The Lab Leak Hypothesis Part 2
Feel like you buried the lede here, Zvi. If this is a lab leak (potentially a second one for covid) seems like it has huge+urgent implications for biosecurity policy and us-all-not-dying etc.
Even if covid itself turns out to be a nothingburger on the larger scale of things, if we’re this eagerly stepping on rakes, maybe we should think harder about picking up all the rakes rather than deciding to start jumping around.
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.