EA + AI Safety university community builder
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Karma: 57
IMO one way in which EA is very important to AI Safety is in cause prioritization between research directions. For example, thereâs still a lot of money + effort (e.g. GDM + Anthropic safety teams) going towards mech interp research despite serious questioning to whether it will help us meaningfully decrease x-risk. I think thereâs a lot of people who do some cause prioritization, come to the conclusion that they should work on AI Safety, and then stop doing cause prio there. I think that more people even crudely applying the scale, tractability, neglectedness framework to AI Safety research directions would go a long way for increasing the effectiveness of the field at decreasing x-risk.
One framing that has helped me internalize this idea is realizing that me and [prospective EA-aligned employer] are on the same side, and we have (generally) the same goals. If there was another candidate much better than me, I should prefer them to be hired over me being hired. In my experience this has helped shift my focus from âI need to get hired so I can make the most impactâ to âI need to become the best possible candidate so that EA organizations/âcommunity have a better talent pool to draw from so that they can make the most impactâ. This framing feels especially helpful in very competitive fields like technical ai safety.