Individual contributions to some tech breakthrough can be roughly sorted temporally in order of abstraction with the earliest exploratory contributions coming from scientist types and the final contributions (which get most of the reward) coming from research engineer types. Case examples—by the time the wright brothers were experimenting with early flyer designs the basic principles of aerodynamics had already been worked out decades earlier and the time window of influence was already long closed.
So if AGI is close (< 10 years) most all the key early exploratory theoretical work is already done—which would be things like bayesian statistics, optimization, circuit theory, key neuroscience etc. And in that case it’s probably not wise to start spinning up a new research career that won’t produce output for another 5 years, as the time window of influence closes well before the winning team actually writes their first line of code.
If AGI is immanent (< 5 years), the best strategy is perhaps to rapidly transform into more of a research engineer, and or network to relevance somehow.
Individual contributions to some tech breakthrough can be roughly sorted temporally in order of abstraction with the earliest exploratory contributions coming from scientist types and the final contributions (which get most of the reward) coming from research engineer types. Case examples—by the time the wright brothers were experimenting with early flyer designs the basic principles of aerodynamics had already been worked out decades earlier and the time window of influence was already long closed.
So if AGI is close (< 10 years) most all the key early exploratory theoretical work is already done—which would be things like bayesian statistics, optimization, circuit theory, key neuroscience etc. And in that case it’s probably not wise to start spinning up a new research career that won’t produce output for another 5 years, as the time window of influence closes well before the winning team actually writes their first line of code.
If AGI is immanent (< 5 years), the best strategy is perhaps to rapidly transform into more of a research engineer, and or network to relevance somehow.