MichaelA

• MichaelA 23 Nov 2022 15:33 UTC

  13 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Where are you donat­ing this year, and why? (Open thread)

  I hadn’t donated for the last couple years despite having taken the GWWC pledge. This is because:

  • It started to seem like I have sufficiently good judgement, domain knowledge, and connectedness* that my money would be most useful for making opportunities I have special knowledge of happen quickly, rather than donating to large existing opportunities

  • I didn’t happen to stumble upon anything especially good

  • I kind-of procrastinated /​ got busy (without reducing willingness to give; I still planned to “catch up” on this giving)

  The downfall of FTX and resignation of the Future Fund team make me think now is a good time for me to catch up on this backlog of giving, and maybe also do some of my coming years’ giving at the same time. So I’ve reached out to ~6 (former) FTX regrantors I know to let them know I’m potentially open to donating to things they think are especially promising or urgent.

  *My evidence for this included being offered a role on the EA Infrastructure Fund, among other things.

[Question] Where are you donat­ing this year, and why? (Open thread)

• MichaelA 14 Nov 2022 2:20 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: MichaelA’s comment on: Database of orgs rele­vant to longter­mist/​x-risk work

  Also Research in Effective Altruism and Political Science (REAPS)

• MichaelA 9 Nov 2022 12:19 UTC

  2 points

  on: AI benchmarks

  I’m not totally sure whether this should exist, and whether it should be called this.

• MichaelA 7 Nov 2022 17:00 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: MichaelA’s comment on: AI timelines via bioan­chors: the de­bate in one place

  Also this recent FLI podcast interview with Ajeya: Ajeya Cotra on Forecasting Transformative Artificial Intelligence
  

• MichaelA 7 Nov 2022 7:56 UTC

  2 points

  on: Proliferation

  I think an ideal version of this page would (a) think more carefully about how to define things, and include links to references that informed the definition or show that it’s fairly standard, and (b) add a section explaining why proliferation/​diffusion matters to nuclear risk, AI, biorisk, and maybe other things, and perhaps also explaining some similarities and differences in how it works/​matters in each of those areas.

• MichaelA 7 Nov 2022 7:54 UTC

  2 points

  on: Proliferation

  It seems plausible the key term used here should be diffusion, technology diffusion, technology proliferation, or (if we want to focus this more) AI proliferation /​ AI diffusion.

  A downside of “proliferation” is that it has negative connotations and is associated with WMDs, which I think is actually fairly appropriate for AI and biotech but also does perhaps undersell their upside potential and could be seen as unfairly “skewing the argument” against openness with AI or biotech development.

  A downside of “diffusion” is that I think a lot of insights and ideas and debates from nuclear/​WMD (non)proliferation do transfer to AI and biotech. Another is that a quick google suggested “technology diffusion” mostly refers to a tech being gradually taken up and used by a large segment of a population, whereas I think really what’s more important here is expanding a tiny circle of people who can use the very cutting edge techs to a small and then moderate circle, and what happens if one of them uses it badly, which then seems more like what’s usually discussed under the term “proliferation”.

• MichaelA 29 Oct 2022 17:08 UTC

  2 points

  on: Pro­pose and vote on po­ten­tial EA Wiki ar­ti­cles /​ tags [2022]

  [Update: I’ve now created this entry.]

  benchmarks or AI benchmarks or something like that

  Relevant posts include:

  • Prizes for ML Safety Benchmark Ideas

  Related entries

  https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​topics/​​ai-safety
  

• MichaelA 27 Oct 2022 8:35 UTC

  14 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: New Fo­rum Li­cense: Creative Commons

  Cool!

  I’d like all my prior posts to have this license (unless they’re linkposts to things I didn’t write, I guess), but don’t want to take the time to manually add that to all my posts. Could the Forum team do some fancy code magic such that then you can quickly apply add license statement at the bottom of all posts by a given author if they opt in to that?

