Ethan Beri's Quick takes

I've recently been writing a long-form post, and I realised that it's taking a while. I was sort of struck by the thought: is everyone doing this? When I see people talk about spending too much time on the forum (and I usually don't - I think I've only seen two or three people say this), it's usually to do with doom scrolling, or something like that. But might people also be spending a lot of time just writing stuff? I'm not sure of the concrete opportunity cost here, but I'm sure there's some. I'm not especially well-versed in the "meta trap" thing - I think this was a debate people had before I got interested in EA - but it seems like this is way it could (or does!) happen. Thoughts?

Hey - I’d be really keen to hear peoples' thoughts on the following career/education decision I'm considering (esp. people who think about AI a lot):

• I’m about to start my undergrad studying PPE at Oxford.
• I’m wondering whether re-applying this year to study CS & philosophy at Oxford (while doing my PPE degree) is a good idea.
  • This doesn’t mean I have to quit PPE or anything. 
  • I’d also have to start CS & philosophy from scratch the following year.
• My current thinking is that I shouldn’t do this - I think it’s unlikely that I’ll be sufficiently good to, say, get into a top 10 ML PhD or anything, so the technical knowledge that I’d need for the AI-related paths I’m considering (policy, research, journalism, maybe software engineering) is either pretty limited (the first three options) or much easier to self-teach and less reliant on credentials (software engineering).
  • I should also add that I’m currently okay at programming anyway, and plan to develop this alongside my degree regardless of what I do - it seems like a broadly useful skill that’ll also give me more optionality.
  • I do have a suspicion that I’m being self-limiting re the PhD thing - if everyone else is starting from a (relatively) blank slate, maybe I’d be on equal footing? 
    • That said, I also have my suspicions that the PhD route is actually my highest-impact option: I’m stuck between 1) deferring to 80K here, and 2) my other feeling that enacting policy/doing policy research might be higher-impact/more tractable.
    • They’re also obviously super competitive, and seem to only be getting more so.
• One major uncertainty I have is whether, for things like policy, a PPE degree (or anything politics-y/economics-y) really matters. I’m a UK citizen, and given the record of UK politicians who did PPE at Oxford, it seems like it might?

What mistakes am I making here/am I being too self-limiting? I should add that (from talking to people at Oxford) I’ll have quite a lot of time to study other stuff on the side during my PPE degree. Thanks for reading this, if you’ve got this far! I’d greatly appreciate any comments.

Would an AI governance book that covered the present landscape of gov-related topics (maybe like a book version of the FHI's AI Governance Research Agenda?) be useful?

We're currently at a weird point where there's a lot of interest in AI - news coverage, investment, etc. It feels weird to not be trying to shape the conversation on AI risk more than we are now. I'm well aware that this sort of thing can backfire, and I'm aware that most people are highly sceptical of trying not to "politicise" issues like these, but it might be a good idea.

If it was written by, say, Toby Ord - or anyone sufficiently detached from American left/right politics, with enough prestige, background, and experience with writing books like these - I feel like it might be really valuable.

It might also be more approachable than other books covering AI risk, like, say, Superintelligence. It might also seem a little more concrete, because it might cover scenarios that are easier for most people to imagine/scenarios that are more near-term, and less "sci-fi".

Thoughts on this?