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I've been meaning to write about what it's like trying to figure out your career direction between 18 and 21 while being part of the EA community—a time that feels, at least for me, like the most uncertain and exploratory part of life. You're not just asking yourself what you want to do, but also grappling with questions about impact and doing the most good, which adds another hard layer to an already complex period.
For anyone at university who's getting introduced to EA and feeling overwhelmed about career decisions, I feel like I want to share some thoughts. I've been there—feeling unsure about whether I was making the "right" choices or if I was doing enough to have impact. I've seen others around that age wrestle with the same questions. I still wrestle with my impact. You have my empathy.
If that's where you are right now, maybe a few scattered pieces of advice from someone a little further down the road could help. I won't turn this into a long essay, but if any of this resonates—or if you want more specific guidance—I'd be happy to expand on these thoughts:
1. 80,000 Hours is not gospel: Of course, they don't claim to be gospel, and explicitly want you to explore different options in your career and provide tools for you to do the thinking. But it's very easy to just default to their listed career options and cause areas. 80,000 Hours won't help you make the right choices if you aren't willing to accept that it's just one piece of your career puzzle. Most people don't just end up working on what they want by default, unfortunately.
2. Think beyond conventional impact paths: On that note, if something doesn't fit neatly into how a typical EA career pans out, that might feel uncomfortable. But that's okay—outside this community, people do all sorts of things in the world. Going to university doesn't automatically prepare you for AI policy work or give you operations skills. You'll probably need to get experience in the outside world that isn't an EA career path, and that can be hard if all you've consumed at university is EA philosophy and its traditional career paths. This is why not pigeon-holing yourself is a good idea (see point 4).
3. Get ready for ego hits: Yes, there's plenty written about how EA jobs are hard to get, but lots of jobs that seem shiny and potentially useful for career capital will reject you—because you're not the only one who wants that shiny job. You might get lucky and end up right where you want to be, but you're probably just like everybody else: inexperienced and trying to make it in the world. Each job application can take weeks of effort. You can make it to interview rounds, all excited about the possibility of doing something you want, only to be rejected because someone else has 10 years more experience than you. This will happen, and it will be hard. You just have to get back up and try again. I found it useful to remind myself every time I got rejected that 'they can reject me, but they can't kill my spirit'—and that helped muster up the motivation to push forward.
4. Don't let EA become your whole life: I switched my degree to be very AI Governance focused (which maybe is paying off), made EA friends, went to EA retreats. It's so enticing because the university EA community tends to be interesting, thoughtful, and ambitious—that's pleasant to be around and can mean your life gets wrapped up in it. Getting invited to EA Global conferences in the Bay Area when you're a twenty-year-old at university hits that status-seeking part of your brain hard. People think it's really cool, and it feels good when they do. I wish I could say I was above caring what others think, but my brain (like most people's) is wired to chase social validation at times. While there's plenty of advice out there about letting go of status-seeking—and you should definitely work on that—I think it's important to acknowledge how these dynamics can pull you deeper into making EA your whole identity. I strongly suggest building yourself in other communities and finding interests outside the movement. This advice might seem obvious to any adult, but when you're at university finding your people, and those people happen to offer both intellectual stimulation and status boosts, it's really easy to stick to the comfortable option.
5. Don't dismiss grades—they're part of the bigger picture: I absorbed some wrong advice about grades not mattering through the rationality community. But they do matter: not just for masters applications, but as a signal to employers about your ability to work hard and follow through. Even if EA jobs don't always list grade requirements, having good grades demonstrates competence and work ethic. More importantly, engaging deeply with your subject teaches you how to tackle difficult problems and work systematically—skills that matter regardless of where you end up. And actually trying with your degree and doing well can make university a much more pleasant experience.
Hope that's useful to somebody.
Thank you for writing this! I wish I had internalized some of these points more while I was at university, and guess others will feel the same.
