What is it like doing AI safety work?

post by KatWoods (ea247) · 2023-02-21T20:12:01.977Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

2 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by Evan R. Murphy · 2023-02-22T06:13:23.764Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

If anyone is looking for a way to start contributing to the field, it seems like one low-hanging fruit approach would be to:

  1. Look in this post at the "Least favorite" parts of these AI safety researchers' days
  2. See if there are any of these things that you could do for the researcher or make substantially better for them. For example, maybe someone with product manager or analyst skills could prioritize William Saunders' research ideas for him. Or someone else could handle Alex Turner's emails for him. Make sure it's something you know you can do well.
  3. Contact the researcher and offer to do it.* They might say no - nothing personal, it can be a lot to change your workflow and start working with a new person. But if they say yes then you could make a senior researcher in the field significantly more productive, and also get the opportunity to work with them and see their work up close.

(Great post btw!)

*If you're one of the researchers mentioned in the post and you'd prefer people didn't reach out to you with offers like this, that's totally cool - feel free to leave a quick reply saying so.

comment by JJ Hepburn (jj-hepburn) · 2023-02-22T01:23:54.328Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This is great! Thanks for doing this.

Would you be able to add people's titles and affiliations for some context? Possibly also links to their websites, LinkedIn or similar.