Thanks for adding your thoughts! I agree, it would have made sense to become an ML engineer just somewhere. I don’t remember why I dismissed that possibility at the time. NB: If I had not dismissed it, I would still have needed to get my head set straight about the job requirements, by talking to an engineer or researcher at a company. Daniel Ziegler described a good way of doing this on the 80,000 Hours Podcast, which is summarized in ML engineering for AI safety & robustness: a Google Brain engineer’s guide to entering the field. Danny Hernandez expanded on that in a useful way in Danny Hernandez on forecasting and the drivers of AI progress.
After I left AI alignment, I thought about spending three months polishing my ML skills, then applying for ML engineering jobs, so that I could return to AI alignment later. – Exactly what you’re suggesting, only four years late. :-) – But given the Covid chaos and my income risk aversion, I decided to stick to my guns and get a software engineering job as soon as possible. Luckily, I ended up with a high-impact one, although on in x-risk.
Final note on why I think it was bad for me to try to get hired: It used to take me up to a week to get out an application, which distracted mightily from research work.
Thanks for adding your thoughts! I agree, it would have made sense to become an ML engineer just somewhere. I don’t remember why I dismissed that possibility at the time. NB: If I had not dismissed it, I would still have needed to get my head set straight about the job requirements, by talking to an engineer or researcher at a company. Daniel Ziegler described a good way of doing this on the 80,000 Hours Podcast, which is summarized in ML engineering for AI safety & robustness: a Google Brain engineer’s guide to entering the field. Danny Hernandez expanded on that in a useful way in Danny Hernandez on forecasting and the drivers of AI progress.
After I left AI alignment, I thought about spending three months polishing my ML skills, then applying for ML engineering jobs, so that I could return to AI alignment later. – Exactly what you’re suggesting, only four years late. :-) – But given the Covid chaos and my income risk aversion, I decided to stick to my guns and get a software engineering job as soon as possible. Luckily, I ended up with a high-impact one, although on in x-risk.
Final note on why I think it was bad for me to try to get hired: It used to take me up to a week to get out an application, which distracted mightily from research work.