Maybe at Google or some other corporation you’d have a more pleasant time, because many employees view it as “just putting food on the table”, which stabilizes things. It has some bureaucratic and Machiavellian stuff for sure, but to me it feels less psychologically pressuring than having everything be about the mission all the time.
Just for disclosure, I was a MIRI research associate for a short time, long ago, remotely, and the experience mostly just passed me by. I only remember lots of email threads about AI strategy, nothing about psychology. There was some talk about having secret research, but when joining I said that I wouldn’t work on anything secret, so all my math / decision theory stuff is public on LW.
Maybe at Google or some other corporation you’d have a more pleasant time, because many employees view it as “just putting food on the table”, which stabilizes things. It has some bureaucratic and Machiavellian stuff for sure, but to me it feels less psychologically pressuring than having everything be about the mission all the time.
Just for disclosure, I was a MIRI research associate for a short time, long ago, remotely, and the experience mostly just passed me by. I only remember lots of email threads about AI strategy, nothing about psychology. There was some talk about having secret research, but when joining I said that I wouldn’t work on anything secret, so all my math / decision theory stuff is public on LW.