One thing in particular that I recognized is viewing 80,000 Hours (and the EA community more broadly) as offering definitive answers, rather than tools and questions. Looking back, I realize I maybe fell into that mindset. I almost expected that if I just followed the "right" path they laid out and worked as hard as I could, I’d maximize my impact. That was, of course, a very soothing thought, drastically simplifying the complexity of my career choice. But it was also very wrong, and I'm grateful that this quick take is now there to point this out :)
Most good AI Governance takes are not on the EA Forum, or Lesswrong. They exist on Substack! (and on X where they get reposted and turned into threads). You should consider exploring the AI Governance substack space more. Some examples: Anton Leicht - Threading the Needle; Miles Brundage.
I run frequently, and it would be nice to eventually see more GiveWell-recommended charities represented at marathon events in the UK. For example, I didn't get a place through the ballot for the London Marathon, but I could still obtain a charity place. However, I don't find any of the available charities particularly appealing to fundraise for, and I wish orgs like the Against Malaria Foundation were offered instead.
The value to the charity consists of both the funds counterfactually raised through the race and the value of the fundraising leads generated through the runner's activity. I'm curious about what BOTEC someone who knows more about the marathon-fundraising model than I might come up with. My off-the-cuff guess is that, to make the effort cost-effective enough, the charity would need a critical mass of runners who were (a) sufficiently invested in the charity to appear credible to their networks (vs. using it more as a way to gain entry) and (b) could tap wealthy-enough fundraising networks to generate significant post-race expected value.
I am now trying to make YouTube videos explaining AI Governance. Here is a video on RSPs. The video has a few problems, and the editing is sometimes choppy. This can be a fun hobby, and I could improve on skills that seem useful to have. The first is having the confidence to talk to a camera. If you have feedback, here is a form.
For a first video, I thought it was surprisingly good! :) I appreciate that you speak clearly, the script is pretty short and to the point, and honestly I thought the editing was way better than most of YouTube (you cut enough to keep it moving, but not too much as to be being annoying or distracting). There were a couple times I felt like you could have edited it down more. I liked the infographic cut-ins, and you could probably add slightly more visual aids before it gets to be too many.
I'm glad you enjoy making them, and I encourage you to keep doing it!
(I am mostly articulating feelings here. I am unsure about what I think should change).
I am somewhat disappointed with the way Manifund has turned out. This isn't to critique the manifund team or that regranting as an idea is bad, but after a few months of excitement and momentum, things have somewhat decelerated. While you get the occasional cool projects, most of the projects on the website don't seem particularly impressive to me. I also feel like some of the regrantors seem slow to move money, but it could be that the previous problem is feeding into this.
Suggestion: Enlarge the font size for pronouns on EA Global/EA retreat name cards
There was a period when I used they/them pronouns and was frequently misgendered at EA events. This likely occurred because I present as male, but regardless, it was a frustrating experience. I often find it difficult to correct people and explicitly mention my preferred pronouns, especially in socially taxing environments like EAGs or retreats. Increasing the size of the pronouns on name cards could be helpful.
I'd like to get opinions on something. I'm planning to experiment with making YouTube videos on AI Governance over the next month or two. Ideally, I want people to see these videos so I can get feedback or get told that I've said something incorrect, which is helpful for correcting my own model around things.
I'd share these videos by posting on the EA Forum, but I'm unsure about the best approach:
a) Posting on the frontpage feels like seeking attention or promoting for views, especially since I'm new to video-making and don't expect high quality initially.
b) Posting as personal blog posts seems less intrusive, as only those who opt to see personal posts will see them. This feels like I have "permission" to make noise and is less intimidating.
C) Putting them in my quick takes section, which is currently my default, would be even more out of the way.
Given my account's karma, my posts typically start with 4 or 5 karma and stay on the frontpage for a few hours by default. I think the forum has improved a lot recently - there's less volume of posts and more interesting discussions. I don't want to create noise each time I make a video.
However, each video is relevant to the EA community. If people don't like a video, it'll naturally move off the front page fairly soon. I'm more likely to get views if I don't make it a personal blog post or update my quick takes. These views are important to me because they mean more interesting feedback and a higher likelihood that I'll improve at making videos. (Also given I am only human, more views and engagement means more motivation to keep making things).
