Quick takes

Today I had to turn off my VPN to pass the Vercel Security Check and access the EA Forum. I think this is bad, especially given the state of internet freedom around the world. As in many places, the internet in my country is subject to frequent bandwidth throttling, ad hoc censorship, and mass surveillance.

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 

This is a linkpost for https://heresjonny.substack.com/p/paul-christianos-barista.  When I left my previous job in April of last year, I took a long break from thinking about AI safety. This was nice. Thinking about catastrophic risks all the time wears you down. Imagining oneself as Cassandra, baffled that nobody around you is taking this sufficiently seriously, is not good for the soul[1]. I was angry at the community that had got me interested in AI risk in the first place. I felt powerless to help, and that I had earned more selfishness anyway. Of course, avoiding AI altogether wasn’t an option. I was worried that coding would soon be automated, and my most marketable skill would disappear. I wanted to broaden my skillset and position myself well in case I couldn’t go back to a regular software engineering job. I started writing posts about how I was going to found a company, after having been heavily influenced by reading The Intelligence Curse[2]. I got really into thinking about the intersection of AI and psychiatry. I started talking about the importance of defensive acceleration and how effective altruists systematically underrate comparative advantage. This was motivated reasoning; I wanted to work on something other than AI safety and not feel guilty about it[3]. I figured that all these super smart, status-y types had it under control already.                                           The EMH is trivially false across all domains In April of this year, I had various conversations that led to me feeling excited about being part of the EA community again. I went to EAG London and primarily talked about things other than AI safety[4]. I started doing some contract work for an EA-flavoured global health and development charity. I was managing to feel like I was part of the community without getting sucked into AI safety’s gravity well. I ended up applying for a job at an EA organisation. I managed to get through to the work trial stage, which involved g

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!

I wrote a case study on the School for Moral Ambition's storytelling. I came to SMA from EA, and many of its ideas sounded familiar. What surprised me was how far a new organization got with them. It seemed to reach people EA rarely reaches, with much less pushback than EA tends to get. That's an impression I can't measure. I think SMA rewrites the usual nonprofit cast. The reader is the hero, a system is the villain, and history is the judge. Every cause comes with a named opponent, like the tobacco industry or tax rules that favor billionaires, and the reader stays off the list of suspects. Its food explainer goes after intensive animal agriculture, and veganism doesn't come up. Is an easier version of these ideas a fair price for reaching people EA never reached? I'm unsure. Pushback welcome, and suggestions for who to look at next. https://annapit.substack.com/p/hero-villain-judge-how-the-school?r=2fkhlo

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.

I've noticed a couple of times in workshops, retreats and conferences that folks quite new to their jobs in EA orgs find themselves in a position where they are talking about their org's work and mission statement and get questioned on their theory of change, and while the first two make complete sense, the last one often gets met with "I've just started my role" or "I've only been at X for Y weeks". This is perfectly reasonable, but I wonder if this has been noticed by other people, and this overall makes me feel we need to see more experienced members of an org dedicate more time to being public-facing in said events!

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.