I was reminded of this post (Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately), and it's something I do myself: work in some speculative EV-maximising space, but donate to "definitely doing good" things.
Thanks for doing this, Ben!
Readers: Here's a spreadsheet with the above Taxonomy, and some columns which I'm hoping we can collectively populate with some useful pointers for each topic:
For security reasons, I have not made it 'editable', but please comment on the sheet and I'll come by in a few days and update the cells.
[1] softly categorised as Plausible, Hope, Grand Hope
Hi! Thanks for sharing your story. Some quick thoughts:
All the best!
Hi Marc, thanks for the question.
Lots has been said about the value of PhDs:
[Caveat: having dropped out of a PhD myself, I might be biased against doing one.] I think our piece on doing PhDs mostly holds up, but I'd make a few updates away from doing one:
Hope this helps! All the best.
Hi Adam, so exciting that you want to use your skills for doing good. I'd go even further and say that "doing good" is its own goal to shoot for, and I want more folks thinking about "What are the best opportunities to do the most good?" first, and only then filtering by some subset of their relevant skills that might make them a good fit.
This is described more in Part 4 our career guide, where we outline a framework -- Scale, Tractability, Neglectedness -- to identify global issues with some of the highest opportunities for positive impact. We've applied such an analysis in our work for many years, and have in-depth articles on what we believe to be some of the world's most pressing problems.
We also host a job board to aggregate opportunities aimed at helping with these. If you're looking for more "goal-directed" next steps, perhaps scanning through those jobs can give you a sense of what the world needs right now, and how you can help. All the best!
Hi alphaplus, thank you for the questions. I'm glad to hear your health is improving.
I want to start by saying: your (written) English seems fine! Even if you're concerned about your speaking skills, you can always lean in to your written ability to connect, exchange ideas, and grow.
Without knowing more, it's hard to give very tailored advice, so here are some messages I think more folks should take seriously:
As a result, I advocate more people develop 'situational awareness', and make their plans keeping (the possibility of) rapid AI progress in mind.
To your main question of "What would you do if you were in my position?", there are several ways to progress. One procedure is articulated here:
The key point is to try things, get feedback, and update your beliefs, and try again. Once you have more clarity, you'll be able to aim for and commit to specific paths.
Finally, there are no real barriers to entry to engaging with Effective Altruism! If you think you'll find value in connecting with folks in the community, you absolutely should. In addition to this Forum, there are plenty of other spaces, e.g. EAG(x) events you can attend, or slack channels you can join.
Hi Stephanie,
Thanks for writing in. It's great that you're thinking of using your career to help AI go well, and have been building skills and applying for roles to that end.
I'm sorry to hear you've been struggling with landing a role. Here are some ideas:
Hope this helps! All the best.
Quick thoughts:
PSA: If you're doing evals things, every now and then you should look back at OpenPhil's page on capabilities evals to check against their desiderata and questions in sections 2.1-2.2, 3.1-3.4, 4.1-4.3 as a way to critically appraise the work you're doing.