Disclaimer: I joined OP two weeks ago in the Program Associate role on the Technical AI Safety team. I’m leaving some comments describing questions I wanted to know to assess whether I should take the job (which, obviously, I ended up doing).
What sorts of personal/career development does the PA role provide? What are the pros and cons of this path over e.g. technical research (which has relatively clear professional development in the form of published papers, academic degrees, high-status job titles that bring public credibility)?
I’d love to hear his thoughts on defensive measures for “fuzzier” threats from advanced AI, e.g. manipulation, persuasion, “distortion of epistemics”, etc. Since it seems difficult to delineate when these sorts of harms are occuring (as opposed to benign forms of advertising/rhetoric/expression), it seems hard to construct defenses.
This is a related concept mechanisms for collective epistemics like prediction markets or community notes, which Vitalik praises here. But the harms from manipulation are broader, and could route through “superstimuli”, addictive platforms, etc. beyond just the spread of falsehoods. See manipulation section here for related thoughts.