Congrats on the new role! I appreciate you sharing this here.
If you’re able to share more, I’d be curious to learn more about your uncertainties about the transition. Based on your current understanding, what are the main benefits you’re hoping to get at Anthropic? In February/March, what are the key areas you’ll be reflecting on when you decide whether to stay at Anthropic or come back to Redwood?
Obviously, your February/March write-up will not necessarily conform to these “pre-registered” considerations. But nonetheless, I think pre-registering some considerations or uncertainties in advance could be a useful exercise (and I would certainly find it interesting!)
The main consideration is whether I will have better and/or higher impact safety research there (at Anthropic I will have a different research environment, with other research styles, perspectives, and opportunities, which I may find better). I will also consider indirect impact (e.g. I might be indirectly helping Anthropic instead of another organization gain influence, unclear sign) and personal (non-financial) stuff. I’m not very comfortable sharing more at the moment, but I have a big Google doc that I have shared with some people I trust.
Makes sense— I think the thing I’m trying to point at is “what do you think better safety research actually looks like?”
I suspect there’s some risk that, absent some sort of pre-registrarion, your definition of “good safety research” ends up gradually drifting to be more compatible with the kind of research Anthropic does.
Of course, not all of this will be a bad thing— hopefully you will genuinely learn some new things that change your opinion of what “good research” is.
But the nice thing about pre-registration is that you can be more confident that belief changes are stemming from a deliberate or at least self-aware process, as opposed to some sort of “maybe I thought this all along//i didn’t really know what i believed before I joined” vibe. (and perhaps this is sufficiently covered in your doc)
Congrats on the new role! I appreciate you sharing this here.
If you’re able to share more, I’d be curious to learn more about your uncertainties about the transition. Based on your current understanding, what are the main benefits you’re hoping to get at Anthropic? In February/March, what are the key areas you’ll be reflecting on when you decide whether to stay at Anthropic or come back to Redwood?
Obviously, your February/March write-up will not necessarily conform to these “pre-registered” considerations. But nonetheless, I think pre-registering some considerations or uncertainties in advance could be a useful exercise (and I would certainly find it interesting!)
The main consideration is whether I will have better and/or higher impact safety research there (at Anthropic I will have a different research environment, with other research styles, perspectives, and opportunities, which I may find better). I will also consider indirect impact (e.g. I might be indirectly helping Anthropic instead of another organization gain influence, unclear sign) and personal (non-financial) stuff. I’m not very comfortable sharing more at the moment, but I have a big Google doc that I have shared with some people I trust.
Makes sense— I think the thing I’m trying to point at is “what do you think better safety research actually looks like?”
I suspect there’s some risk that, absent some sort of pre-registrarion, your definition of “good safety research” ends up gradually drifting to be more compatible with the kind of research Anthropic does.
Of course, not all of this will be a bad thing— hopefully you will genuinely learn some new things that change your opinion of what “good research” is.
But the nice thing about pre-registration is that you can be more confident that belief changes are stemming from a deliberate or at least self-aware process, as opposed to some sort of “maybe I thought this all along//i didn’t really know what i believed before I joined” vibe. (and perhaps this is sufficiently covered in your doc)