Is there a way “regular” people can “help”? I’m a serial entrepreneur in my late 30s. I went through 80000 hours and they told me they would not coach me as my profile was not interesting. This was back in 2018 though.
You may want to consider booking a call with AI Safety Support. I also recommend applying for the next iteration of the AGI safety fundamentals course or more generally just improving your knowledge of the issue even if you don’t know what you’re going to do yet.
Just brainstorming a few ways to contribute, assuming “regular” means “non-technical”:
Can you work at a non-technical role at an org that works in this space?
Can you identify a gap in the existing orgs which would benefit from someone (e.g. you) founding a new org?
Can you identify a need that AI safety researchers have, then start a company to fill that need? Bonus points if this doesn’t accelerate capabilities research.
Can you work on AI governance? My expectation is that coordination to avoid developing AGI is going to be really hard, but not impossible.
More generally, if you really want to go this route I’d suggest trying to form an inside view of (1) the AI safety space and (2) a theory for how you can make positive change in that space.
On the other hand, it is totally fine to work on other things. I’m not sure I would endorse moving from a job that’s a great personal fit to something that’s a much worse fit in AI safety.
Easy answers: You are probably over qualified (which is great!) for all sorts of important roles in EA, for example you could help the CEA or Lesswrong team, maybe as a manager?
If your domain is around software, I invite you to talk to me directly. But if you’re interested in AI direct work, 80k and AI Safety Support will probably have better ideas than me
Is there a way “regular” people can “help”? I’m a serial entrepreneur in my late 30s. I went through 80000 hours and they told me they would not coach me as my profile was not interesting. This was back in 2018 though.
I believe 80000 hours has a lot more coaching capacity now, it might be worth asking again!
Seconding this. There was a time when you couldn’t even get on the waitlist.
Will do. Merci!
You may want to consider booking a call with AI Safety Support. I also recommend applying for the next iteration of the AGI safety fundamentals course or more generally just improving your knowledge of the issue even if you don’t know what you’re going to do yet.
Just brainstorming a few ways to contribute, assuming “regular” means “non-technical”:
Can you work at a non-technical role at an org that works in this space?
Can you identify a gap in the existing orgs which would benefit from someone (e.g. you) founding a new org?
Can you identify a need that AI safety researchers have, then start a company to fill that need? Bonus points if this doesn’t accelerate capabilities research.
Can you work on AI governance? My expectation is that coordination to avoid developing AGI is going to be really hard, but not impossible.
More generally, if you really want to go this route I’d suggest trying to form an inside view of (1) the AI safety space and (2) a theory for how you can make positive change in that space.
On the other hand, it is totally fine to work on other things. I’m not sure I would endorse moving from a job that’s a great personal fit to something that’s a much worse fit in AI safety.
Easy answers: You are probably over qualified (which is great!) for all sorts of important roles in EA, for example you could help the CEA or Lesswrong team, maybe as a manager?
If your domain is around software, I invite you to talk to me directly. But if you’re interested in AI direct work, 80k and AI Safety Support will probably have better ideas than me
We should talk! I have a bunch of alignment related projects on the go, and at least two that I’d like to start are somewhat bottlenecked on entrepreneurs, plus some of the currently in motion ones might be assistable.
Also, sad to hear that 80k is discouraging people in this reference class.
(seconding talk to AI Safety Support and the other suggestions)
booked a call!