I really appreciate this sort of post; I’m not looking to hire anyone myself (I couldn’t afford to even if I wanted), but it’s still helpful to know what sort of skillsets people in this community have. Thanks for posting this here!
What do you want to spend most of your time on? What do you think would be the most useful things to spend most of your time on (from a longtermist standpoint)?
The Immotouch bracelets look like a really good idea and business model — I am considering ordering one to use to stop my nail biting habit. Have you considered replicating this functionality as an app for an existing wearable, e.g. an Apple Watch? I can definitely see that as being a profitable app that would make the world a better place. Selling your own single-purpose wearable is likely harder.
We tried putting it on an Apple Watch years ago but to get the app to work we had to enable fitness mode and that killed the battery too fast to be useful.
Makes sense — I wonder if they’ve gotten better at it, or if there is alternative hardware that allows sufficient streaming accelerometer data to be useful to you instead.
I don’t think it’s a hardware issue per se. The problem was along the lines of “if you want to run software around the clock then we require a complete application to run and that application has a bunch of baggage which wears down the battery”.
Apple Watch might have improved in the years since we tried.
There’s a certain baseline amount of money I need to fund my personal life. $500k per year is much more money than I need for my own expenses (though there’s no limit to how much money I could throw at scalable altruistic projects).
Interested in how you would go about throwing money at scalable altruistic projects. There is a lot of money and ideas around in EA, but a relative shortage of founders, I think.
That’s what I hear, but I don’t have connections to EA. People keep saying there’s lots of money and too few founders but I don’t know where to start. As a founder, how do I got about acquiring funding?
Interested in how you would go about throwing money at scalable altruistic projects.
The biggest change I’d make if I had money is I’d hire people to write software. In particular, I’d hire an engineer to write the firmware of my food-tracking bracelet. Last time, I did most of the firmware myself (not just the data science).
A system of meta=ML Lisp macros that, if extended properly, might help provide an automated system for extrapolating the rough behavior of ML algorithms.
I know you’ve probably aware of this, but have you considered applying for 80,000 hours coaching? They’re talking to a lot more people these days.
Nope! It’s worth a shot.
I don’t know how good of a fit you would be, but have you considered applying to Redwood Research?
Or other AI alignment organizations like Anthropic, the Fund for Alignment Research, or Aligned AI.
I really appreciate this sort of post; I’m not looking to hire anyone myself (I couldn’t afford to even if I wanted), but it’s still helpful to know what sort of skillsets people in this community have. Thanks for posting this here!
What do you want to spend most of your time on? What do you think would be the most useful things to spend most of your time on (from a longtermist standpoint)?
I think the most important thing for me to spend my time on is AI Alignment. I have PM’d you a link to a proposal I could use funding on.
The Immotouch bracelets look like a really good idea and business model — I am considering ordering one to use to stop my nail biting habit. Have you considered replicating this functionality as an app for an existing wearable, e.g. an Apple Watch? I can definitely see that as being a profitable app that would make the world a better place. Selling your own single-purpose wearable is likely harder.
We tried putting it on an Apple Watch years ago but to get the app to work we had to enable fitness mode and that killed the battery too fast to be useful.
Makes sense — I wonder if they’ve gotten better at it, or if there is alternative hardware that allows sufficient streaming accelerometer data to be useful to you instead.
I don’t think it’s a hardware issue per se. The problem was along the lines of “if you want to run software around the clock then we require a complete application to run and that application has a bunch of baggage which wears down the battery”.
Apple Watch might have improved in the years since we tried.
What is your price for purely mercenary work? $1million a year in expectation? $500k+ a year guaranteed?
Note: I cannot hire anyone except for maybe an hour before I run out of money. So this is purely hypothetical.
There’s a certain baseline amount of money I need to fund my personal life. $500k per year is much more money than I need for my own expenses (though there’s no limit to how much money I could throw at scalable altruistic projects).
Interested in how you would go about throwing money at scalable altruistic projects. There is a lot of money and ideas around in EA, but a relative shortage of founders, I think.
That’s what I hear, but I don’t have connections to EA. People keep saying there’s lots of money and too few founders but I don’t know where to start. As a founder, how do I got about acquiring funding?
The biggest change I’d make if I had money is I’d hire people to write software. In particular, I’d hire an engineer to write the firmware of my food-tracking bracelet. Last time, I did most of the firmware myself (not just the data science).
With the rise of effective appetite suppressants, has this lowered your enthusiasm for the bracelet?
What is the machine learning project that might be of use in AI Alignment?
A system of meta=ML Lisp macros that, if extended properly, might help provide an automated system for extrapolating the rough behavior of ML algorithms.