Here are some services EAs might use more if they had easier access:
- copyediting (in-depth editing of a piece to making it clearer, etc)
- proofreading (more nitty-gritty spelling and grammar checking)
- formatting into a specific format (markdown, etc)
Larger organizations usually hire or contract with at least one copyeditor and to help make their written work clearer and more consistent. But a lot of people might want occasional copyediting and not find it worthwhile to go through the hassle of finding someone to do it. Particularly if they want someone with enough knowledge of EA that they can help improve and clarify EA-specific material.
A colleague writes, "I've had ~10 people ask me in the last year about finding copyeditor services, and have recommended them to many more people. Would be great to have a bank of available people who authors could hire."
I would be excited if someone started a project coordinating this! Similar to what Pineapple Operations is doing with personal and executive assistants.
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The cause prioritization landscape in EA is changing. Prominent groups have shut down, others have been founded, and everyone’s trying to figure out how to prepare for AI. This is the third in a series of posts critically examining the state of cause prioritization and strategies for moving forward.
Executive Summary
* An increasingly common argument is that we should prioritize work in AI over work in other cause areas (e.g. farmed animal welfare, reducing nuclear risks) because the impending AI revolution undermines the value of working in those other areas.
* We consider three versions of the argument:
* Aligned superintelligent AI will solve many of the problems that we currently face in other cause areas.
* Misaligned AI will be so disastrous that none of the existing problems will matter because we’ll all be dead or worse.
* AI will be so disruptive that our current theories of change will all be obsolete, so the best thing to do is wait, build resources, and reformulate plans until after the AI revolution.
* We identify some key cruxes of these arguments, and present reasons to be skeptical of them. A more direct case needs to be made for these cruxes before we rely on them in making important cause prioritization decisions.
* Even on short timelines, the AI transition may be a protracted and patchy process, leaving many opportunities to act on longer timelines.
* Work in other cause areas will often make essential contributions to the AI transition going well.
* Projects that require cultural, social, and legal changes for success, and projects where opposing sides will both benefit from AI, will be more resistant to being solved by AI.
* Many of the reasons why AI might undermine projects in other cause areas (e.g. its unpredictable and destabilizing effects) would seem to undermine lots of work on AI as well.
* While an impending AI revolution should affect how we approach and prioritize non-AI (and AI) projects, doing this wisel
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TLDR
When we look across all jobs globally, many of us in the EA community occupy positions that would rank in the 99.9th percentile or higher by our own preferences within jobs that we could plausibly get.[1] Whether you work at an EA-aligned organization, hold a high-impact role elsewhere, or have a well-compensated position which allows you to make significant high effectiveness donations, your job situation is likely extraordinarily fortunate and high impact by global standards. This career conversations week, it's worth reflecting on this and considering how we can make the most of these opportunities.
Intro
I think job choice is one of the great advantages of development. Before the industrial revolution, nearly everyone had to be a hunter-gatherer or a farmer, and they typically didn’t get a choice between those.
Now there is typically some choice in low income countries, and typically a lot of choice in high income countries. This already suggests that having a job in your preferred field puts you in a high percentile of job choice. But for many in the EA community, the situation is even more fortunate.
The Mathematics of Job Preference
If you work at an EA-aligned organization and that is your top preference, you occupy an extraordinarily rare position. There are perhaps a few thousand such positions globally, out of the world's several billion jobs. Simple division suggests this puts you in roughly the 99.9999th percentile of job preference.
Even if you don't work directly for an EA organization but have secured:
* A job allowing significant donations
* A position with direct positive impact aligned with your values
* Work that combines your skills, interests, and preferred location
You likely still occupy a position in the 99.9th percentile or higher of global job preference matching. Even without the impact perspective, if you are working in your preferred field and preferred country, that may put you in the 99.9th percentile of job preference
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Summary
Following our co-founder Joey's recent transition announcement we're actively searching for exceptional leadership to join our C-level team and guide AIM into its next phase.
* Find the full job description here
* To apply, please visit the following link
* Recommend someone you think could be a great fit here
* Location: London strongly preferred. Remote candidates willing to work from London at least 3 months a year and otherwise overlapping at least 6 hours with 9 am to 5 pm BST will be considered. We are happy to sponsor UK work visas.
