I reckon there is more internal conflict; it’s just not being disclosed. 

‘To me, this isn't some carvout for sexual harassment, it's trying to treat discussion of sexual harassment like I treat everything else.’

This is a thankless endeavour. The topic is too emotionally heated, and the social incentives are too skewed towards what you’ve seen. 

My own view is that the topic of whether there is or isn't a particular problem with sexual harassment in EA has become a distraction. If there are concrete failures, name them and fix them. If there are clear policies that might improve things, propose them. But the ambient claim that EA is unusually bad is under-evidenced to me too, and I don’t think the community benefits from treating that as the default frame.

I largely agree, the plight of animals is being looked past ... as is the only somewhat realistic solution to factory farming (and, therefore, the implications of AI on factory farming). 

All or most funding currently allocated towards animal welfare in EA ought to be focused on but one intervention, in my view: policy advocacy to help get cultivated meat on supermarket shelves ASAP. No other intervention offers comparable upside (in terms of reduced suffering) of even a modest market penetration of cultivated meat. 

I don't see another way to end factory farming in our lifetimes.

Just one person's strongly held view, though I'm also pleased to see Bruce Friedrich's talk at EAG next week titled 'the only tractable solution to industrial animal farming'. See some of you there! 

Hi, cool program! A few questions: 

'The IAP: Entrepreneurship Track acts as a compliment to many other high-impact entrepreneurship programs. In fact, many IAP alumni have subsequently gone on to complete other entrepreneurial programs and incubators...' 

So, is this new program a kind of a pre-cursor to those programs? How does the content differ (besides you covering AI safety, which I think AIM doesn't)? 

Also, who's facilitating the Entrepreneurship Track?

Quick FYI for anyone still waiting to hear back re: EAG London. I learned today that my acceptance email from March never reached me, and apparently there have been a few email hiccups this year.

Might be worth checking spam/alternative inboxes or contacting admissions if you're still waiting. 

What do people think the implications are for the AI safety field if internal deployment is where frontier AI labs are heading? It would seem less tractable to me, especially for people who aren’t already deeply networked into the labs, which I expect describes most people currently trying to pivot into AI safety. 

I'd like to know too. 

Hi! Congratulations on the growth. A few questions from a fairly interested outside observer:

1. How do you think about counterfactual impact? It seems quite difficult to separate outcomes that would likely have happened anyway from outcomes meaningfully attributable to your interventions, particularly in a tough market. I don’t expect that’s fully solvable, but I’m curious about what methods or heuristics you use.

2. What do you see as the main differences between Probably Good and other career advisory organisations/services such as 80,000 Hours or High Impact Professionals? Where do you think your comparative advantage is emerging?

3. You mention an extensive search before selecting an internal hire for the ED role. Roughly how many applicants were involved, and how much staff time did the process consume overall? I’m generally sympathetic to internal hires/closed rounds in most cases because of the potential time/cost savings, but I’d be interested to better understand the level of those potential savings in practice.

Thanks for sharing, I’d definitely be interested in reading a longer retrospective at some point.
 

One angle I’d add is that there may be a complementary, more immediate approach: bringing in experienced grantmakers from adjacent fields and helping them transition into AI safety.

I think many of the core skills (evaluating proposals, making judgment calls with uncertain information, communicating decisions, managing portfolios, etc) are quite transferable. The main gap is context, for the reasons you've described. I think that'd be faster to remedy than building grantmakers from scratch.

Do you think this kind of approach (getting proven grantmakers into AI safety) could help solve the expected bottleneck? Perhaps I’m underestimating the barriers.  

Ok, my updated understanding is that Sentient Futures is primarily focused on field-building, with a view to supporting interventions as they emerge over time.

One thing I’m still trying to get a better grip on is how this translates into impact on animals, and ideally, on what timescale. I’ve had similar questions when thinking about wild animal welfare more broadly: when does investment in building a field start to produce concrete outcomes that benefit animals? 

In the AI x animals case, it seems slightly more pressing because of the time-sensitivity point. I’m trying to reconcile the idea that 'this is urgent' with an approach that is upstream and preparatory.

I’m also conscious that most of what I’m seeing is the public-facing layer, and you mentioned that a lot of the communication is happening in more private or high-context settings; so it may be that the picture looks more abstract from the outside than it does from within. 

Thanks for the invite. I (edit) was going to join the showcase, but my kid is sick. I hope it goes well. 

Thanks, Martijn. Yes, that's another point of confusion; someone would need to pick up the tab for the added costs associated with better welfare.