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Comment by Jason Maskell (jason-maskell) on AGI Safety FAQ / all-dumb-questions-allowed thread · 2022-06-15T07:00:43.815Z · LW · GW

Thanks, that's a super helpful reading list and a hell of a deep rabbit hole. Cheers.

I'm currently skilling up my rusty ML skills and will start looking in earnest in the next couple of months for new employment in this field. Thanks for the job board link as well.

Comment by Jason Maskell (jason-maskell) on AGI Safety FAQ / all-dumb-questions-allowed thread · 2022-06-10T15:30:02.994Z · LW · GW

Is that true for Redwood? They've got a timed technical screen before application, and their interview involves live coding with Python and ML libraries.

Comment by Jason Maskell (jason-maskell) on AGI Safety FAQ / all-dumb-questions-allowed thread · 2022-06-10T15:18:47.567Z · LW · GW

Fair warning, this question is a bit redundant.

I'm a greybeard engineer  (30+ YOE) working in games. For many years now, I've wanted to transition to working in AGI as I'm one of those starry-eyed optimists that thinks we might survive the Singularity. 

Well I should say I used to, and then I read AGI Ruin. Now I feel like if I want my kids to have a planet that's not made of Computronium I should probably get involved. (Yes, I know the kids would be Computronium as well.)

So a couple practical questions: 

What can I read/look at to skill up with "alignment." What little I've read says it's basically impossible, so what's the state of the art? That "Death With Dignity" post says that nobody has even tried. I want to try.

What dark horse AI/Alignment-focused companies are out there and would be willing to hire an outsider engineer? I'm not making FAANG money (Games-industry peasant living in the EU), so that's not the same barrier it would be if I was some Facebook E7 or something. (I've read the FAANG engineer's post and have applied at Anthropic so far, although I consider that probably a hard sell).

Is there anything happening in OSS with alignment research?

I want to pitch in, and I'd prefer to be paid for doing it but I'd be willing to contribute in other ways.