I don’t know, I’m replying here with my priors from software development.
TL;DR:
Do something that is
Mostly useful (software/ML/math/whatever are all great and there are others too, feel free to ask)
Where you have a good fit, so you’ll enjoy and be curious about your work, and not burn out from frustration or because someone told you “you must take this specific job”
Get mentorship so that you’ll learn quickly
And this will almost certainly be useful somehow.
Main things my prior is based on:
EA in general and AI Alignment specifically need lots of different “professions”. We probably don’t want everyone picking the number one profession and nobody doing anything else. We probably want each person doing whatever they’re a good fit for.
The amount we “need” is going up over time, not down, and I can imagine it going up much more, but can’t really imagine it going down (so in other words, I mostly assume whatever we need today, which is quite a lot, will also be needed in a few years. So there will be lots of good options to pick)
I don’t know, I’m replying here with my priors from software development.
TL;DR:
Do something that is
Mostly useful (software/ML/math/whatever are all great and there are others too, feel free to ask)
Where you have a good fit, so you’ll enjoy and be curious about your work, and not burn out from frustration or because someone told you “you must take this specific job”
Get mentorship so that you’ll learn quickly
And this will almost certainly be useful somehow.
Main things my prior is based on:
EA in general and AI Alignment specifically need lots of different “professions”. We probably don’t want everyone picking the number one profession and nobody doing anything else. We probably want each person doing whatever they’re a good fit for.
The amount we “need” is going up over time, not down, and I can imagine it going up much more, but can’t really imagine it going down (so in other words, I mostly assume whatever we need today, which is quite a lot, will also be needed in a few years. So there will be lots of good options to pick)