Tobias Häberli

• Tobias Häberli 10 Apr 2024 12:33 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: An­nounc­ing the Pivotal Re­search Fel­low­ship – Ap­ply Now!

  We also encourage you to share this opportunity with others who may be a good fit. If we accept any fellow we contacted based on your recommendation, you’ll receive $100 for each accepted candidate. The recommendation form is here.

• Tobias Häberli 6 Apr 2024 7:32 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Who’s hiring? (Feb-May 2024)

  Pivotal Research is looking for a Operations & Community Manager for our 2024 Research Fellowship.

  Employment Period: As soon as possible (subject to availability) to September 2024

  Location: London (preferred in-person)

  Employment Work-Load: 0.7 – 1 FTE

  Salary Range: GBP 4,000 − 5,000 per month for 1 FTE (depending on background and experience)

  Deadline: April 17th, 23:59 (CET+1), Apply Here

  For the 2024 Research Fellowship, Pivotal Research (previously known as CHERI) is looking for a dedicated Operations & Community Manager to join the team. This role presents a unique opportunity to make a substantial impact in the global catastrophic risk (GCR) field by providing crucial support to the fellowship. The Operations & Community Manager will enjoy significant autonomy and decision-making authority, enabling them to play a key role in ensuring the success of the research fellowship. This position is ideal for individuals passionate about operational excellence and community engagement, aiming to contribute meaningfully to the advancement of GCR research.

• Tobias Häberli 4 Apr 2024 12:22 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: OscarD’s comment on: An­nounc­ing the Pivotal Re­search Fel­low­ship – Ap­ply Now!

  Hi Oscar, thanks for the question! To clarify, only the fellowship has moved to the UK, not our entire organisation.

  We’ve thought a lot about the pros and cons of moving from Switzerland and largely agree with your points.^[1] The main driver for our decision was Switzerland’s comparatively small GCR network.

  We see the fellowship as an opportunity to immerse fellows in a rich intellectual environment, which London’s – and especially LISA’s – GCR ecosystem offers. Our experience of running fellowships outside of established hubs suggests that fellowships alone are not a great vehicle to build a new GCR hub due to their seasonal nature and limited ability to retain people long-term. Nevertheless, we do see significant value in diversification and are considering future projects outside established GCR hubs for this reason.

  Hope this explains our thinking, happy to answer more questions.

  1. ^

     Mentor access isn’t a huge concern for us, since we expect most mentor-mentee interactions to happen virtually either way.

An­nounc­ing the Pivotal Re­search Fel­low­ship – Ap­ply Now!

• Tobias Häberli 1 Dec 2023 22:58 UTC

  38 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: To­bi­asH’s Shortform

  “Profits for investors in this venture [ETA: OpenAI] were capped at 100 times their investment (though thanks to a rule change this cap will rise by 20% a year starting in 2025).”

  
  I stumbled upon this quote in this recent Economist article [archived] about OpenAI. I couldn’t find any good source that supports the claim additionally, so this might not be accurate. The earliest mention I could find for the claim is from January 17th 2023 although it only talks about OpenAI “proposing” the rule change.

  If true, this would make the profit cap less meaningful, especially for longer AI timelines. For example, a 1 billion investment in 2023 would be capped at ~1540 times in 2040.

• Tobias Häberli 30 Oct 2023 15:02 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Pres­i­dent Bi­den Is­sues Ex­ec­u­tive Order on Safe, Se­cure, and Trust­wor­thy Ar­tifi­cial Intelligence

  • Require that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the U.S. government. In accordance with the Defense Production Act, the Order will require that companies developing any foundation model that poses a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health and safety must notify the federal government when training the model, and must share the results of all red-team safety tests.

  Would the information in this quote fall under any of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions, particularly those concerning national security or confidential commercial information/​trade secrets? Or would there be other reasons why it wouldn’t become public knowledge through FOIA requests?

• Tobias Häberli 27 Oct 2023 7:57 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

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

  As far as I understand the plan is for it to be a (sort of?) national/​governmental institute.^[1] The UK government has quite a few scientific institutes. It might be the first in the world of that kind.

  1. ^

     In this article from early October, the phrasing implies that it would be tied to the UK government:

     Sunak will use the second day of Britain’s upcoming two-day AI summit to gather “like-minded countries” and executives from the leading AI companies to set out a roadmap for an AI Safety Institute, according to five people familiar with the government’s plans.

     The body would assist governments in evaluating national security risks associated with frontier models, which are the most advanced forms of the technology.

     The idea is that the institute could emerge from what is now the United Kingdom’s government’s Frontier AI Taskforce[...].

UK Prime Minister Rishi Su­nak’s Speech on AI

• Tobias Häberli 18 Oct 2023 18:34 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: bern’s comment on: What, ex­actly, did SBF do?

  Thanks for the context, didn’t know that!

• Tobias Häberli 18 Oct 2023 15:18 UTC

  10 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: What, ex­actly, did SBF do?

  SBF was additionally charged with bribing Chinese officials with $40 million. Caroline Ellison testified in court that they sent a $150 million bribe.

• Tobias Häberli 5 Oct 2023 9:33 UTC

  12 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ramiro’s comment on: Ramiro’s Shortform

  GiveWell didn’t lose $900 million to fraud. GiveDirectly lost $900′000 to fraud.