* Employment Type: Full-time (35 hours)
* Application Deadline: rolling until August 10, 2025
* Start Date: as soon as possible (with some flexibility for the right candidate)
* Compensation: £45,000–£90,000 (for details on our compensation policy see full job description)
Leadership Transition
On March 15th, Joey announced he's stepping away from his role as CEO of AIM, with his planned last day as December 1st. This follows our other co-founder Karolina's completed transition in 2024. Like Karolina, Joey will transition to a board member role while we bring in new leadership to guide AIM's next phase of growth.
The Opportunity
AIM is at a unique inflection point. We're seeking an exceptional leader to join Samantha and Devon on our C-level team and help shape the next era of one of the most impactful organizations in the EA ecosystem.
With foundations established (including a strong leadership team and funding runway), we're ready to scale our influence dramatically and see many exciting pathways to do so. While the current leadership team has a default 2026 strategic plan, we are open to a new CEO proposing radical departures. This might include:
* Proposing alternative ways to integrate or spin off existing or new programs
* Deciding to spend more resources trialling more experimental programs, or double down on Charity Entrepreneurship
* Expanding geographically or deepening impact in existing region
As a reminder in case people were unaware, we provide free editing services on LessWrong for anyone above 100 karma on the site: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nsCwdYJEpmW5Hw5Xm/lesswrong-is-providing-feedback-and-proofreading-on-drafts
Just click the "Request Feedback" button when you are writing a new post, and a chat window will pop up asking you what kind of feedback you want, and within 24 hours someone will have left comments and suggestions on your post.
FWIW: highly, highly recommend LessWrong's editing services! Justis Millis in particular gave excellent feedback, across the gamut of low-level formatting to high-level content ideas, in a stunningly short amount of time (<48h, iirc).
Thanks! Yeah, I think right now I do ~all the feedback requests, and my goal tends to be 24h turnaround time or less (though it does sometimes get closer to 48h).
I've found the LessWrong editing service to be a pretty exciting way to provide copyediting, proofreading, feedback etc. to lots and lots of individuals over the last several months. Perhaps an expansion of that model could be valuable? This month there were 32 posts I did copyediting for through the service, which is more than usual but not by too much. That's way more than I would have even actively trying to promote myself, and I haven't had to do the promoting (or handle billing with a whole bunch of individuals). If there's more money for centralized-funding-of-edits, I at least continue to have excess capacity there and find it a lot of fun!
Thanks for this post!
Here's a related thing I wrote recently, with a slightly different framing and some additional details, in case this is useful to someone. Though Habryka's comment makes me think perhaps LessWrong already have this mostly covered, so I guess a first step would be to check that out.
"Mesa-project* idea: Centralised & scalable proofreading, copyediting, and formatting assistance for EA-aligned people
Maybe someone should find decent/good copyeditors/proofreaders/formatters and advertise their services to EA community members who are willing & able to pay, either for their Forum posts or for other things they're working on? (By "formatters", I personally just have in mind people who can take a Google Doc with lots of tables and footnotes and format it for the EA Forum, but maybe there'd be other use cases as well, such as LaTeX.)
Ofc people can also sort this out themselves, but then there's the search and vetting and set-up costs. Seems more efficient for some actor to set it up in a centralised/scalable way. E.g., Rethink Priorities has a person to do this for our work, and that seems much better than us each finding a person ourselves. I'd like various other orgs and individuals to also have this.
Potential benefits:
(But maybe a Fermi estimate would suggest that the benefits are actually really small and not worth thinking about? Seems worth at least checking, though?)
Potential downsides:
*Not quite a megaproject, but more than a microproject :D"
I'm willing to do this work for $15-35 per page (depending on the author's ability to pay); I'm very detail-oriented and like this kind of stuff. I can only really copyedit/proofread posts written in American English, but I can do formatting for any text. I could probably do one or two copyediting or formatting jobs per weekend.
@Amber Dawn does this. Conflict of interest - she's my partner. https://amber-dawn-ace.com/
I plan to start offering this – among other things – for free through the Altruistic Agency later this year.
Another type of service that would be useful is accessibility services, such as writing transcripts/timed text for audio and video (e.g. podcasts) and alt text for images.
I used to do transcribing with timestamps. I met some cool people and learned a lot about the topics I was working on that way. It was a good remote flex-time freelance job for me at 20. I rarely do transcription work anymore, but I would be happy to do a call about what I learned and my setup with anyone considering this line of work.