• MichaelA 23 Oct 2022 9:35 UTC

  2 points

  on: List of EA fund­ing opportunities

  Another opportunity: Amplify creative grants

  Some info from that post:

  We’re announcing a small grants program for creative media, supported by Hear This Idea and the FTX Future Fund regranting program.

  [...]

  Over the next few months, we’re aiming to make grants to podcasts and other creative media projects that spread ideas to help humanity navigate this century.

  We’re interested in applications that look to cover topics related to (i) reducing existential risk, (ii) helping fix pressing global problems, and (iii) putting humanity on a positive long-term trajectory. More details on all three below.

  We want to amplify ideas associated with effective altruism and longtermism, but you don’t need to be actively engaged with effective altruism to apply.

  We’re excited to support projects (new and existing) in English and other languages — sharing important ideas with new, global, audiences.

  If you are unsure whether your idea fits among the areas we outline below, please lean toward applying— we want to hear your ideas! The form is a single page of questions, and should easily take less than an hour. The first batch of grants will be approved around three weeks after this announcement. After that, we’ll approve grants on a rolling basis. Let us know if you have a deadline you need to hear back by, and we’ll do our best to accommodate and get back very quickly if necessary. If you have any questions which aren’t answered below, please contact us on grants@hearthisidea.com.

  You can apply now by following this link.

  [...]

  October 22nd update: we’ve been really impressed with the number and quality of applications over the last few weeks; enough to disburse all of our initial pot to the (successful) applications we have already received. As such, we will no longer be actively considering new applications for the first set of grants. However, we will keep the application form open as a way to express interest in case we renew the program. Thanks for your understanding!

• MichaelA 18 Oct 2022 15:26 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: Richard Möhn’s comment on: Be care­ful with (out­sourc­ing) hiring

  Oh crap, my bad, should’ve looked closer! (And that’s ironic given my comment, although at least I’d say the epistemic standards for comments can/​should be lower than for posts.) Sorry about that.

  Though still I think “not predictive” seems like a strong misrepresentation of that source. I think correlations of .41 and .31 would typically be regarded as moderate/​weak and definitely not “approximately zero”. (And then also the apparently high incremental validity is interesting, though not as immediately easy to figure out the implications of.)

  I agree that “the points of [your] post rely only lightly on this article”. But I still think this is a sufficiently strong & (in my view, seemingly) obvious* misrepresentation of the source that it would make sense to see this issue as a reason for readers to be skeptical of any other parts of the post that they haven’t closely checked.

  (I also find it surprising that in your two replies in this thread you didn’t note that the table indeed seems inconsistent with “not predictive”.)

  *I.e., it doesn’t seem like it requires a very close/​careful reading of the source to determine that it’s saying something very different to “not predictive”. (Though I may be wrong—I only jumped to the table, and I guess it’s possible other parts of the paper are very misleadingly written.)

• MichaelA 18 Oct 2022 7:48 UTC

  22 points

  on: Be care­ful with (out­sourc­ing) hiring

  There’s a decent amount in this post that I agree with, but also sufficiently poor epistemics/​reasoning transparency[1] (in my view) and enough advice that seems inaccurate[2] that I would recommend people either (a) don’t read this post or (b) read it only with substantial skepticism and alongside other sources of advice (and not just Manager Tools, though maybe use that as well, just with skepticism). One place other advice can be found is in this quick collection I made: Quick notes/​links on hiring/​vetting

  I do think this post has some advice many people would benefit from, but the post also confidently asserts some things that I think are probably inaccurate or bad advice.[2] And (in my view) the post doesn’t make it easy for people to discern the good from bad advice unless they already have good knowledge here (in which case they’ll also gain little from the post), since the post provides very little sources or arguments and has the same confident tone for all its advice (rather than presenting some things as more tentative).

  Overall, I think that this post is below the epistemic standards we should want for the Forum. (I’m aware this is somewhat rude/​aggressive to write, and I promise I come across as friendlier in person! Also, in part [1] of this comment I provide some concrete recommendations /​ constructive advice that may be helpful for future posts. And to be clear, I do expect that the author was well-intentioned and trying to be helpful when writing this.)

