I felt very discouraged when I heard that there were over 1300 applications for the Gov AI winter fellowship. But now I'm frankly appalled to hear that there were over 7500 applications for the 2025 FIG Winter Fellowship.
Should we officially declare that AI governance is oversaturated, and not recommend this career path except for the ultra-talented?
No on appalled; No on oversaturated; Yes on being clear that AIS projects are looking for the ultra-talented, but be mindful how hard it is to be well calibrated on who is ultra-talented, including yourself.
In my experience, a sizable majority of applicants in big figures like these are both plainly unqualified and don't understand the mission of AIS orgs. You shouldn't assume most or even many resemble you or other people on the EA Forum.
Everyone should be open to not being a fit for many projects or open to the idea that better candidates are out there. I wish for the world's sake that I become unhirable!
Ok that's fair, I guess 'appalled' was just my own personal reaction as someone who'd hoped to have a chance at this. And I agree, if I put my own interests aside, it is good that a lot of people are going for this. And it's good if I'm not needed.
By 'oversaturated' I didn't mean that there's no need for greater talent, but rather that many people will be wasting their time trying to pursue this path. Even if many of the 7500 applicants weren't aligned with FIG's mission... I'm sure the number who are is still very high. With such slim chances of getting a position, I don't think it makes sense to recommend people pursue this path unless they're really a good fit or highly talented.
Yep. I agree there's too great a default towards optimism and that some people are wasting their time as a result.
Based on the numbers I saw when I worked on hiring, I'd say something like 125-200 of the GovAI applicants were determined to work in AIS, properly conceived, as the primary thing they wanted to do. FIG is harder to guess, but I wouldn't be surprised is they just got added to some popular lists of random/"easy" internship opportunities and got flooded with totally irrelevant apps.
If you look at the newest posts on any given day, you'll see a number with 0 or 1 karma. If my understanding is correct, this means they have been downvoted. Yet a lot of these posts clearly involved a lot of work and are well intended. I imagine that to put so much effort into a post only to be immediately downvoted, and possibly have your post disappear from the front page and be read by very few people as a result, must be quite disheartening.
Of course many of these posts have flaws. But it would be good then for anyone who downvotes it - or even disagree-votes - to say why and provide feedback. I think requiring this would be too much, but if downvoting triggered a comment-box to pop up, that might help to encourage such feedback to be given. I'm imagining this working the same way voting on a poll prompts you to also add a comment. And if doing this across the board seems too annoying, it could be made to apply only to posts with, idk, <10 karma?
If you look at the newest posts on any given day, you'll see a number with 0 or 1 karma. If my understanding is correct, this means they have been downvoted.
I don't think this is correct, you can mouseover the karma score of a post to see the number of votes. E.g. here it has 1 karma from 1 vote (the automatic self-vote that is given when you post) and no downvotes
I think these posts are either not being shown on the frontpage to most people, or don't get voted on before disappearing
Oh! I had the idea that new posts start with 3 karma, but then I was wrong.
In that case, I suppose downvoting is less common than I thought. I did still see one or two new posts with 0 or -1 karma, so my argument would still stand for them. But this is clearly less of an issue than I thought.
Oh! I had the idea that new posts start with 3 karma, but then I was wrong.
They start with a self-strong-upvote, which depends on the user karma https://github.com/centre-for-effective-altruism/ea-forum/blob/27d24f53b7dce59b770040e6ac9ff05fcb9c4b16/src/lib/votes/voteHelpers.ts#L71-L91
I’ve just left Switzerland after five and a half years, and I want to say a big THANK YOU to the EA Switzerland team: Marcel Steimke, @Erik Jentzen, @mariuswenk and @Andre Santos 🔸.
Over this time I’ve been there they’ve:
I'm really grateful I could be part of this community and firmly believe that this community building work has a super-high counterfactual impact (although I acknowledge this is biased, vibesy, anecdotal evidence 🙃).
Thanks a lot Tristan!
It was great having you as an amazing community member and EA Bern organiser!
All the best,
Erik
Many thanks Tristan! EA Bern and EA Switzerland will miss you a lot 😊