What this means in practice is that the “entry-level” positions are practically impossible for “entry-level” people to enter.
This problem in and of itself is extremely important to solve!
The pipeline is currently: A University group or some set of intro-level EA/AIS reading materials gets a young person excited about AI safety. The call to action is always to pursue a career in AI safety and part of the reasoning is that there are very few people currently working on the problem (it is neglected!). Then, they try to help out but their applications keep getting rejected.
I believe we should:
Be honest about AI safety job prospects.
Create new programs that find creative ways to bridge the gap in the talent pipeline described above. I believe we can do so much better than just MATS and the growing list of MATS clones.
However, I think it’s unfair to describe all the various AI safery programs as “MATS clones”. E.g. AISC is both order and quite diffrent.
But no amount of “creative ways to bridge the gap” will solve the fundamental problem, because there isn’t a gap realy. There isn’t lots of senior jobs, if we could only level up people faster. The simple fact is that there isn’t enough money.
Is money really the bottleneck? It seems to me that the distribution of senior mentors to entry-level people is more of a bottleneck. Also, funneling the right people into the right projects is a slower process than funding. Please let me know if my intuition seems to be off here.
Agree, money is technically abundant now that OP and other donors flooded the ecosystem, though well-directed money is semi scarce, and vetting/mentorship seems more bottleneck-y
This problem in and of itself is extremely important to solve!
The pipeline is currently: A University group or some set of intro-level EA/AIS reading materials gets a young person excited about AI safety. The call to action is always to pursue a career in AI safety and part of the reasoning is that there are very few people currently working on the problem (it is neglected!). Then, they try to help out but their applications keep getting rejected.
I believe we should:
Be honest about AI safety job prospects.
Create new programs that find creative ways to bridge the gap in the talent pipeline described above. I believe we can do so much better than just MATS and the growing list of MATS clones.
Definetly yes to more honestly!
However, I think it’s unfair to describe all the various AI safery programs as “MATS clones”. E.g. AISC is both order and quite diffrent.
But no amount of “creative ways to bridge the gap” will solve the fundamental problem, because there isn’t a gap realy. There isn’t lots of senior jobs, if we could only level up people faster. The simple fact is that there isn’t enough money.
Is money really the bottleneck? It seems to me that the distribution of senior mentors to entry-level people is more of a bottleneck. Also, funneling the right people into the right projects is a slower process than funding. Please let me know if my intuition seems to be off here.
Money is a bottleneck yes
Agree, money is technically abundant now that OP and other donors flooded the ecosystem, though well-directed money is semi scarce, and vetting/mentorship seems more bottleneck-y