The Apprentice Thread

[APPRENTICE] Advanced math or AI alignment. I'm bad at getting homework done and good at grokking things quickly, so the day-to-day should look like pair programming or tutoring.

[MENTOR] See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MHqwi8kzwaWD8wEQc/would-you-like-me-to-debug-your-math [LW · GW]. The first session has the highest leverage, but if my calendar doesn't end up booked (there is one slot in the next two weeks booked out of like 50), more time per person makes sense. My specialization is pattern-matching to correctly predict where a piece of math is going if it's good. When you science that art you get applied category theory.

[NORMAL]/[meta] Apprenticeships typically start with training but this is in exchange for continued labor from the apprentice for some period after they achieve a useful level of competency. I don't think this part has been made explicit, which means the mentors and apprentices may have different expectations. Did you imagine that this would be training only?

Training can be a significant time cost to the mentor. It's only fair that they be compensated somehow. (The apprentice is compensated with new skills.) If the mentors are simply paid with money as they go, this amounts to tutoring rather than an apprenticeship. If the compensation is some period of labor, then the amount of time and nature of the work should be agreed upon in advance, perhaps after a brief tryout period. Also, what mechanism do we have to punish defectors? The apprentice may simply cut off contact once they've achieved competency, refusing to perform any more labor. For standardized apprenticeships in a trade, they could be taken to court for breach of contract. For apprenticeships over the Internet where we're not even certain of each other's real names, this seems harder. I'm open to ideas.

Sometimes the best way to learn something is to teach it. The mentors can hone their own skills by teaching them, so mentoring an apprentice who defects is not a complete waste of time, but it's still not clear if that would be worth it. Perhaps a useful type of compensatory labor could be a period of co-learning where the apprentice helps the mentor study their skill more deeply.

Something like a mutual mentorship seems more fair. It would be an exchange where both parties teach the other a new skill. This would work really well if there's a match, but what are the chances that you know the skill your mentor wants?

An alternative system, which might work better for us, is a gift economy. The exact details can vary, but in a gift culture, you attain status by being generous, and lose status by being in someone's social debt. If you're indebted to a mentor, you can regain status by paying it forward: mentoring someone else in the community. For this to work though, we'd have to be open and public about what is happening, to bring the social pressure of the group into play.

Even this could be gamed to some degree, using sock puppets, but doing so would be somewhat costly anyway, especially if the apprentices have high karma. Maintaining the puppet might not cost quite as much as maintaining an apprentice, but it's still a cost. In this sense, your LessWrong karma can be thought of as a kind of credit rating: how much you are invested in the community, and thus subject to its social pressure. Those with new accounts (say less than 1000 karma?) have lower social costs when they default. They could simply make a new account and start over. Not sure where the cutoff should be.

We should come up with some way to compensate for this. It occurs to me that we could have them post a bond to some escrow, to be paid to the mentor if they default. But then we'd need a trusted third party and a system to judge. Another possibility is some kind of verifiable community service as a prerequisite for low-karma apprentices. Maybe you guys can think of others.

[MENTOR] I expect to be busy for the near future. However, please contact me anyways - my email is on my LW profile page.

• Doing self-study [? · GW], and doing it right, and - most importantly - having fun along the way.
• AI alignment research. I don't know how to transfer some important skills and habits I've picked up, but I can try anyways. And if you're the kind of person who'll earnestly wonder things like "can I figure out corrigibility in the next hour?" -- let's talk.

[MENTOR] Research on aligning language models. This includes developing strategies for:

• Training language models to answer questions correctly, even when we don't have access to the correct answer during training (as in my past work on training models to debate or decomposing questions into subquestions)
• Learning from human feedback (e.g., from crowdworkers or upvotes) to generate helpful/truthful text
• Evaluating how aligned language models are (e.g., by studying how well they generalize), and evaluating the effectiveness of different alignment techniques (like generating subquestions)

[MENTOR] I just finished high school last year so my primary intended audience are probably people who are still in high school. Reach out if you're interested in any of these:

• competitive physics
• applying to US colleges from outside the US and Getting Into World-Class Universities (undergrad)
• navigating high school effectively (self-study, prioritization)
• robotics (Arduino, 3D printing)
• animation in manim (the Python library by 3blue1brown) basics
• lucid dreaming basics

[APPRENTICE] Navigating college effectively (deciding what to aim for and how to balance time commitments while wasting as little time as possible). I don't know how much I should care about grades, which courses I should take, or how much I should follow the default path for someone in college. I'm aiming to maximize my positive impact on the long-term future. A message or short call with someone who has (mostly) finished college would be great!

email in bio

[MENTOR] Parenting. Pragmatics of real-life parenting (four boys, the oldest now 17, the youngest 9) from crying in the night, changing diapers to troubles at school, and conflicts of interest. Also a lot of ideas about what goes on in their brains while they develop. We write a weekly development diary and over time you spot patterns. If you want to know my style you may have a look at some of the parenting posts [? · GW] I did here (and the comments in the other posts in that category). 

