Thank you for adding that last part, “Have a sufficient financial safety net”.
Not everyone can afford to leave paid work and just do AI Safety work for free / in favour of unstable short fellowships.
It’s harsh but it’s the reality. If you have dependants (children, or other family members) or have massive student loans to pay every month, and have zero financial support from anyone else…
I’d say: still dedicate as much time as possible to your research. Like OP says- more time to actually doing the work than on applications.
But I’ve seen people get pressured into quitting their work or studies and made feel like they’re not committed enough if they don’t. When it turns out they’d be putting their entire family in financial duress if they did so.
And to those who can afford not to work for a salary: please remember to be kind and prudent. Some of us also have short timelines, but we’d like our families to have food on their plate too.
P.S.: in case it isn’t obvious, I do support the message on this post.
I would recomend thay anyone with dependents, or any other need for economic stability (e.g. lack of safety net from your family or country) should focus on erning money.
You can save up and fund yourself. Or if that takes too long, you can give what you can give 10% (or what ever works for you) to support someone else.
to be clear: this strategy is also problematic if you hope to have dependents in the future (i.e. are dating with family-starting intentions). its a selection effect on the partners you can realistically have relationships with.
Agreed! Thank you, Linda. For readers: this also goes for students who do not have support from family members or whose families have a quite precarious situation- quitting your degree may leave you with thousands in debt that you’ll still have to repay.
For undergrad students in particular, the current university system coddles. The upshot is that if someone is paying for your school and would not otherwise be paying tens of thousands of dollars a year to fund an ai safety researcher, successfully graduating is sufficiently easy that its something you should probably do while you tackle the real problems, in the same vein as continuing to brush your teeth and file taxes. Plus you get access to university compute and maybe even advice from professors.
Yeah, if you are doing e.g. a lab heavy premed chemistry degree my advice may not apply to an aspiring alignment researcher. This is absolutely me moving the goalposts, but may also be true: on the other hand, if you are picking courses with purpose, in philosophy, physics, math, probability, comp sci: theres decent odds imho that they are good uses of time in proportion to the extent that they are actually demanding your time.
Yep, for sure put your own oxygen mask on first, this field doesn’t need more people burning the last of their slack and having a bad time/losing the ability to aim properly.
This post is for people who want to help and have slack, but feel they need permission.
This is a good addition! However, I’m assuming that if the advice given in this post applies to you, you’re already using a nontrivial amount of time on applications, which you’re not getting paid for anyway.So might as well trade that time for volunteering or working on your own project. [1]
Also I should make explicit a fundamental underlying assumption I have, which is that if you do a great job as a volunteer, you’re more likely to get hired or funded [2], than if you were starting the application process from scratch.
Orgs spend significant resources in hiring people, and I’m sure many would be happy to skip the recruitment process and just hire the person they’ve already seen in action, or is already doing the job for them. I personally believe most AIS orgs act in good faith and want to pay the people who do valuable work for them if they have the financial means to do so.
Probably should be added here that if you have good reason to believe you’re likely to be accepted to a position, I wouldn’t discourage you from applying—this is definitely not the purpose of this post.
...for either a) what you’re already doing, b) a different position in the same org/project, or c) a position in another org/project because now you have relevant experience in your CV.
Thank you for adding that last part, “Have a sufficient financial safety net”.
Not everyone can afford to leave paid work and just do AI Safety work for free / in favour of unstable short fellowships.
It’s harsh but it’s the reality. If you have dependants (children, or other family members) or have massive student loans to pay every month, and have zero financial support from anyone else…
I’d say: still dedicate as much time as possible to your research. Like OP says- more time to actually doing the work than on applications.
But I’ve seen people get pressured into quitting their work or studies and made feel like they’re not committed enough if they don’t. When it turns out they’d be putting their entire family in financial duress if they did so.
And to those who can afford not to work for a salary: please remember to be kind and prudent. Some of us also have short timelines, but we’d like our families to have food on their plate too.
P.S.: in case it isn’t obvious, I do support the message on this post.
I would recomend thay anyone with dependents, or any other need for economic stability (e.g. lack of safety net from your family or country) should focus on erning money.
You can save up and fund yourself. Or if that takes too long, you can give what you can give 10% (or what ever works for you) to support someone else.
to be clear: this strategy is also problematic if you hope to have dependents in the future (i.e. are dating with family-starting intentions). its a selection effect on the partners you can realistically have relationships with.
source: pain and suffering.
Hugs!
Agreed! Thank you, Linda. For readers: this also goes for students who do not have support from family members or whose families have a quite precarious situation- quitting your degree may leave you with thousands in debt that you’ll still have to repay.
For undergrad students in particular, the current university system coddles. The upshot is that if someone is paying for your school and would not otherwise be paying tens of thousands of dollars a year to fund an ai safety researcher, successfully graduating is sufficiently easy that its something you should probably do while you tackle the real problems, in the same vein as continuing to brush your teeth and file taxes. Plus you get access to university compute and maybe even advice from professors.
No doubt true in many cases, but I would assume this to depend on exactly which country, university, degree etc. we were talking about?
Yeah, if you are doing e.g. a lab heavy premed chemistry degree my advice may not apply to an aspiring alignment researcher. This is absolutely me moving the goalposts, but may also be true: on the other hand, if you are picking courses with purpose, in philosophy, physics, math, probability, comp sci: theres decent odds imho that they are good uses of time in proportion to the extent that they are actually demanding your time.
Yep, for sure put your own oxygen mask on first, this field doesn’t need more people burning the last of their slack and having a bad time/losing the ability to aim properly.
This post is for people who want to help and have slack, but feel they need permission.
This is a good addition! However, I’m assuming that if the advice given in this post applies to you, you’re already using a nontrivial amount of time on applications, which you’re not getting paid for anyway. So might as well trade that time for volunteering or working on your own project. [1]
Also I should make explicit a fundamental underlying assumption I have, which is that if you do a great job as a volunteer, you’re more likely to get hired or funded [2], than if you were starting the application process from scratch.
Orgs spend significant resources in hiring people, and I’m sure many would be happy to skip the recruitment process and just hire the person they’ve already seen in action, or is already doing the job for them. I personally believe most AIS orgs act in good faith and want to pay the people who do valuable work for them if they have the financial means to do so.
Probably should be added here that if you have good reason to believe you’re likely to be accepted to a position, I wouldn’t discourage you from applying—this is definitely not the purpose of this post.
...for either a) what you’re already doing, b) a different position in the same org/project, or c) a position in another org/project because now you have relevant experience in your CV.