I'd appreciate others' opinions on this. I recognise that part of my hesitation probably stems from a lack of confidence and fear of others' opinions, but I don't think these are necessarily good justifications for my decision.
If it were me, I would default to posting them as quick takes. I think that would get them more visibility than a personal blog post (not sure), and quick takes are a good fit for asking for feedback on more early stage things.
But I am somewhat biased because I'm pretty scared to publish frontpage posts, and I don't want to discourage you from posting it there, especially if you are willing to put in some additional effort to make it valuable for frontpage readers (such as by including a written version of the contents, or by asking for specific feedback in the post, or framing your post as a discussion about the video topic that people can continue in the comments). As you say, in the worst case, if it doesn't get many upvotes, it will fall off pretty quickly.
On another note, I think the Forum isn't currently that well-suited for sharing video content, so if you have suggestions for how we can do better there, let me know! :)
I'm doing some thinking on the prospects for international cooperation on AI safety, particularly potential agreements to slow down risky AI progress like CHARTS. Does anyone know of a good website or resource that summarizes different countries' current views and policies regarding deliberately slowing AI progress? For example, something laying out which governments seem open to restrictive policies or agreements to constrain the development of advanced AI (like the EU?) versus which ones want to charge full steam ahead, no matter the risks. Or which countries seem undecided or could be persuaded. Basically, I'm looking for something that synthesizes various countries' attitudes and stated priorities when it comes to potentially regulating the pace of AI advancement, especially policies that could slow the race to AGI. Let me know if you have any suggestions!
Not exactly what you're looking for (because it focuses on the US and China rather than giving an overview of lots of countries), but you might find "Prospects for AI safety agreements between countries" useful if you haven't already read it, particularly the section on CHARTS.
Curated and popular this week
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Regulation cannot be written in blood alone.
There’s this fantasy of easy, free support for the AI Safety position coming from what’s commonly called a “warning shot”. The idea is that AI will cause smaller disasters before it causes a really big one, and that when people see this they will realize we’ve been right all along and easily do what we suggest. I can’t count how many times someone (ostensibly from my own side) has said something to me like “we just have to hope for warning shots”. It’s the AI Safety version of “regulation is written in blood”. But that’s not how it works.
Here’s what I think about the myth that warning shots will come to save the day:
1) Awful. I will never hope for a disaster. That’s what I’m trying to prevent. Hoping for disasters to make our job easier is callous and it takes us off track to be thinking about the silver lining of failing in our mission.
2) A disaster does not automatically a warning shot make. People have to be prepared with a world model that includes what the significance of the event would be to experience it as a warning shot that kicks them into gear.
3) The way to make warning shots effective if (God forbid) they happen is to work hard at convincing others of the risk and what to do about it based on the evidence we already have— the very thing we should be doing in the absence of warning shots.
If these smaller scale disasters happen, they will only serve as warning shots if we put a lot of work into educating the public to understand what they mean before they happen.
The default “warning shot” event outcome is confusion, misattribution, or normalizing the tragedy.
Let’s imagine what one of these macabrely hoped-for “warning shot” scenarios feels like from the inside. Say one of the commonly proposed warning shot scenario occurs: a misaligned AI causes several thousand deaths. Say the deaths are of ICU patients because the AI in charge of their machines decides that costs and suffering would be minimize
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This is a transcript of my opening talk at EA Global: London 2025. In my talk, I challenge the misconception that EA is populated by “cold, uncaring, spreadsheet-obsessed robots” and explain how EA principles serve as tools for putting compassion into practice, translating our feelings about the world's problems into effective action.
Key points:
* Most people involved in EA are here because of their feelings, not despite them. Many of us are driven by emotions like anger about neglected global health needs, sadness about animal suffering, or fear about AI risks. What distinguishes us as a community isn't that we don't feel; it's that we don't stop at feeling — we act. Two examples:
* When USAID cuts threatened critical health programs, GiveWell mobilized $24 million in emergency funding within weeks.
