Talk to me about your summer/career plans

post by Akash (akash-wasil) · 2023-01-31T18:29:23.351Z · LW · GW · 3 comments

Contents

  Background
  What I can do
  What to do if you're interested
  Who should do this?
None
3 comments

Last May, I wrote a post called talk to me about your summer plans [EA · GW]. I was impressed by the number & quality of people who reached out. Some people found it helpful, so I'm doing it again. 

TLDR: Please reach out to me if you are interested in learning about summer opportunities or career transitions relating to AI safety. Also, feel free to share this post with people who might benefit (e.g., a researcher who was recently laid off by a tech company; a talented operations specialist who has been following the AI stuff but doesn't know what to do). You can message me on LessWrong [LW · GW] or the EA Forum [EA · GW].

Background

I often have 1:1 conversations with people who want to reduce AI x-risk. A few observations:

• Peoples' motivations often don't match up with their plans. 
• It's often hard for people to keep track of all the posted opportunities.
• It's even harder for people to keep track of all the unposted opportunities.
• Sometimes people don't realize how their skills can be useful.
• Sometimes, short conversations with me seem to lead someone to seriously consider changing how they spend their summer/career.

What I can do

If you're interested in summer opportunities or career opportunities in AI safety, please reach out to me. Specific things I can do:

• Connect you with opportunities/people that you might not know about.
• Help you consider faster or more ambitious ways to spend your summer.
• Ask questions [EA · GW] to help you consider wider action spaces [EA · GW]

Specific things I will try not to do:

• Tell you what you should do.
• Make you feel guilty if you have considerations for how to spend your time that go beyond maximizing the utility of the universe.

What to do if you're interested

Send me a message with:

• Who you are
• Your current level of knowledge/familiarity with AI safety 
• What your current plans are
• What your biggest strengths/skills are
• Miscellaneous information about your engagement with EA or your aptitudes (e.g., I completed an intro fellowship; I submitted a proposal to the ELK contest; I'm competent in operations and people management).

Please spend less than 5 minutes on this; I will ask you if I need more information.

Who should do this?

I expect I will be most helpful to people who are interested in technical AI safety, AI strategy/governance, operations/events, and outreach/field-building. I'm still happy to talk to people with other interests, though, and I'm also happy to connect them to others.

Caveats: I am not a professional career advisor, some of my advice will be wrong, you should also get advice from other people, etc. 

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