I’ve been to two EAGx events and one EAG, and the vast majority of my one on ones with junior people end up covering some subset of these questions. I’m happy to have such conversations, but hopefully this is more efficient and wide-reaching (and more than I could fit into a 30 minute conversation).

I am specifically aiming to cover advice on getting a job in empirically-leaning technical research (interp, evals, red-teaming, oversight, etc) for new or aspiring researchers without being overly specific about the field of research – I’ll try to be more agnostic than something like Neel Nanda's mechinterp quickstart guide but more specific than the wealth of career advice that already exists but that applies to ~any career. This also has some overlap with this excellent list of tips from Ethan Perez but is aimed a bit earlier in the funnel.

This advice is of course [...]

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Outline:

(01:25) Requisite skills

(01:29) What kind of general research skills do I need?

(06:40) What level of general programming skills do I need?

(09:33) What level of AI/ML experience do I need?

(10:18) Should I upskill?

(11:02) Should I do a PhD?

(11:40) Actually getting a job

(11:44) What are some concrete steps I can take?

(15:42) How can I find (and make!) job opportunities?

(16:56) Sensemaking about impact

(17:42) What is the most impactful work in AI safety?

(20:43) On how to update off of people you talk to

(22:37) Some encouragement

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 24th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kGt3ukLR924kyfn5y/so-you-want-to-work-on-technical-ai-safety

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“So you want to work on technical AI safety” by gw

LessWrong (30+ Karma)