Great post, thanks for sharing!

Furthermore, it is probably a non-sum zero game, and more efforts on MA might not come at the expense of AI safety money.

Agreed. As far as I know, Polaris Ventures is interested in the s-risk space but not fund more "traditional" AI Safety work.

Hey Egg, thanks for your comment! Here are my thoughts:

but far more often than that I point new people to the BlueDot curriculum. I commonly see others doing the same; I think it's become the default AIS 101 reading. Maybe you're mistaking that for people pushing the BlueDot course on everyone new to the field?

This totally makes sense, I do the same, though I think if people have the opportunity to take a "live" course that is more beneficial. What this post aims to respond to is the notion that, given that Bluedot exists as an organisation, people conclude that there is no need to start local fieldbuilding initiatives (something I come across quite often). Hope that clarifies!

AI safety (other than governance) isn't at all a local problem, and so there's no particular reason to focus on local groups.

Agreed! However, looking at the many benefits that such initiatives provide (some of which you mentioned, and the others I outline in the post) I think it is justified to run them.

[on AIS being management constrained] That's not obvious to me; I do think there are constraints there but my sense is that the field is currently mainly bottlenecked by funding (1, 2)

I could concede that the main bottleneck is funding right now. My current guess on funding gaps is that up until now, it was possible to get a small "moonshot" grant from LTFF relatively easily (this might change now that they pivoted to doing funding rounds), but then projects will fail to maintain funding once they need over 100k USD. For orgs that can fundraise from OP, money is less of an issue.

Why are they more likely to give AIS the benefit of the doubt? Won't that be most likely to happen if their exposure is to the highest-quality course they have access to?

What I mean here is that if you are introduced to a local AIS community through a friend who is also part of that group, you are more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt even if the course is not run as professionally as Bluedot's. Compared to such a person, I expect it's better for an experienced professional to take Bluedot's course instead of one organised by university students or fresh graduates. The quality of materials is important in either case!

Sorry for the late reply, Shafira! We would be excited for you to join the project with your group, if you end up organising one! In terms of target audiences, having a mixed group has its pros and cons. On one hand, people get to hear more perspectives. On the other hand, when people have the same levels of career experience, they might be more likely to keep in touch after the course to support each other as they have more in common!

Sorry for the late reply, Vasco! I have recently published a post called "Why not just send people to Bluedot". The post is more focused on AI Safety, but its arguments largely apply to EA as well.

I definitely agree that quality is more important than quantity; perhaps I could have made that clearer. My point is that with marketing, you can get a lot of talented people. If you are running a general course, you probably couldn't only attract people who are in the 99th percentile, but you will get some, which makes the whole endeavour worth it (you can also try your best to filter out less promising people depending on your bar and ability to take participants)

Gotcha! One bit of feedback I have is that unless you expect to fill all spots easily, it might be easier to get a sense of the number of people interested if you put out a deadline. You can still extend it or just turn to rolling applications afterward. My experience is that people otherwise just like to wait until the last moment (most applications come at the same day as the deadline, at least for courses I ran)

thanks for the reminder :)

What is the deadline to apply? :)

Thanks for the update!

Where does this overall leave you in terms of your public association with EA? Many orgs (including ones that are not just focused on AIS) are trying to dissociate themselves from the EA brand due to reputational reasons.

80k is arguably the one org that has the largest audience from the "outside world", while also having close ties with the EA community. Are you guys going to keep the status quo?

I will add my two cents on this in this footnote^[1] too, but I would be super curious to hear your thoughts!

1. ^{^}

   I think in the short term association with EA is not helpful for anyone that is trying to be taken seriously on the world stage, but it also comes with downsides. We would probably want to see if the "short timelines AGI" bet pays off by 2030 or so. If it doesn't, the costs will start to outweigh the short-term gains. (In the meantime we should also invest more into EA PR)

   At the same time, by 2030 AIS might also grow enough to not be reliant on EA in terms of funding and talent.