Yonatan Cale's Shortform

post by Yonatan Cale (yonatan-cale-1) · 2022-04-02T22:20:47.184Z · LW · GW · 6 comments

Contents

7 comments

6 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by Yonatan Cale (yonatan-cale-1) · 2022-04-02T22:20:47.526Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Posts I want to write (most of them already have drafts) :

(how do I prioritize? do you want to user-test [LW · GW] any of them?)

  1. Hiring posts
    1. For lesswrong
    2. For Metaculus
  2. Startups
    1. Do you want to start an EA software startup? A few things to probably avoid [I hate writing generic advice like this but it seems to be a reoccurring question]
    2. Announce "EA CTOs" plus maybe a few similar peer groups
  3. Against generic advice - why I'm so strongly against questions like "what should I know if I want to start a startup" [this will be really hard to write but is really close to my heart]. Related:
  4. How to find mentoring for a startup/project (much better than reading generic advice!!!)
  5. "Software Engineers: How to have impact?" - meant to mostly replace the 80k software career review, will probably be co-authored with 80k
  6. My side project: Finding the most impactful tech companies in Israel
  7. Common questions and answers with software developers
    1. How to negotiate for salary (TL;DR: If you don't have an offer from another company, you're playing hard mode.  All the other people giving salary-negotiation advice seem to be ignoring this)
    2. How to build skill in the long term
    3. How to conduct a job search
      1. When focusing on 1-2 companies, like "only Google or OpenAI"
      2. When there are a lot of options
    4. How to compare the companies I'm interviewing for?
    5. Not sure what you are looking for in a job?
    6. I'm not enjoying software development, is it for me? [uncertain I can write this well as text]
    7. So many things to learn, where to start?
    8. I want to develop faster / I want to be a 10x developer / Should I learn speed typing? (TL;DR: No)
    9. Q: I have a super hard bug that is taking me too long panic!
  8. Goodheart Meta: Is posting this week a good idea at all? If more stuff is posted, will less people read my own posts?

How can you help me:

TL;DR: Help me find what there is demand for

Comment / DM / upvote people's comments

Thx!

Replies from: TLW
↑ comment by TLW · 2022-04-03T02:55:54.098Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Common questions and answers with software developers

How to decide when to move on from a job.

comment by Yonatan Cale (yonatan-cale-1) · 2022-05-22T10:38:29.236Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Is this an AGI risk?

A company that makes CPUs that run very quickly but don't do matrix multiplication or other things that are important for neural networks.

Context: I know people who work there

Replies from: GeneSmith
↑ comment by GeneSmith · 2022-05-23T01:49:35.894Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Perhaps, but I'd guess only in a rather indirect way. If there's some manufacturing process that the company invests in improving in order to make their chips, and that manufacturing process happens to be useful for matrix multiplication, then yes, that could contribute.

But it's worth noting how many things would be considered AGI risks by such a standard; basically the entire supply chain for computers, and anyone who works for or with top labs; the landlords that rent office space to DeepMind, the city workers that keep the lights on and the water running for such orgs (and their suppliers), etc.

I wouldn't worry your friends too much about it unless they are contributing very directly to something that has a clear path to improving AI.

Replies from: yonatan-cale-1
↑ comment by Yonatan Cale (yonatan-cale-1) · 2022-05-29T12:07:20.488Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks

 

May I ask why you think AGI won't contain an important computationally-constrained component which is not a neural network?

Is it because right now neural networks seem to be the most useful thing? (This does not feel reassuring, but I'd be happy for help making sense of it)

Replies from: GeneSmith
↑ comment by GeneSmith · 2022-05-29T21:55:06.565Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Metaculus has a question about whether the first AGI will be based on deep learning. The crowd estimate right now is at 85%.

I interpret that to mean that improvements to neural networks (particulary on the hardware side) are most likely to drive progress towards AGI.