Your work may well be some small part of the most important that humanity has ever conducted in its entire existence. If alignment turns out to matter at all, which seems likely, then the modal outcomes are: incredible advances worth far more than merely trillions of dollars, or total annihilation of everything we care about.
You’ve become part of something very much larger than yourself.
Yes, your prior sacrifices pale in comparison to the resources you’ve been allocated to work on this problem. If anything the difference in scale is not nearly enough. If your work contributes 0.0001% expected payoff in reaching the better future rather than the worse one, then it is worth at least many millions.
The part that makes me more angry is that AI capability work is being funded vastly more, because most of the gains in the medium term are privatized while all of the (immense!) risk is socialized.
I appreciate the encouragement, and I do still agree with my decision to attempt a 6 month exploration to see whether I can do meaningful alignment work.
Your work may well be some small part of the most important that humanity has ever conducted in its entire existence. If alignment turns out to matter at all, which seems likely, then the modal outcomes are: incredible advances worth far more than merely trillions of dollars, or total annihilation of everything we care about.
You’ve become part of something very much larger than yourself.
Yes, your prior sacrifices pale in comparison to the resources you’ve been allocated to work on this problem. If anything the difference in scale is not nearly enough. If your work contributes 0.0001% expected payoff in reaching the better future rather than the worse one, then it is worth at least many millions.
The part that makes me more angry is that AI capability work is being funded vastly more, because most of the gains in the medium term are privatized while all of the (immense!) risk is socialized.
I appreciate the encouragement, and I do still agree with my decision to attempt a 6 month exploration to see whether I can do meaningful alignment work.