As a self-taught programmer who’s dabbled in ML, but has only done front and back-end web work: it’s been pretty frustrating trying to find a way to work on ML or AI safety the last four years. I think some of the very recent developments like RR’s ML boot camp are promising on this front, but I’m pretty surprised that Redwood was surprised they would get 500 applications. We’ve been telling people explicitly “this is an emergency” for years now, but tacitly “but you can’t do anything about it unless you’re a 99th percentile programmer and also positioned in the right place at the right time to apply and live in the bay area.” Or, that’s how it’s felt to me.
I wonder if some subset of the people who weren’t accepted to the Redwood thing could organise a remote self-taught version. They note that “the curriculum emphasises collaborative problem solving and pair programming”, so I think that the supervision Redwood provides would be helpful but not crucial. Probably the biggest bottleneck here would be someone stepping up to organise it (assuming Redwood would be happy to share their curriculum for this version).
I agree that this would be helpful if Redwood shares their curriculum. If someone is willing to take up lead organizing, I’d be happy to help out as much as I can (and I suspect this would be true for a non-insignificant number of people who applied to the thing). I’d do it myself, but I expect not to have the free time to commit to that and do it right in the next few months.
Same here (Not sure yet if I get accepted to AISC though). But I would be happy with helping or co-organizing something like Richard_Ngo suggested. (Although I’ve never organized something like that before) Maybe a virtual version in (Continental?) Europe, if there are enough people
Maybe, we could also send out an invitation to all the people who got rejected to join a Slack channel. (I could set that up, if necessary. Since I don’t have the emails, though, someone would need to send the invitations). There, based on the curriculum, people could form self-study groups on their own with others close-by (or remotely) and talk about difficulties, bugs, etc. Maybe, even the people who got not rejected could join the slack and help to answer questions (if they like and have time, of course)?
I’ve created a discord for the people interested in organizing / collaborating / self-study: https://discord.gg/Ckj4BKUChr People could start with the brief curriculum published in this document, until a full curriculum might be available :)
From Redwood’s application update (rejecting those who didn’t make the cut):
We had many more applicants than I expected, and even though we expanded the program to have space for 30 participants instead of 20, we aren’t able to accept that many of our 500 applicants, including many applicants who seem very promising and competent. I am sad that we don’t have space for more people.
As a self-taught programmer who’s dabbled in ML, but has only done front and back-end web work: it’s been pretty frustrating trying to find a way to work on ML or AI safety the last four years. I think some of the very recent developments like RR’s ML boot camp are promising on this front, but I’m pretty surprised that Redwood was surprised they would get 500 applications. We’ve been telling people explicitly “this is an emergency” for years now, but tacitly “but you can’t do anything about it unless you’re a 99th percentile programmer and also positioned in the right place at the right time to apply and live in the bay area.” Or, that’s how it’s felt to me.
I wonder if some subset of the people who weren’t accepted to the Redwood thing could organise a remote self-taught version. They note that “the curriculum emphasises collaborative problem solving and pair programming”, so I think that the supervision Redwood provides would be helpful but not crucial. Probably the biggest bottleneck here would be someone stepping up to organise it (assuming Redwood would be happy to share their curriculum for this version).
I agree that this would be helpful if Redwood shares their curriculum. If someone is willing to take up lead organizing, I’d be happy to help out as much as I can (and I suspect this would be true for a non-insignificant number of people who applied to the thing). I’d do it myself, but I expect not to have the free time to commit to that and do it right in the next few months.
Same here (Not sure yet if I get accepted to AISC though). But I would be happy with helping or co-organizing something like Richard_Ngo suggested. (Although I’ve never organized something like that before) Maybe a virtual version in (Continental?) Europe, if there are enough people
Maybe, we could also send out an invitation to all the people who got rejected to join a Slack channel. (I could set that up, if necessary. Since I don’t have the emails, though, someone would need to send the invitations). There, based on the curriculum, people could form self-study groups on their own with others close-by (or remotely) and talk about difficulties, bugs, etc. Maybe, even the people who got not rejected could join the slack and help to answer questions (if they like and have time, of course)?
I’ve created a discord for the people interested in organizing / collaborating / self-study: https://discord.gg/Ckj4BKUChr People could start with the brief curriculum published in this document, until a full curriculum might be available :)
FYI That invite link has now expired!
Should work again :)
I’m curious what this is referring to—was there public communication to that effect?
From Redwood’s application update (rejecting those who didn’t make the cut):
Oh, I misread, I thought they would have been surprised to get 500 applicants for an open job position.
Sorry, but what is RR?
Redwood research