Hi, thanks for the advice.
Do you, or other people, know why your comment is getting downvoted? Right now it’s at −5 so I have to assume the general LW audience disagrees with your advice. Presumably people think it is really hard to become a ML researcher? Or do they think we already have enough people in ML so we don’t need more?
I am interested in working on AI alignment but doubt I’m clever enough to make any meaningful contribution, so how hard is it to be able to work on AI alignment? I’m currently a high school student, so I could basically plan my whole life so that I end up a researcher or software engineer or something else. Alignment being very difficult, and very intelligent people already working on it, it seems like I would have to almost be some kind of math/computer/ML genius to help at all. I’m definitely above average, my IQ is like 121 (I know the limitations of IQ as a measurement and that it’s not that important) in school I’m pretty good at maths and other sciences but not even the best out of my class of 25. So my question is basically how clever does one have to be to be able to contribute to AGI alignment?