  ---

  [1] Regarding poor epistemics /​ reasoning transparency in my view: It sounds like the author deliberately chose to release a short-ish and maybe quickly-ish written post rather than no post at all (“I won’t be arguing every point fully. [...] That’s because doing otherwise would have made the article ten times longer”). That’s a reasonable choice. But in this case I think it turns out too much of this advice is probably bad for the resulting quick post to be useful to many people. I think the ideal version of this post would involve maybe a bit more word count and a bit longer time spent (but doesn’t have to be much more) and would:

  • Indicate differing levels of confidence in different claims

  • Probably be substantially less confident on average

    • I’m not saying that all posts should be low-confidence. But I think that should probably be the case when:

      • the author has limited experience

        • I’m basing this on the author saying “Hiring is a wide field and I’ve only tilled a small patch of it myself”. To be clear, I’m not saying people should only write posts about things they have lots of experience on, just that limited experience plus the following things should warrant lower confidence.

      • The author didn’t have time to properly find sources or explain the arguments

        • This is relevant because in the process of doing so one often realises oneself that the claims rest on shakier ground than one thought.

      • The main source seems to be a podcast/​site (Manager Tools) which (I think) itself has poor epistemics

        • I’ve engaged a fair bit with Manager Tools, and think it’s useful overall, but in my experience they also usually provide no evidence or arguments for their claims except their personal experience, and I think many of their claims/​advice are bad. So when I’m engaging with it I’m doing so with skepticism and sifting for a few takeaways that are in hindsight obviously true or that I can test out easily myself.

  • Provide more of the reasoning/​arguments for various claims, even if that just means saying more of what one already believes or thinks rather than thinking things through in more detail or finding more sources

  • Be based on more careful reading of sources, to avoid drawing from one source a conclusion that seems exactly opposite to what the source finds

    • (I haven’t checked any of the other claims/​sources properly, so this may not be the only such issue)

  • Probably defer less to sources which don’t themselves have strong evidence bases or reasoning transparency (Manager Tools)

  • Maybe find more high-quality sources (though it’d also be reasonable to not bother with that)

  ---

  [2] Some things in this post that I think are inaccurate or bad advice (though unfortunately don’t have time to explain my reasoning for most of these):

  • The claim that personality tests aren’t predictive of job performance

    • My prior belief from reading some papers a while ago and from what I think would make sense (given how well I think Big Five personality tests can predict some other things) is that they are predictive. And the paper cited in this post for the claim that they’re not predictive actually seems to be showing they are one of the most predictive things. [Edited to add: Whoops, I misread the source myself. Though still the source seems to be saying they’re weakly/​moderately predictive, and have unusually high incremental validity when added to other specific assessments, rather than saying “not predictive”.]

  • Saying it’s bad to outsource things you don’t know because you can’t assess performance well in those cases, without flagging that this might not apply anywhere near as much in cases where an outsourcee comes highly recommended by people you trust and whose situation is similar to yours, and when the outsourcee has credible signals of sharing a lot of your values

    • (E.g., if they’re a credibly EA-aligned hiring service/​advisor who comes recommended from relevant other people based on performance there.)

  • Suggesting filtering only via resumes rather than instead/​also via screening questions that are basically a very short work test

  • Suggesting giving many interviews and relying heavily on them, and suggesting candidates answering the same questions from each interviewee

    • I think that latter advice could only make sense if interviewees don’t have a pre-set rubric and are just assessing answers subjectively, which seems unwise to me, or if the interviews are close to unstructured rather than structured, which also seems unwise to me. Also, relative to work tests, this takes up a lot of candidate and esp. hirer time.

  • Making final decisions based on a meeting where people verbally share their assessments one at a time (which could then be anchored by whoever speaks first or groupthink or whatever), rather than collecting scores along the way and sticking to them by default (though with room to manoeuvre) to minimise noise (see also the book Noise)

  Those last three things basically seem consistent with the ways traditional hiring is bad and seems based on prizing subjective judgement and not really quantitatively assessing things or checking what research shows works best, in contrast to what’s common in EA orgs + leading tech firms (as far as I’m aware). And that seems consistent with my experience of the kind of advice Manager Tools tends to give.

