Quick takes

“We want lab employees to show up” Can someone explain to me the over-blown importance of lab employees? That we need them to show up to our events or community or snag a conversation with them at an EAG = some sort of impact. (I.e I speculate lab employees showing up to EA SF would mean we get more funding or something)  My understanding is that many employees who would show up are already AIS-pilled and doing their best. What more do you want from them? To leave, to unionize, to influence them in some way?  I’m sure I’m missing something here 🤷‍♀️ 

Some quick observations on the attacks on METR, EA, and other AI safety orgs (from my perspective as a political campaigner and former Communications Director for a union and mayor during COVID): 1. If you're explaining, you're losing: Every rebuttal repeats the accusation to people who haven't heard it yet. Answer the accusation once, link to it, and stop explaining. This is the "illusory truth" effect (information is true when it's repeated). 2. Silence doesn't work either: Not responding on the record suggests something is being hidden. Make one clear statement rather than amplifying in multiple twitter threads. 3. Concede what you can: A concept I know from political comms is the "admission against interest". This buys trust, disarms cynical voters, and establishes credibility. Saying "yes, AND here's what we're doing about it" will take some air out of the critique. 4. Messenger > message: Ideally people who know the organization being attacked, are from outside the AI safety world, have independent standing, or better yet, have disagreed with the organization publicly will land the defense better. 5. Going after people's personal lives or spouses is overreach: Ordinary people will obviously find this unfair and it's where their attacks will backfire. 6. Don't quote tweet and rebut: You're just distributing their message for them. I want to write something longer on this but don't have time right now. Lots of opportunity for good crisis comms here. Let me know what's wrong about this take and if you'd like to hear more!

With all the recent media attention on EA, I think what's really unclear to outsiders is the relationship between EA and Anthropic (rightfully so!). To most people it doesn't make sense that a community so focused on AI safety can also be linked to one of the leading companies. I'd personally be very interested to see a survey of what EAs think of Anthropic, but maybe that's a minefield.. Even a good explainer meant for the public could go a long way.

The "Desperate" AI Safety Talent Bottleneck is deeply misleading. Please.stop. I worked at Google. Google does not tell applicants that there is a talent bottleneck and they are desperately hiring. They say "we're cool, join us!"  I didn't get into Harvard.  Harvard does not tell applicants that they are desperately seeking students. I am not misled.  I've gotten rejected from countless AI Safety organizations. AI Safety tells applicants - we are in desperate need of talent (operators/generalists)! Please join us!  I've coached 70+ aspiring career pivoters on navigating the ecosystem. A common theme is the dejection & disappointment from all this rejection. Because of this false marketing, I am the one picking up the pieces to calibrate professionals on how difficult, competitive, and picky organizations are, how to build context, and how to endure the marathon, which is like any other job hunt.  Please.stop. Some alternatives: * We are an exciting, growing organization and you should apply for our roles! * Many people are excited to work for us - here are qualities of candidates we're especially excited about. * EA roles are competitive, and we would still love to see your application. Relevant posts: * https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/B6d8Wzk4gNzHsXvdi/ai-safety-is-extremely-bottlenecked-on-grantmakers?commentId=n2Rd7RR4y9EnKP42F * https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b82SLXwEHRCs3TFJA/why-experienced-professionals-fail-to-land-high-impact-roles * https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jmbP9rwXncfa32seH/after-one-year-of-applying-for-ea-jobs-it-is-really-really 

I went to jail yesterday in Wisconsin. I helped rescue 23 beagles in a large mass open rescue against a factory farm, Ridglan Farms, near Madison. We were trying to push the police to act on documented animal cruelty at Ridglan. Instead they arrested me and 26 other activists. I wrote a blog post about why I did it.. Excerpt: More info and stories from Wayne Hsiung: https://blog.simpleheart.org/p/im-in-jail-for-rescuing-dogs-its If you're in the DC area, I'll be sharing more about my experience at Revolutionists' Night, an animal welfare meetup, this Thursday. Reach out for an invite. [Edited to add:] I believe there is a lawful basis for this action and I intend to fight any attempted prosecution in court! I'm not advocating any illegal activity, of course.

You should volunteer at your first EAG! (Especially if you are a student or early career) * If you don’t have a network in EA, EAG’s can be overwhelming. Volunteering gives you a ready-made, organic network. * Volunteering is pretty chill - a lot of the shifts aren’t that hard. * At your first EAG, it’s unlikely that you are using your time so efficiently that a few hours of volunteering would cut into the value of your conference.

Hi! This has been in my backlog, so I wanted to quickly post about a one-on-one app that we made a couple of months ago for the West Coast EA Retreat and Midwest EA Retreat. Pairwise is a simple scheduler for 1:1s at retreats and other events. You can sign in with a magic link, mark the slots you're free, browse other attendees and see when your availability overlaps, and request meetings. You can try a demo retreat here and read about its use at the West Coast EA retreat here.  If you want to use pairwise for an EA or AI safety or similar retreat/event, please let me know! You can email [email protected] or DM me. Made by Jesse Gilbert with help from Saul Munn. Open source on GitHub.

There should be more ongoing debate about whether it's good or not to call oneself an EA; I haven't seen many posts myself. We should try to think through all the pros and cons.  It probably depends on who you are and the career you want to have, but for some reason it feels like most people think it's bad in most cases. Even if you disagree with some subgroups or like to have a small identity, it could be bad for the world that most EA-adjacents don't call themselves EAs.  Over time, it could make some of them less effective or altruistic. It could also allow crazy people to give bad first impressions and misrepresent the movement. SBF, of course, is the prime example of this; maybe it would be better if people were autistic about EA like he was. In this state, we may be a ticking bomb just waiting for more crazy EA-adjacents to join and worsen the brand even more. And it's just a matter of cases like those until it's left in an irrecoverable state. Another reason may be that identifying with a label has to do with feelings that we cannot control and we should value honesty. But then, can we fix that from within the movement if we realize it would be better for people to identify as an EA? It could be because it sounds cringe too, but maybe it's worth enduring it.  Idk, these are just some pros and cons I just thought about.