Description du poste
I’m speaking for myself here, not for any organization, house, home, clan, club, coven, or cult I may be part of. This post is written for scientists outside the field rather than LessWrong regulars; I’m crossposting it so it’s easy to link.
The AI safety job market is a strange one. Every single organization is growing rapidly (the one I work at is planning to double in the next year), which is a fundamentally new dynamic for those of us used to the slow decline of academia. At the same time, interest in the field goes through boom after boom after boom.
We have a ton of openings and a ton of applicants. Sounds like everyone should be happy. Unfortunately, the whole process is slowed down by the fact that nobody has any idea what they’re doing.
The people doing the hiring have never hired anyone before, because a few years ago they (we) were graduate students. They all earnestly believe that half the work they do will be done by robots in a year, but have no idea what half. And although many of us consider hiring to be the #1 priority, it still has to compete with five or six other #1 priorities.
Meanwhile, the people applying for these jobs have no track record in the field, and no idea what the field even looks like because they only heard about it a month ago. While academics have advisors who have been through the hiring process and seen it play out a hundred times, lots of the people trying to get into AI safety have never met someone actually working in the field.
The purpose of this blog post is to fix everything provide some basic context if you’re looking to break into the field. This is mostly aimed at my past self, someone with a strong background in doing basic research in a heavily mathematical field, and someone with a strong interest in doing basic research in a heavily mathematical field.
This might be a long post. So just to make my opinions super obvious, here they are:
• The Alignment Research Center has the most promising agenda.• You can and sh