Another cultural gap I have seen (as someone pivoting from 20+ years of applied public health work) is people in AI safety making incorrect assumptions about the fields people are pivoting from. Most of my career has been in government (in US, federal, state, local) and multiple people have explicitly told me that former government employees aren't a good fit for AI because they are too rigid and rule-bound. While this may be true of some government work cultures, it's definitely not the case in public health where we are often tackling completely new problems without sufficient information or resources. Public health workers are almost always being asked to make decisions and design interventions under tremendous uncertainty. Many positions specifically prioritize experience in the start-up world without recognizing that those core skills and experiences can be found in many other places.
Another cultural gap I have seen (as someone pivoting from 20+ years of applied public health work) is people in AI safety making incorrect assumptions about the fields people are pivoting from. Most of my career has been in government (in US, federal, state, local) and multiple people have explicitly told me that former government employees aren't a good fit for AI because they are too rigid and rule-bound. While this may be true of some government work cultures, it's definitely not the case in public health where we are often tackling completely new problems without sufficient information or resources. Public health workers are almost always being asked to make decisions and design interventions under tremendous uncertainty. Many positions specifically prioritize experience in the start-up world without recognizing that those core skills and experiences can be found in many other places.
I submitted an application to grantmaking.ai for seed funding for the project:
AI Welfare Evaluation Panel: A validation study and pilot
Next on to work on the Longview Philanthropy application.