SebastianSchmidt

• SebastianSchmidtOct 31, 2023, 9:19 PM

  3 points

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  in reply to: Geoffrey Miller’s comment on: The UK AI Safety Sum­mit tomorrow

  You’re most welcome Geoffrey. Glad someone like yourself find it helpful.

The UK AI Safety Sum­mit tomorrow

• SebastianSchmidtOct 29, 2023, 9:01 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Tobias Häberli’s comment on: UK Prime Minister Rishi Su­nak’s Speech on AI

  Having thought more about it, I think the AI safety institute might be a continuation of the UK Frontier AI Taskforce. I don’t know anything about the object-level output of the Taskforce but they’ve certainly managed to put together a great bunch of people as advisors and contributors (Yoshua Bengio, Paul Christiano, etc.). Very excited to see what comes out of this.

• SebastianSchmidtOct 26, 2023, 10:25 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Dave Cortright 🔸’s comment on: Should we in­vest more in sup­port­ing al­tru­ists to be at their best? (Men­tal health + pro­duc­tivity)

  Thanks, Dave! Yes, we found that even the conservative estimate indicates that this can be a worthwhile investment and I feel more robustly good about folks investing in experimenting with high-quality services. That said, some initiatives have significantly higher ROI than 3.7 (our upper bound) so people will have to make individual judgment calls.

  In terms of your considerations:

  1. This seems right to me. I also want to stress that I think it’s likely that some of the people who could benefit the most from these services aren’t currently working at organizations. E.g., individual researchers who don’t have anything that resembles management and other beneficial structures typically found within organizations.

  2. Seems true to me! However, even very senior people may benefit a lot from this. For example, many of the big tech CEOs (e.g., Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook, and Sundar Pichai) were coached by Bill Campbell and attributed significant value to that coaching.

  Yes, we’re happy to support follow-ups!

• SebastianSchmidtOct 26, 2023, 10:06 PM

  11 points

  1 ∶ 1

  on: UK Prime Minister Rishi Su­nak’s Speech on AI

  Some moderately strong and reasonable statements coming from a PM. I wonder what their vision for the AI safety institute is and how the expert panel might look like.

  Seems a bit misplaced to say that the institute will be the first in the world as there’s already several institutes working on this (though he could be meaning within government).

• SebastianSchmidtOct 13, 2023, 7:52 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Tee’s comment on: Should we in­vest more in sup­port­ing al­tru­ists to be at their best? (Men­tal health + pro­duc­tivity)

  Thanks for the comment Tee!
  As mentioned in the post, this approach had many flaws. This is partly because we wanted to rely on published studies on the association between various conditions (e.g., stress) and productivity loss. Most of the studies we looked at relied on self-reported absenteeism and presenteeism (loss of productivity while at work due to lower performance). This means that these estimates don’t include turnover which can indeed cause decreased organizational productivity, emotional challenges, and other costs. Overall, this might mean that this is an underestimate though there are other ways in which the estimates above might be an overestimate. Do you have a sense of how many people this might involve—e.g., is it 0.1% of staff, 1% of staff, or something else?

Should we in­vest more in sup­port­ing al­tru­ists to be at their best? (Men­tal health + pro­duc­tivity)

• SebastianSchmidtOct 3, 2023, 3:55 PM

  2 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: The Power of Dom­i­nant Logic: How the EA Com­mu­nity is Main­stream­ing Global Apartheid

  Thanks for sharing your thoughts and frustrations—I’m very curious to learn more about LMIC perspectives! I have the following reflections that agree with some aspects of your points while potentially disagreeing with others:

  • It’s important to consider how to adapt cause prioritization to the local context. E.g., there may be something to prioritizing basic infrastructure, and the urgency of problems can be very significant. However, some issues seem to be particularly big and of a global scale in a way that are surprisingly weird and hard to fully grasp (certainly took me a long time and I still have a lot to learn). These include existential risks from AI and pandemics that could affect all of us and future generations.

  • Using contextualized sources that communicate the core ideas and claims to a broader audience makes sense. I’m reminded of this curricula. That said, I think ideas should come first. While diversity is important, it shouldn’t be prioritized over the core ideas.
    

