All too often we (at least myself) deliberate over which high-hanging fruit to pluck, when there’s low-hanging fruit right in front of us. Talking with more people at happy hours is a low-hanging fruit.[1] If you’re newer to AI safety and are invited to a happy hour, you should talk with more people outside your social circle at happy hours.
Much of the most recent strategic thinking in this space isn’t written down, and if it is, it’s in private Slack channels. Events are where the private Slack channels turn semipublic. You’re able to tap into insights that are otherwise expensive to get outside (email fancy person, hope they read your message) or from your unknown unknowns (you’ve already grokked the takes of people in your milieu).
You can laser in on relevant information when conversing to a greater degree than skimming through someone’s writing. Consider each individual’s mind to correspond to a library of experiences. Skimming their LessWrong is like browsing some of the shelves.[2] Talking face-to-face is like chatting with the librarian that knows the catalogue and can recommend you to resources (although in many cases they don’t need to, because they can summarize the exact content).
If you’re in SF/Berkeley, it’s likely that you’ve become desensitized to the fortune you have to be there. It might be motivating to reflect on what you would do earlier on in your AI safety journey if you had the chance to attend these events.
When you strip away the familiarity we have with many AIS professionals by virtue of the efforts they make to be available, you come up with a list that newbies to other industries would kill to meet their equivalents of. Here are people that I talked to today[3]:
Most of these facts are in the “well, duh” category. My point with adding these is to get you to take a step back and notice, not to make some claim that these are the most important details or the most important people to talk to. In fact, some of the most valuable conversations were with others who had similar context levels to me and we could work through a crux together.
By this point, I hope you’re seeing the value in the thesis here. But what if you’re anxious about this whole thing? A few recommendations:
Something that has held me back earlier is that I feel like I’m detracting from more senior people’s experience at these events.
Naturally, this advice only applies if you’re lucky enough to have invites to these events and live in The Bay, DC, or London. This is worth a separate post, but attending conferences like EAGs, participating in courses or fellowships, or knowing alumni of AI safety programs is normally enough to get on the list, whence it’s easier to meet people who can invite you to more, etc. ↩︎
One could argue that with a good algorithm, this is more like browsing the “top picks” shelf. ↩︎
I wrote this a while ago and am only just publishing this, so technically not today anymore. ↩︎
Beautiful short piece here, Jacob. I couldn't agree more about the overall thesis of actually tapping into the network around you (in this case, at happy hours and other AIS events). Far too often, we are living below the privilege we have as humans to connect. I think your thesis holds even when in far-flung lands (i.e., not SF, London, Boston, etc.).
I would add that a level of consistency is required to build the practice of finding and talking with interesting people. For example, at the end of this summer, I went on a who's-who spree, emailing and talking to everyone I could. It was incredibly liberating to build up so much momentum and to speak so freely with so many people. However, now that things have settled down, I feel like I've lost the edge I had developed. In sum, I'd like to get better at this, and your post was a helpful reminder to go and do this!