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lukeprog comments on Request for Advice : A.I. - can I make myself useful? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Might you be able to slightly retrain so as to become an expert on medium-term and long-term biosecurity risks? Biological engineering presents serious GCR risk over the next 50 years (and of course after that, as well), and very few people are trying to think through the issues on more than a 10-year time horizon. FHI, CSER, GiveWell, and perhaps others each have a decent chance of wanting to hire people into such research positions over the next few years. (GiveWell is looking to hire a biosecurity program manager right now, but I assume you can't acquire the requisite training and background immediately.)
This is the kind of 'I-wouldn't-have-thought-of-that' answer I was hoping for.
It would require substantial retraining, but this seems like a direction I could move in by choosing the appropriate post-doc, while also doing some useful work along the way. The general class of 'using biology to ensure the future occurs' contains a lot of potentially interesting things like plant biology and research involving things like salt and pathogen tolerant crops. Looks like I have some research to do :)
Did you, by any chance, read Andre Almeida on trehalose and desiccation/salt/cold tolerance in plants? (Not that that's particularly interesting, but my impression was that it was 'solid'.) (Also, sometimes people develop salt-tolerant wheat in vitro without any research as to how its symbionts in vivo influence its performance, which should impact study reproducibility.)
The problem with being interested in biosecurity risks is that the books about witches are written by wizards, who get strange ideas around five in the morning... And it would require a synthesis of giant amounts of current research which [for a layman] looks very patchy and inconsistent; it wouldn't probably be a fulfilling occupation. Although of course this is otherwise a great idea. Perhaps if the person concentrated on a specific area, like crops or biofuels?
Research (that I've seen) is in general patchy and inconsistent. But I take your point, it might be a frustrating enterprise. I think concentrating on a specific area is almost certainly a good idea.