The “generalist” description is basically my dream job right until
>The team is in Berkeley, California, and team members must be here full-time.
Just yesterday I was talking to a friend who wants to leave his finance job to work on AI safety and one of his main hesitations is that whichever organization he joins will require him to move to the Bay. It’s one thing to leave a job, it’s another to leave a city and a community (and a working partner, and a house, and a family...)
This also seems somewhat inefficient in terms of hiring. There are many qualified AI safety researchers and Lightcone-aligned generalists in the Bay, but there are surely even more outside it. So all the Bay-based orgs are competing for the same people, all complaining about being talent-constrained above anything else. At the same time, NYC, Austin, Seattle, London, etc. are full of qualified people with nowhere to apply.
I’m actually not suggesting you should open this particular job to non-Berkeley people. I want to suggest something even more ambitious. NYC and other cities are crying out for a salary-paying organization that will do mission-aligned work and would allow people to change careers into this area without uprooting their entire lives, potentially moving on to other EA organizations later. Given that a big part of Lightcone’s mission is community building, having someone start a non-Bay office could be a huge contribution that will benefit the entire EA/Rationality ecosystem by channeling a lot of qualified people into it.
And if you decide to go that route you’ll probably need a generalist who knows people...
I’d love to build campuses in other cities around the world. There’s lots of incredible people with strong reasons to be in other places. When we talk in the team about what success looks like in the next 5-10 years, part of it is a major hub (e.g. 500 people) in the Bay, and growing hubs (200 people, 100 people, 50 people, etc) in multiple other places like the ones you mention.
You say “NYC and other cities are crying out for a salary-paying organization that will do mission-aligned work”. I will point out there’s a little chicken-and-egg problem here, in that the Bay already has several rationalist and longtermist orgs such that there’s been a good way for us to get a foothold in starting an office. In some ways there’s lots of low-hanging fruits of things to do, but in other ways it’s a real challenge to find founding teams and help them execute on a project such that they can employ people.
But it certainly isn’t a defeater, I do see paths to helping build the research and engineering projects for people to work on in these places.
And if we’re successful, and are plotting to build in NYC, I look forward to talking with you (and many of the other excellent people in NYC) about it :)
The “generalist” description is basically my dream job right until
>The team is in Berkeley, California, and team members must be here full-time.
Just yesterday I was talking to a friend who wants to leave his finance job to work on AI safety and one of his main hesitations is that whichever organization he joins will require him to move to the Bay. It’s one thing to leave a job, it’s another to leave a city and a community (and a working partner, and a house, and a family...)
This also seems somewhat inefficient in terms of hiring. There are many qualified AI safety researchers and Lightcone-aligned generalists in the Bay, but there are surely even more outside it. So all the Bay-based orgs are competing for the same people, all complaining about being talent-constrained above anything else. At the same time, NYC, Austin, Seattle, London, etc. are full of qualified people with nowhere to apply.
I’m actually not suggesting you should open this particular job to non-Berkeley people. I want to suggest something even more ambitious. NYC and other cities are crying out for a salary-paying organization that will do mission-aligned work and would allow people to change careers into this area without uprooting their entire lives, potentially moving on to other EA organizations later. Given that a big part of Lightcone’s mission is community building, having someone start a non-Bay office could be a huge contribution that will benefit the entire EA/Rationality ecosystem by channeling a lot of qualified people into it.
And if you decide to go that route you’ll probably need a generalist who knows people...
I’d love to build campuses in other cities around the world. There’s lots of incredible people with strong reasons to be in other places. When we talk in the team about what success looks like in the next 5-10 years, part of it is a major hub (e.g. 500 people) in the Bay, and growing hubs (200 people, 100 people, 50 people, etc) in multiple other places like the ones you mention.
You say “NYC and other cities are crying out for a salary-paying organization that will do mission-aligned work”. I will point out there’s a little chicken-and-egg problem here, in that the Bay already has several rationalist and longtermist orgs such that there’s been a good way for us to get a foothold in starting an office. In some ways there’s lots of low-hanging fruits of things to do, but in other ways it’s a real challenge to find founding teams and help them execute on a project such that they can employ people.
But it certainly isn’t a defeater, I do see paths to helping build the research and engineering projects for people to work on in these places.
And if we’re successful, and are plotting to build in NYC, I look forward to talking with you (and many of the other excellent people in NYC) about it :)