• SebastianSchmidtOct 2, 2023, 7:55 PM

  1 point

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  on: Writ­ing about my job: Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Director

  Thanks for sharing and congrats on being the first in your family to attend uni and having landed a promising job! :)
  
  I’ll keep this in mind when I encounter people who find that their career doesn’t really fit with EA and feels like a mess.
  On a personal note, when I first encountered EA, I recall thinking that many people also had very impressive CVs and felt some sense of inadequacy and imposter syndrome.

• SebastianSchmidtSep 26, 2023, 7:21 AM

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joel Tan🔸’s comment on: CEARCH’s Cause Ex­plo­ra­tion Con­test: Awards

  Ok, I feel a bit confused as to why a method wouldn’t have a more substantial entry or description but also don’t want to keep bothering you.

• SebastianSchmidtSep 13, 2023, 8:22 AM

  1 point

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joel Tan🔸’s comment on: CEARCH’s Cause Ex­plo­ra­tion Con­test: Awards

  Maybe I misunderstood something but my understanding was that there was an entry that you rewarded related to significant overall impact given the benefits across multiple cause areas. So I was wondering if this is something you could share.

• SebastianSchmidtSep 13, 2023, 8:18 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Inga’s comment on: Pilot Re­sults: High-Im­pact Psy­chol­ogy/​ Men­tal Health (HIPsy)

  Understood. So Rethinking Well-being is quite distinct from HIPsy?

• SebastianSchmidtSep 7, 2023, 9:28 PM

  1 point

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  on: CEARCH’s Cause Ex­plo­ra­tion Con­test: Awards

  Where can I find “significant overall impact given the benefits across multiple cause areas”?

• SebastianSchmidtSep 7, 2023, 9:25 PM

  3 points

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  on: Pilot Re­sults: High-Im­pact Psy­chol­ogy/​ Men­tal Health (HIPsy)

  Thanks for the post Inga.

  When thinking about mental health as a cause area in EA, I think it’s important to separate global mental health (e.g., anxiety and depression globally) from mental health amongst impact oriented individuals (e.g., EAs). I refer to the latter as development of impact oriented individuals as it wouldn’t only consider mental health but also things such as skill building or character development. All with the intention of increasing their capacity for doing the most good.

  Can I ask why you didn’t mention Effective Peer Support?

• SebastianSchmidtAug 30, 2023, 7:57 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Vilhelm Skoglund’s comment on: Vilhelm Skoglund’s Quick takes

  Great reflections.
  Agree that recognition and the associated feelings of gratitude should not be the main thing. But still, thanks to all of you who decide to pursue things that seem the best and perhaps even giving up on some version of your passion, the praise, and status you’d get if you acted less altruistic and rationally.

• SebastianSchmidtAug 29, 2023, 8:18 PM

  0 points

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  on: Im­pact Academy is hiring an AI Gover­nance Lead—more in­for­ma­tion, up­com­ing Q&A and $500 bounty

  Looking forward to seeing what comes out of it. The world needs some AI governance talent.

Im­pact Academy is hiring an AI Gover­nance Lead—more in­for­ma­tion, up­com­ing Q&A and $500 bounty

• SebastianSchmidtAug 14, 2023, 8:51 PM

  0 points

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  on: $1,000 bounty for an AI Pro­gramme Lead recommendation

  Exciting. Good luck with the hire!

• SebastianSchmidtAug 7, 2023, 8:02 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Peter Wildeford’s comment on: AMA: Peter Wilde­ford (Co-CEO at Re­think Pri­ori­ties)

  This makes sense. Do you have any explicated intentions for how big you want to get?

• SebastianSchmidtAug 7, 2023, 8:01 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Peter Wildeford’s comment on: AMA: Peter Wilde­ford (Co-CEO at Re­think Pri­ori­ties)

  Thanks for this. I notice that all of these reasons are points in favor of working on multiple causes and seem to neglect considerations that would go in the other direction. And clearly, you take this considerations seriously too (e.g., scale and urgency) as you recently decided to focus exclusively on AI within the longtermism team now.