• Tobias Häberli 26 Sep 2023 6:04 UTC

  25 points

  13 ∶ 2

  in reply to: Ben_West’s comment on: Ben_West’s Shortform

  My hope and expectation is that neither will be focused on EA

  I’d be surprised [p<0.1] if EA was not a significant focus of the Michael Lewis book – but agree that it’s unlikely to be the major topic. Many leaders at FTX and Alameda Research are closely linked to EA. SBF often, and publically, said that effective altruism was a big reason for his actions. His connection to EA is interesting both for understanding his motivation and as a story-telling element. There are Manifold prediction markets on whether the book would mention 80′000h (74%), Open Philanthropy (74%), and Give Well (80%), but these markets aren’t traded a lot and are not very informative.^[1]

  This video titled The Fake Genius: A $30 BILLION Fraud (2.8 million views, posted 3 weeks ago) might give a glimpse of how EA could be handled. The video touches on EA but isn’t centred on it. It discusses the role EAs played in motivating SBF to do earning to give, and in starting Alameda Research and FTX. It also points out that, after the fallout at Alameda Research, ‘higher-ups’ at CEA were warned about SBF but supposedly ignored the warnings. Overall, the video is mainly interested in the mechanisms of how the suspected fraud happened, where EA is only one piece of the puzzle. One can equally get a sense of “EA led SBF to do fraud” as “SBF used EA as a front to do fraud”.
  
  ETA:
  The book description^[2] “mentions “philanthropy”, makes it clear that it’s mainly about SBF and not FTX as a firm, and describes the book as partly a psychological portrait.

  1. ^

     I also created a similar market for CEA, but with 2 mentions as the resolving criteria. One mention is very likely as SBF worked briefly for them.

  2. ^

     “In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own—until it all came undone.”

• Tobias Häberli 14 Sep 2023 11:20 UTC

  4 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: Who should we in­ter­view for The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast?

  (Not sure if this is within the scope of what you’re looking for. )
  I’d be excited about having something like a roundtable with people who have been through 80′000h advising – talking about how their thinking about their career has changed, advice for people in a similar situation, etc. I’d imagine this could be a good fit for 80k After Hours?

• Tobias Häberli 13 Sep 2023 14:59 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: How to listen to PDFs & Google Docs

  On Microsoft Edge (the browser) there’s a “read aloud” option that offers a range of natural voices for websites and PDFs. It’s only slightly worse than speechify and free – and can give a glimpse of whether $139/​year might be worth it for you.

• Tobias Häberli 17 Aug 2023 8:22 UTC

  12 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: quinn’s comment on: Univer­sity EA Groups Need Fixing

  I think that a very simplified ordering for how to impress/​gain status within EA is:

  Disagreement well-justified ≈ Agreement well-justified >>> Agreement sloppily justified > Disagreement sloppily justified

  Looking back on my early days interacting with EAs, I generally couldn’t present well-justified arguments. I then did feel pressure to agree on shaky epistemic grounds. Because I sometimes disagreed nevertheless, I suspect that some parts of the community were less accessible to me back then.

  I’m not sure about what hurdles to overcome if you want EA communities to push towards ‘Agreement sloppily justified’ and ‘Disagreement sloppily justified’ being treated similarly.

• Tobias Häberli 18 Jul 2023 8:13 UTC

  10 points

  3 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: Effec­tive Altru­ism and the strate­gic am­bi­guity of ‘do­ing good’

  As far as I understand, the paper doesn’t disagree with this and an explanation for it is given in the conclusion:

  Communication strategies such as the ‘funnel model’ have facilitated the enduring perception amongst the broader public, academics and journalists that ‘EA’ is synonymous with ‘public-facing EA’. As a result, many people are confused by EA’s seemingly sudden shift toward ‘longtermism’, particularly AI/​x-risk; however, this ‘shift’ merely represents a shift in EA’s communication strategy to more openly present the movement’s core aims.

• Tobias Häberli 5 Apr 2023 5:08 UTC

  117 points

  16 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ben_West’s comment on: An­nounc­ing CEA’s In­terim Manag­ing Director

  The low number of human-shrimp connections may be due to the attendance dip in 2020. Shrimp have understandably a difficult relationship with dips.

• Tobias Häberli 1 Apr 2023 14:24 UTC

  13 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Harrison Durland’s comment on: Iter­at­ing on our re­design (Fo­rum up­date April 2023)

  There is a comprehensive process in place… it is a cohesive approach to aligning font, but thank you for the drama!

• Tobias Häberli 1 Apr 2023 8:18 UTC

  18 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: An­nounc­ing the April 1st Pur­chase of Bodhi Kosher Vege­tar­ian Res­tau­rant by EA NYC

  Insiders know that EA NYC has ambitious plans to sprout a whole network of Bodhi restaurants. To those who might criticize this blossoming “bodhi count,” let’s not indulge in shaming their gastronomic promiscuity. After all, spreading delicious vegan dim sum and altruism is something we can all savour.

An­nounc­ing the Swiss Ex­is­ten­tial Risk Ini­ti­a­tive (CHERI) 2023 Re­search Fellowship