UPDATE June 27, 2021: I got a lot of replies. My schedule is full and I am no longer taking mentees at the moment. However, I am still open to one-off video calls if you'd like to say hi or you'd like me to help you get started with something.

[NORMAL] What an opportunity! Kudos to Zvi for lowering the activation energy by creating this thread. You win this week's Catalyst Prize.

Here is a link to the Don't Worry About the Vase sister post for those who don't have it.

[APPRENTICE] Quantitative finance. My goal is to eventually start my own hedge fund. I have experience in mathematical modeling and I have hand-coded my own small data machine learning algorithms, but I haven't applied these skills to a financial context yet. I want to learn more about this industry but I don't want to move to New York or commit myself to working 9-5 for someone else.

[MENTOR] Writing. I am good at writing nonfiction. I got linkposted by Scott Alexander. I even helped write advertising copy that got my startup on international news. I'm not willing to be your editor (for free) but I am willing to be my editor. There are many things I want to write but don't have the time to write myself, like a sequence on Adversarial Learning Environments. My offer: I help you learn to write better on the condition you write about my ideas on the topic of my choice and then we both get our names on the post. Prerequisites: [1] Basic competence at writing. [2] The skill of translating ideas into words (legible thinking).

[MENTOR] Programming. I am a self-taught software engineer. Proper guidance could have saved me years. Prerequisites: You must be very smart and self-motivated. You must learn fast and work faster. I expect you can read an entire technical book of this difficulty in a week. What I get: software development. What you get: education, experience and a portfolio.

[MENTOR] Agency. People routinely comment on my agency and their own lack thereof. If you want someone to help guide you through savage trials of pure will then I'm your guy [LW · GW]. My expectations of you are extra high on this one. [See below.] If you fail to complete a single assignment on time then we're done. What you get: A life of your own. What I get: This is an experiment. I'm curious to what extent agency can be learned.

[MENTORSHIP EXPECTATIONS] Free mentorship offers tend to attract flakes so if you show up one minute late to a meeting then we're done. If I message you and you do not reply in a reasonable timeframe then we're done. I'm not going to be your therapist. Expect something more along the lines of a drill sergeant.

[CONSPIRACY] I believe we might be in an AI overhang and that AI alignment depends on winning the race to an AGI. Still figuring out the details on this one since it's a jungle of secrets and infohazards. More information is available here.

You can contact me via Less Wrong private message or by sending me an email.

[MENTOR] computer programming in Python. My level is pretty advanced now, but I certainly don't have everything 100% memorized. This could be a good refresher for me, but I'm pretty busy right now, so I have limited time for this.

The exact curriculum could depend on my knowledge and your interests, but, for example:

• For a total beginner, I could teach the basics of computer science along with an introduction to the language. I'd even be willing to try this for someone who thinks that they do not have the talent for it, because I'm interested in learning if one-on-one instruction can overcome this. This would require a certain level of tenacity from the apprentice. It may take some experimenting to find a method that works. I can't help you if you give up before I do.
• For someone experienced in another language, I can probably get you up to speed with Python pretty quickly, but I think it's pretty easy as programming languages go. You might not need my help.
  • I can also walk you through related things like
    • how to use version control with git
    • how to set up an editor
    • linters
    • formatters
    • python package management
    • package distribution options
    • maybe CI/CD pipelines.
  • I can introduce you to DSLs that come with Python.
    • Regular expressions
    • String formatting
    • SQLite
    • Tcl/Tkinter
• For someone who already knows Python,
  • I can show you some advanced metaprogramming tricks.
    • Decorators
    • metaclasses
    • AST manipulation
    • bytecode disassembly
    • introspection
    • lots of magic methods and their uses
    • and a few libraries that can help with these, including some that I wrote myself.
  • I can also introduce newer Python features you might not be familiar with yet, such as
    • async
    • pattern matching
    • and static type checking.
  • I can introduce you to extended Python dialects like Xonsh and IPython.

I could probably also help with certain other programming languages, but in some cases this might be co-learning rather than mentor/apprentice.