* People from the EA ecosystem spotted AI risks years ahead of the mainstream and pioneered funding for the field starting in 2015, helping transform AI safety from a fringe concern into a thriving research field.
* We don't make spreadsheets because we lack care. We make them because we care deeply. In the face of tremendous suffering, prioritization helps us take decisive, thoughtful action instead of freezing or leaving impact on the table.
* Surveys show that personal connections are the most common way that people first discover EA. When we share our own stories — explaining not just what we do but why it matters to us emotionally — we help others see that EA offers a concrete way to turn their compassion into meaningful impact.
You can also watch my full talk on YouTube.
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One year ago, I stood on this stage as the new CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism to talk about the journey effective altruism is on. Among other key messages, my talk made this point: if we want to get to where we want to go, we need to be better at telling our own stories rather than leaving that to critics and commentators. Since
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A friend of mine who worked as a social worker in a hospital told me a story that stuck with me. She had a conversation with an in-patient having a very difficult time. It was helpful, but as she was leaving, they told her wistfully 'You get to go home'. She found it hard to hear—it felt like an admonition. It was hard not to feel guilt over indeed getting to leave the facility and try to stop thinking about it, when others didn't have that luxury.
The story really stuck with me. I resonate with the guilt of being in the fortunate position of being able to go back to my comfortable home and chill with my family while so many beings can't escape the horrible situations they're in, or whose very chance at existence depends on our work.
Hearing the story was helpful for dealing with that guilt. Thinking about my friend's situation it was clear why she felt guilty. But also clear that it was absolutely crucial that she did go home. She was only going to be able to keep showing up to work and having useful conversations with people if she allowed herself proper respite. It might be unfair for her patients that she got to take the break they didn't, but it was also very clearly in their best interests for her to do it.
Having a clear-cut example like that to think about when feeling guilt over taking time off is useful. But I also find the framing useful beyond the obvious cases.
When morality feels all-consuming
Effective altruism can sometimes feel all consuming. Any spending decision you make affects how much you can donate. Any activity you choose to do takes time away from work you could be doing to help others. Morality can feel as if it's making claims on even the things which are most important to you, and most personal.
Often the narratives with which we push back on such feelings also involve optimisation. We think through how many hours per week we can work without burning out, and how much stress we can handle before it becomes a problem.
I do find that
I'd like to get opinions on something. I'm planning to experiment with making YouTube videos on AI Governance over the next month or two. Ideally, I want people to see these videos so I can get feedback or get told that I've said something incorrect, which is helpful for correcting my own model around things.
I'd share these videos by posting on the EA Forum, but I'm unsure about the best approach:
a) Posting on the frontpage feels like seeking attention or promoting for views, especially since I'm new to video-making and don't expect high quality initially.
b) Posting as personal blog posts seems less intrusive, as only those who opt to see personal posts will see them. This feels like I have "permission" to make noise and is less intimidating.
C) Putting them in my quick takes section, which is currently my default, would be even more out of the way.
Given my account's karma, my posts typically start with 4 or 5 karma and stay on the frontpage for a few hours by default. I think the forum has improved a lot recently - there's less volume of posts and more interesting discussions. I don't want to create noise each time I make a video.
However, each video is relevant to the EA community. If people don't like a video, it'll naturally move off the front page fairly soon. I'm more likely to get views if I don't make it a personal blog post or update my quick takes. These views are important to me because they mean more interesting feedback and a higher likelihood that I'll improve at making videos. (Also given I am only human, more views and engagement means more motivation to keep making things).
I'd appreciate others' opinions on this. I recognise that part of my hesitation probably stems from a lack of confidence and fear of others' opinions, but I don't think these are necessarily good justifications for my decision.
If it were me, I would default to posting them as quick takes. I think that would get them more visibility than a personal blog post (not sure), and quick takes are a good fit for asking for feedback on more early stage things.
But I am somewhat biased because I'm pretty scared to publish frontpage posts, and I don't want to discourage you from posting it there, especially if you are willing to put in some additional effort to make it valuable for frontpage readers (such as by including a written version of the contents, or by asking for specific feedback i... (read more)