SebastianSchmidt

Karma: 530

Impact Academy is a non-profit organization that enables people to become world-class leaders, thinkers, and doers who are using their careers and character to solve our most pressing problems and create the best possible future.

I also work as an impact-driven and truth-seeking coach for people who are trying to do the most good.

I’m also a medical doctor, author, and former visiting researcher (biosecurity) at Stanford.

I appreciate feedback—especially about how I’m falling short. Please do me a favor and leave https://www.admonymous.co/sebastian_schmidt

SebastianSchmidt Oct 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!

SebastianSchmidt Oct 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).

SebastianSchmidt Oct 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?

SebastianSchmidt Oct 3, 2023, 3:55 PM
2 points
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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.

SebastianSchmidt Oct 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.

SebastianSchmidt Sep 26, 2023, 7:21 AM
3 points
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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.

SebastianSchmidt Sep 13, 2023, 8:22 AM
1 point
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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.

SebastianSchmidt Sep 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?

SebastianSchmidt Sep 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”?

SebastianSchmidt Sep 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?

SebastianSchmidt Aug 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.

SebastianSchmidt Aug 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.

SebastianSchmidt Aug 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!

SebastianSchmidt Aug 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?

SebastianSchmidt Aug 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.

SebastianSchmidt Aug 5, 2023, 10:06 AM
1 point
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on: Against the “smarts fetish”
I agree with the overall claim of the post—i.e., that IQ is currently overrated within EA (although this will certainly depend on the context—i.e., it’s much less the case in some contexts). That said, I do feel confused about several aspects—including which factors are the most important for impact.
For the record, I think that IQ is in the ~ top 5 qualities that are appreciated de facto within EA and perhaps even the top 1 in some contexts and that this is being overrated.

I think it’s overrated for two reasons.
1. Firstly, depending on the role, it’s an important but not in the top 2 most important factors for impact. E.g., being an excellent researcher will benefit more from IQ than being an excellent manager or community health person. Similarly, some studies suggest that CEOs or companies are higher than average but not significantly so (e.g., the median CEO of a large-scale company is in the top 17% of the population in terms of cognitive abilities). I’ll mention some factors that I think are important on the margin below.

2. IQ is hard to change, so it’s more constructive to focus on things that can be cultivated.

In terms of which qualities that are important to cultivate on the margin, I think the following are potential candidates in some contexts:
1. Mental and physical health.
2. Interpersonal skills.
3. Impartial altruism.
4. Epistemics—including independent thinking, scientific literacy, and epistemic humility.
5. Ambition.
6. Stamina/conscientiousness.
7. General professional and personal experience (i.e., having a significant amount of experience from various walks of life).
8. Self-care and personal growth: We want everyone to be at their best in and flourish in the the long run. This means that we take care of ourselves by taking time off and investing in learning, and having an antifragile attitude towards the inevitable challenges that we will face. We also aim to lead by example and be the change we want to see in the world.
9. Ownership/agency:
10. Collaborative spirit: We are committed to fostering an open and welcoming environment that allows for the flourishing of different people and approaches to doing good. We think we can do more good by working together with others and building great partnerships.
That said, I think there are many other characteristics (that aren’t traits) that are important to keep in mind—this includes relevant professional and personal experience and sociological factors (sadly, affluence and education level within one’s family and country matter a lot in the current composition of the world).

SebastianSchmidt Jul 27, 2023, 10:05 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Kevin_Cornbob’s comment on: How to quickly set up Claude as a chat bot for online fellowships and courses
Yeah, this could be the case. Just not sure that gpt4 can be given enough context for it to be a highly user friendly chatbot in the curriculum. But it might be the best of the two options.

SebastianSchmidt Jul 23, 2023, 7:44 PM
7 points
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on: AMA: Peter Wildeford (Co-CEO at Rethink Priorities)
Hi Peter, thanks for your work. I have several questions:
1. Most organizations within EA are relatively small (<20). Why do you think that’s the case and why is RP different?
2. How do you decide on which research areas to focus on and, relatedly, how do you decide how to allocate money to them?
3. What do you focus on within civilizational resilience?
4. How do you decide whether something belongs to the longtermism department (i.e., whether it’ll affect the long-term future)?

SebastianSchmidt Jul 23, 2023, 7:29 PM
1 point
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on: How to quickly set up Claude as a chat bot for online fellowships and courses
Thanks for running with the idea! This is a major thing within education these days (e.g., Khan academy). This seems reasonably successful although Peter’s example and the tendency to hallucinate makes me a bit concerned.

I’d be keen on attempting to fine-tune available foundations models on the relevant data. E.g., gpt-3.5 and see how good a result one might get.

SebastianSchmidt Jul 12, 2023, 9:27 AM
3 points
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in reply to: rileyharris’s comment on: Future Academy—Successes, Challenges, and Recommendations to the Community
Hi Riley,
Thanks a lot for your comment. I’ll mainly speak to our (Impact Academy) approach to impact evaluation but I’ll also share my impressions with the general landscape.

Our primary metric (*counter-factual* expected career contributions) explicitly attempts to take this into account. To give an example of how we roughly evaluate the impact:

Take an imaginary fellow, Alice. Before the intervention, based on our surveys and initial interactions, we expected that she may have an impactful career, but that she is unlikely to pursue a priority path based on IA principles. We rate her Expected Career Contribution (ECC) to be 2. After the program, based on surveys and interactions, we rate her as 10 (ECC) because we have seen that she’s now applying for a full-time junior role in a priority path guided by impartial altruism. We also asked her (and ourselves) to what extent that change was due to IA and estimate that to be 10%. To get our final Counterfactual Expected Career Contribution (CECC) for Alice, we subtract her initial ECC score of 2 from her final score of 10 to get 8, then multiply that score by 0.1 to get the portion of the expected career contribution which we believe we are responsible for. The final score is 0.8 CECC. As an formula: 10 (ECC after the program) − 2 (ECC before the program) * 0.1 (our counterfactual influence) = 0.8 CECC.

You can read more here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pb1HeD362xX8UtInJtl7gaKNKYCDsfCybcoAdrWijWM/edit#heading=h.vqlyvfwc0v22

I have the sense that other orgs are quite careful about this too. E.g., 80,000hours seems to think that they only caused a relatively modest amount of significant career changes because they discovered that the people had updated significantly due to reasons not related to 80,000hours.