AI Safety is important - yes, but you don't have to pivot. Maybe you just don't have a horse in that race. 

War makes me sad. The war in Russia-Ukraine. The war in Israel-Palestine. People impoverished and holding the butt of decisions they had no say in due to politics & power. 

I really cannot do anything about this. I can vote for officials who care about peace and would advocate for that! But I cannot put Putin & Zelensky in the same room and make them: 

I talk to individuals from various career paths who have fear about AI for various reasons and feel pressured to pivot, but I dont think it makes sense to advise everyone to simply pivot, especially if there is not a role for them to land. 

If you're a nurse and enjoy nursing, please stay and help your patients. If you're a teacher and enjoy teaching, please stay and enrich the lives of children. If you're a PhD in pharmaceutics, please stay and help the creation of medicine to address ailments. 

I like this! thinking, I also like:

• give others the benefit of the doubt (This is Water by DFW)
• apologize + forgive (virtues)
• don't do bitterness + resentment + self-pity - keep it to the minimum (bad energy that creates more bad)
• Call your grandparents - it takes 10 min of your day and makes them 100x happy

for donate 1%, any chance you would like to link https://1fortheworld.org/ ? 

I’m really excited to see your findings! I find your observations and experiences of the Bay Area AI safety scene to be accurate and appropriately nuanced. 

MATS has had a dedicated Community team since the start to manage the concerns you raise (?) would be cool if that were integrated into your study as a factor. 

Mox tries to lean more into vibes for programming and the fact that we are all a full person besides AI Safety #shamelessplug but maybe we’d get more funding if we didn’t (?) 🙃

Hell yeah! I loved seeing the Generators around our Bay Area community. It looks like a high concentration of individuals in an area lead to massive initiatives - who knew? 

One point of feedback: Maybe this is intentional, but I want to encourage greater specificity on the people you are most excited about with this program - it still feels like quite a broad umbrella and I'm struggling to identify specific community members to encourage to apply w/ high likelihood of acceptance. I'm seeing that your Generators tend to skew junior and most definitely high potential (stellar schools, high conviction, cracked & smart :) so this might be the archetype. 

While we're requesting things, I'd like explainers to send to specific audiences. Explainers that are more than informative, but also to influence cause prioritization/political priorities relative to others

1. Why AIS is more important than...
   1. climate change - I'm seeing just a ton of political salience from progressive-people-who-generally-care-about-good towards climate change/climate activism over AIS. (re: flood in nepal, indian farmers impacted, etc.)
2. for parents: https://www.parentsforsafeai.org/ - woot! @Simon Newstead 🔸 

3. for Christians: woot @Shon Pan https://projectimagodei.org/

    

“We want lab employees to show up”

Can someone explain to me the over-blown importance of lab employees? That we need them to show up to our events or community or snag a conversation with them at an EAG = some sort of impact. (I.e I speculate lab employees showing up to EA SF would mean we get more funding or something) 

My understanding is that many employees who would show up are already AIS-pilled and doing their best. What more do you want from them? To leave, to unionize, to influence them in some way? 

I’m sure I’m missing something here 🤷‍♀️ 

tangentially related, but linked you out on a meetup idea for EA SF :) https://luma.com/2vekrkaz

+ hiya @Jonathan Claybrough 

Re: "the shape of fieldbuilding for SF might be particularly different"

• might poke @gergo for his thoughts here 

Thank you for writing this and pardon my tremendous delay in responding!

Some takes I get from this (+ my response):

• Invest more into diffusion of knowledge (quantity) over quality (1:1)
  • Contrasts w/ David Nash (former EA UK) advice
• Consider SF's uniqueness - not rinse & repeat normal CB
  • im seeing austin's response to this also
• AIS vs EA balance is tricky - i havent read the McAskill post (yet?)
  • there is significantly more demand for AIS programming
  • but also right now, its hard to break into AIS w/o EA context
  • BlueDot & Mox fulfill some AIS field-building already. I consider separation of roles as BD/Mox able to be flashier/attract speakers/more resources & EA SF to be more scrappy - like a club, meetup, touchpoint.
• an inference: to reach the masses vs strengthen existing EA ecosystem
  • i agree, but personally, unenthused. EA Chicago's friendly neighborhoodyness was my only community in a new city and my starting point for becoming invested into EA.
  • i am philosophically more motivated by NEST > 80k-ness
  • also, super EAs already live in group houses or know each other well anywho
  • in an ideal world, I would have a co-organizer to do all the professionalism events + ais workshops and i could proceed with vibey ones. 

I am a bottleneck and I wonder if EA SF needs a proper proper organizer to take this to the next level. 

Current rough EA SF offerings has been:

• 1-1 AIS Coaching calls (high demand ~40+/mo)
• 1-1 EA SF calls (slim ~5/month)
• bi-weekly informal events
• community slack
• our newsletter/luma calendar has ~800 people
  • event dist tends to be 20% high context 40% low context, 40% middle or mainly ais
• [dormantish] coffee chats - member matching (not by ai, by me) 

Previously, we've done a career fair & hackathon. Now, co-supporting https://thebigtent.ai/ - mega-conference for intro AIS.