Quick takes

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!

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.

With the large expected inflow of philanthropic capital, there has been a surge in interest in entrepreneurship among those who otherwise might not have pursued it. As we pursue promising new ideas, many ventures will fail. Some of these failures will be because the idea was not as good as it seemed, but many will fail because the entrepreneurs executed it poorly. I'm concerned we will abandon good ideas due to poor execution. Founders new and old should strive to make their successes and failures publicly visible (though these stories should be read critically given founder biases). More importantly, we should be skeptical of claims that an idea is bad based solely on the failure of one attempt, and we should be willing to pursue ideas more than once if we have a strong account for why the previous attempt(s) failed.

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.

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.

Please list any new funding opportunities you can think of here on the Forum? I feel like we might already be in the early ramp-up to significantly more EA aligned funding. At the same time, the Forum's overview over funding opportunities feels like it is quickly getting outdated. I think as things move quickly, coordination might become looser and new promising interventions are identified, it is helpful for people to have a good overview over available funding sources and their priorities. I have heard on the grapevine there is already funding on several fronts that might not be very public. I am a little bit uncertain if perhaps it is better these sources remain anonymous. At the same time, I think there might be several promising EA projects that are not sufficiently visible to people influencing funding decisions.  Epistemic note: I am not listing these yet as I have not had time yet to verify how much they qualify as EA funding opportunities. Here are a few recent developments I am considering listing on the funding opportunities page, but would like someone that knows these funds better to list them: * Probably several I have missed - please list these here * OpenAI Foundation - AI Resilience * OpenAI Rosalind * The Launch Sequence (not a fund in itself, but plausibly one can treat this kind of like a funding source?) * Several of Renaissance Philanthropy's (RP) funds (several quite plugged in EAs do not even know of RP!) * Astralis Foundation

I am currently the only Fund Manager at the EA Infrastructure Fund... and that needs to change! I work full-time on something else within the Centre for Effective Altruism, and the EAIF needs a dedicated owner who will drive it forwards. I think we're sitting on a big opportunity here. There's so much that the EA movement could achieve, and so much great work that could be enabled by EAIF. Some indicators of promise here: * CEA is growing, but there's only so much that CEA can work on in-house. We need to fund and nurture great work that's happening elsewhere, too! * There are potential new sources of funding that EAIF could tap into; building a strong product here that donors are excited about is essential. * We have a mini roadmap laid out by recent successes within EA Funds. Let me say more on that last one. I've been extremely impressed by what another EA Fund, the Animal Welfare Fund, has achieved over the past year or two, improving it's evaluation quality, it's staffing, and it's available pool of resources. I think the EAIF has the potential for a similar rocketship trajectory; it needs the right person to come in and make that happen. CEA is hiring for a new Head of the EA Infrastructure Fund: full job description and application form here, apply by 4th May. Let me know if you have questions! I can't promise deep engagement with all potential candidates, but I'll help out with key/quick uncertainties if I can! Some additional thoughts from Loic, new Head of EA Funds, here.