  Also, these are just most of the things that stood out to me when casually listening to the post (in audio form), and that’s enough to make me think that there may also be some other issues.

  What links here?

  • Be care­ful with (out­sourc­ing) hiring by Richard Möhn (17 Oct 2022 20:30 UTC; 44 points)

• MichaelA 18 Oct 2022 7:34 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Richard Möhn’s comment on: Be care­ful with (out­sourc­ing) hiring

  [Update: This comment of mine was wrong, but I still think the claim in the post is contradicted by the source cited; see below.]

  It looks like integrity and conscientiousness tests were also the 3rd and 4th highest rated things for the “Validity” column itself, out of a large list? And they appear to have ranked above interviews and some CV-like things (e.g., reference checks and job experience (years)), yet your post recommends interviews and CVs.

  I’m pretty confused by this apparent misreading of the source. I think readers should treat that as a reason for being more skeptical of the rest of the post. My guess is it’d be worth you “moving a bit slower” (to check sources more carefully etc.) and stating things less confidently in future posts.

• MichaelA 17 Oct 2022 8:40 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Charles He’s comment on: Pro­pose and vote on po­ten­tial EA Wiki ar­ti­cles /​ tags [2022]

  I’m manually writing the content.

  It’s probably like 1-15 mins per comment, depending on how much thinking/​searching I do.

  I’d guess that fixing the formatting could probably be automated somehow. But I’d guess that actually getting the content together can’t be automated, though someone like a volunteer/​RA/​PA could probably look at a bunch of the past ones I’ve done and then replicate similar things fairly well as and when I give them rough ideas.

  I’m definitely happy for you to try to help these things things happen faster/​better if you want (though I don’t want to actively claim that’s the best use of your time). I’ve also got a doc of “Writing, editing, or collection tasks Michael would be keen for someone to do” which I could send you.

• MichaelA 16 Oct 2022 8:16 UTC

  4 points

  on: Pro­pose and vote on po­ten­tial EA Wiki ar­ti­cles /​ tags [2022]

  [Update: I’ve now created this entry]

  Export controls

  Some relevant posts:

  • The US expands restrictions on AI exports to China. What are the x-risk effects?

  • Analysis: US restricts GPU sales to China (though that’s on LW)

  • Using Export Controls to Reduce Biorisk

  Related entries:

  https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​topics/​​semiconductors | AI governance | https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​topics/​​international-relations

• MichaelA 15 Oct 2022 11:54 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: MichaelA’s comment on: Database of orgs rele­vant to longter­mist/​x-risk work

  Also AFTER (Action Fund for Technology and Emerging Risk)

• MichaelA 1 Oct 2022 15:22 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: MichaelA’s comment on: Database of orgs rele­vant to longter­mist/​x-risk work

  Also Future Academy (but maybe that’s not an org and instead a project of EA Sweden?).

• MichaelA 29 Sep 2022 20:16 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: MichaelA’s comment on: Database of orgs rele­vant to longter­mist/​x-risk work

  Also anything in Alignment Org Cheat Sheet that’s not in here. And maybe adding that post’s 1-sentence descriptions to the info this database has on each org listed in that post.

• MichaelA 16 Sep 2022 12:20 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: MichaelA’s comment on: Database of orgs rele­vant to longter­mist/​x-risk work

  Also fp21 and maybe Humanity Forward.

  (Reminder: This is a database of orgs relevant to longtermist/​x-risk work, and includes some orgs that are not part of the longtermist/​x-risk-reduction community, don’t associate with those labels, and/​or don’t focus specifically on those issues.)

• MichaelA 15 Sep 2022 17:20 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: Venn di­a­grams of ex­is­ten­tial, global, and suffer­ing catastrophes

  Thanks for flagging this! I’ve now updated my post to include this new definition (I still use the old one first, but have added an explicit update in the main text).

  This definition does seem better to me, for the reasons you mention.