I wonder if this is simply the result of the generally bad SWE/CS market right now. People who would otherwise be in big tech/other AI stuff, will be more inclined to do something with alignment.
This is roughly my situation. Waymo froze hiring and had layoffs while continuing to increase output expectations. As a result I/we had more work. I left in March to explore AI and landed on Mechanistic Interpretability research.
I have a similar story. I left my job at Amazon this year because there were layoffs there. Also, the release of GPT-4 in March made working on AI safety seem more urgent.
This is roughly my situation. Waymo froze hiring and had layoffs while continuing to increase output expectations. As a result I/we had more work. I left in March to explore AI and landed on Mechanistic Interpretability research.
I have a similar story. I left my job at Amazon this year because there were layoffs there. Also, the release of GPT-4 in March made working on AI safety seem more urgent.