[MENTOR kind of]

Non-standard perhaps, but I think good to toss into this pool. The Monastic Academy takes on two-month apprentices (with a free bed and free vegan food). You study meditation, the Buddhadharma, fundraising, grounds work, cooking, cleaning, how to give and receive feedback, and how to be a good community member (we all live and work together). Ideal if you are bought into social collapse / climate collapse scenarios being one of the major challenges the planet faces and at least somewhat bought into the idea that the major leverage point is the mind itself (on every scale). 

Location: Lowell, VT

More info: https://www.monasticacademy.com/apprentice/ 

DM me if you want to ask me stuff. 

[MENTOR] Machine learning. I do it for work, but I'm a bit behind the frontier and this would motivate me to catch up. You should already know how to code in Python, and have taken multivariable calculus and linear algebra.

[APPRENTICE]: I am a brand new startup founder with, like, 'a few thousand' in funding. (This achieves a surprising amount in the esports industry but is not remotely enough for what I want to do.)

I am 23 and do not know remotely enough about the world to build a successful business. I am interested in fixing this. I will generally be very grateful to people who teach me things that turn out to be relevant. 

[APPRENTICE] for character development / lessons for life. Not sure what exactly I expect, but I want to create workshops about these things eventually, as my contribution to raising the sanity waterline. I still have a lot of learning to do first, so I'm asking for an opportunity to do so.

What do I mean exactly: Basic useful skills like public speaking, charisma, communication (speech & text), financial intelligence, self-, and project management, teamwork-skills, leadership, and whatever else a 'master' would have at least a basic understanding and capability of. I'd be thrilled if you can just take on a single one I mentioned, or anything else I didn't.

[MENTOR] Investing (mostly passive ETF for wealth preservation).

[MENTOR] Django, including deployment on VPS.

[MENTOR] Switching to Dvorak from QWERTY and deciding whether you should do this.

[MENTOR] Using computer in a more sustainable for your body way (wrists, eyes, back).

[MENTOR] Feeling happier (not an expert, but can point to many resources).

[APPRENTICE] I'd like to learn more about investing and finance, to the extent that finance will help me understand investing. My goal in this is primarily being able to manage my own money/investments and ultimately to be able to reach financial independence so that I can work on effective/impactful causes and donate more. I've been reading more about cryptoassets lately, but don't have strong opinions yet about where is best to point my attention in this field.

[MENTOR] I'm a self-taught programmer who's done mostly web-programming (lot of Python, Django, some FE, some JS/node). I'm potentially available for some amount of mentoring in that area.

[APPRENTICE]: I would love to be an apprentice / receive advice about bootstrapping online businesses (non-exclusive example: Software-as-a-Service). I find this much more intrinsically rewarding and interesting than mine current 'conventional' job (especial being able to focus on areas I find important and to be less driven by external incentives). Ideally I would like to boostrap myself into working full time on my side projects (that is completely replace my current source of income). 

I am a backend developer learning frontend these days (React + css frameworks). I think I already have technical skills to make and run services. My weakest area is analyzing the market and demand / finding problems to solve. Also I suspect that I might be too conservative and not trying out enough ideas or committing to ideas without seeing strong demand.

I already have users on a free product I made and even received a donation.

[APPRENTICE] Working on and thinking about major problems in neurosymbolic AI / AGI. I:

• am three months from finishing undergrad with a BS in Computers and Minds (I designed this degree to be a comprehensive AI degree). I have 1.5 years of academic research experience working with some core RL folks at my university. Considering grad schools for next fall but still unsure.
• have an academic background in:
  • AI subfields ([hierarchical] reinforcement learning (options framework), more general sequential decision-making, grounding language to behavior). Interested in re-integrating the many subfields of AI. I have submitted a first-author paper to a conference on language-assisted policy search.
  • linguistics (pragmatics, compositional semantics)
  • psychology (personality [there's plenty of insight from psychology that we have yet to integrate into AI])
  • philosophy (a few ethical dimensions of AI [I co-designed a course on the ethical dilemmas of the future of technology], philosophy of mind, epistemology)
• am additionally interested in these things, which I don't know as much about:
  • representation learning
  • planning
  • POMDPs
  • more structured MDP formalisms
• need help thinking through research topics and ideas worth pursuing.
• am looking to sharpen my focus and understanding of how AGI might work under the hood (I happen to think the most robust and intuitive route is via neurosymbolic AI).

[MENTOR] Anything I mentioned in my academic background in the apprentice section. I should have more time at the start of 2022.

[APPRENTICE] I have a bachelor's degree in Math and I want to get a job in Quantitative Finance. I don't know much about Finance, or the math that is specifically used there, though I am very confident in my math skills. I would like to get a better understanding of what the job is like and also what kinds of skills they are looking for.

