about that and not mix in EA community issues here (there are enough other posts about the EA community).
@David_Moss
Any updates on when you’re able to share results?
Fwiw: This might locally differ. The EA coworking office in Berlin is going strong and a second related space (Aurea) just opened. I think there’s probably demand for more co-living spaces and maybe also more coworking spaces in the coming year, and they probably could be (mostly) funded by members, so not depending on donors.
Nice map! Do you want to upload this on some website, so people can share and find it easier? (similar to aisafety.world) Could be worth investing a tiny bit of money to buy such a domain?