There's now also the related concept of viatopia, which is maybe a better concept/term. Not sure what the very best links on that are but this one seems a good starting point.
I'll soon be joining LV as the AI Program Director
I'd be happy to chat to people at length about why I decided to join and my frank takes on the pros & cons, for people who get to final rounds or who seem obviously promising for these roles and need some convincing to apply! Feel free to reach out.
My standard take is that people should have a somewhat low bar for applying to things that might be a great fit, and then if they get to a work trial or an offer they should dive deep on the details, think about their broader career plans (e.g. in a doc like this), and red-team each option intensely. Joining LV seems like a great move for many people, but it depends on the specifics of the person and their alternative options. I had a tough and intensive decision process myself (given I was also very excited about my other options), and would be happy to share my intel & reasoning for people who are at that stage.
Haven't read much here, but just flagging that the first sentences of my post were not merely "just apply" but rather:
Don’t spend too long thinking about the pros and cons of applying to an opportunity (e.g., a job, grant, degree program, or internship). Assuming the initial application wouldn’t take you long, if it seems worth thinking hard about, you should probably just apply instead." [emphasis changed]
This is indeed ideally complemented by heuristics about which specific things to apply to, and with some other career-capital-building moves like doing courses or bootcamps.
And I expect some people did further than ideal with "just apply" due to my post (e.g. reading the title alone), but that it was on net a useful nudge.
Nice post! If someone wants AI governance/safety recommendations, feel free to message me. There's a set of orgs I'm confident are things that (a) non-OP donors are better suited than OP to funding and (b) people like me and OP grantmakers think are good. These are what I give to myself. Up to a given person whether they want my suggestions, of course!
(I was previously a grantmaker for EA Funds, and have been in the AI governance space for a few years.)
Hi Richard, quick reactions without having much context:
If you mean this is all one company, this sounds like putting too many eggs in one basket, and insufficiently exploring.
I think it's generally good to apply to many different types of roles and organizations.
Sometimes it makes sense to focus in mostly on one role type or one org. But probably not entirely. And not once one has already gotten some evidence that that's not the right fit. (Receiving a few rejections isn't much negative info, but if it's >5 for one particular org or type of thing then that's probably at least enough evidence that one should also apply to lots of other things and not spend lots of further time on this one thing.)
I'd be much less focused on "am I annoying them?" than "Am I spending too much of my valuable time on this one type of thing, and also potentially missing lots of other better-fitting things elsewhere?"
Oh wow, thanks for flagging that, fixed! Amazing that a whole extra word in the title itself survived a whole year, and survived me copy-pasting the title in various other places too 😬
AI Safety Support have a list of funding opportunities. I'm pretty sure all of them are already in this post + comments section, but it's plausible that'll change in future.
Yeah, the "About sharing information from this report" section attempts to explain this. Also, for what it's worth, I approved all access requests, generally within 24 hours.
That said, FYI I've now switched to the folder being viewable by anyone with the link, rather than requiring requesting access, though we still have the policies in "About sharing information from this report". (This switch was partly because my sense of the risks vs benefits has changed, and partly because we apparently hit the max number of people who can be individually shared on a folder.)
There's now also the related concept of viatopia, which is maybe a better concept/term. Not sure what the very best links on that are but this one seems a good starting point.
Just adding that:
My standard take is that people should have a somewhat low bar for applying to things that might be a great fit, and then if they get to a work trial or an offer they should dive deep on the details, think about their broader career plans (e.g. in a doc like this), and red-team each option intensely. Joining LV seems like a great move for many people, but it depends on the specifics of the person and their alternative options. I had a tough and intensive decision process myself (given I was also very excited about my other options), and would be happy to share my intel & reasoning for people who are at that stage.
Haven't read much here, but just flagging that the first sentences of my post were not merely "just apply" but rather:
This is indeed ideally complemented by heuristics about which specific things to apply to, and with some other career-capital-building moves like doing courses or bootcamps.
And I expect some people did further than ideal with "just apply" due to my post (e.g. reading the title alone), but that it was on net a useful nudge.
(What Dee writes above looks useful to me.)
Nice post! If someone wants AI governance/safety recommendations, feel free to message me. There's a set of orgs I'm confident are things that (a) non-OP donors are better suited than OP to funding and (b) people like me and OP grantmakers think are good. These are what I give to myself. Up to a given person whether they want my suggestions, of course!
(I was previously a grantmaker for EA Funds, and have been in the AI governance space for a few years.)
Hi Richard, quick reactions without having much context:
The AI Safety Fundamentals opportunities board, filtered for "funding" as the opportunity type, is probably also useful.
Welcome to Apply: The 2024 Vitalik Buterin Fellowships in AI Existential Safety by FLI!
Oh wow, thanks for flagging that, fixed! Amazing that a whole extra word in the title itself survived a whole year, and survived me copy-pasting the title in various other places too 😬
AI Safety Support have a list of funding opportunities. I'm pretty sure all of them are already in this post + comments section, but it's plausible that'll change in future.
Yeah, the "About sharing information from this report" section attempts to explain this. Also, for what it's worth, I approved all access requests, generally within 24 hours.
That said, FYI I've now switched to the folder being viewable by anyone with the link, rather than requiring requesting access, though we still have the policies in "About sharing information from this report". (This switch was partly because my sense of the risks vs benefits has changed, and partly because we apparently hit the max number of people who can be individually shared on a folder.)