[APPRENTICE]

• Book writing - I'm publishing my first technical book this year (no name publisher, they gave me a good deal) and I want to publish a fiction book next year (this one paid out of pocket) | I'd love help from anyone that's gone through the process and published a few books, especially if your starting point was blogging style articles.

• Trading - I eer on the side of Taleb here in thinking that the chances someone sharing true knowledge on the subject is low. But if anyone would like to help me with automated trading I'd be very happy to listen. My main focus is using a mix of high compte timeseries analysis for the prices plus NLP to analyze odd sources of data, with a focus on instruments popular among amateur traders, where I assume it's easier to find inefficiencies (but maybe I'm entirely wrong, that's why I'd appreciate advice)

[MENTOR]

• Remote working - if you need advice on how to find remote work, how to manage the resulting cost benefit matrix (e.g. more control over taxes, higher freedom to travel) I'd be willing to help depending on your starting point. Background/Credentials: Remote work and travel for 3 years with a low-effort and very legible 9% tax (real, including VAT, social security and such) setup

• Getting in tech as a dropout - If you're in the 17-20 age range and wish to skip the college racket and instead just work towards a low six figure job in tech. I did this, helped a few people along in doing this. But it's certainly more cost effective and simpler if you're younger and haven't invested in a diploma mill yet. Background/Credentials: I did this starting age 19, currently working in ML research, but I was mainly working in specialized programming and small team management roles before.

• Maybe self hosting and refactoring if anyone here is interested. But kinda niche areas.

[APPRENTICE] Writing good code. I have been developing on Ruby on Rails for the last five years with zero formal training. My website backend has a booking engine, email parsing, a dashboard pulling info from many APIs and can modify info on other websites without APIs (e.g. airbnb). I can code what I need but since no one has ever looked at my code I’m certain there’s a lot of bad practices in there, in spite of reading up on good practices and correcting as much as I can.

[APPRENTICE] for anything biology-related. Bonus for working in bioinformatics or simulating (metabolic) pathways. Also interested in joining some startup doing work in this area.

I'm doing a computer science master’s degree and visiting introductory biology lectures on the side, I'd love to build up on those. Additionally, I'm getting deeper in ML and simulation, and would be interested in applying it to biological data. I am currently reading a number of biology papers for creating a presentation which is to be held next month.

[NORMAL] Already posted something quite similar as a reply, but posting as a main comment to indicate broader interest as well.

[APPRENTICE] AI Alignment, Machine Learning Research

I'm an incoming new grad SWE at Google and have a degree in Statistics and Data Science, to give an idea of my background and skillset. I have a modest amount of experience with machine/deep learning, mainly through coursework and a few personal projects (taken and TAd a class on Natural Language Processing, taken a survey Deep Learning class, wrote my undergraduate thesis on applying neural networks to causal inference problems). I've read a lot of the Alignment Forum and LessWrong sequences on AI alignment (Iterated Amplification, Value Learning, etc.) and would like to move into AI capability and safety research at some point in my career.

I may not have the right background or enough experience to be a useful apprentice for you but if you'd like to get in touch, you can reach me at anshuman.radhakrishnan@gmail.com

[APPRENTICE] Any AI alignment (or related) stuff. I have an average of maybe 5-10 hours of time per week to give to something over the next ~10 months while I finish a chemistry master's degree. I have decent experience programming (a few languages as part of my degree) and some in pure maths (BMO1/2 which are high school-level national Olympiads in the UK).

I'd be interested in anything that would let me get involved with or get a feel for the field in the way just reading random papers and posting here doesn't.

Thread for comments on the article that aren't of the forms:

[MENTOR],

ETC.

[APPRENTICE]

I'm seeking improvement in hardware design, electrical engineering, signals processing, control systems and neuroscience (each somewhat sporadically but they're all connected). I learn quickly but I'm at a loss for tangible projects, so if you have any suggestions for any of those topics and/or are willing to commit some time to mentoring me in completing them, please share!

[MENTOR]

• Linux
  • I can consult on a high level if you want to get into the whole Linux/vim/Tor/lineageOS/privacy/ everything is FOSS situation with software recs (best choice for your goals, what software is susceptible to vulns, how to avoid that) and other general advice (how to set things up, potential issues)
• Information security
  • I have a lot of resources to recommend based on your goals, can give advice in learning about this field, participating in competitions, common pitfalls (have not been professionally employed in this capacity and am a hobbyist, so beginners only please)
• Basics of programming
  • I can do code review for beginners, oversee small projects, most comfortable in Python

Isn't the academic grad school basically this same model, at scale? I do not see any improvements here that are scalable.