All of Manuel Allgaier's Comments + Replies

Great work, repost this on EA forum

I haven't yet seen this posted in the EA forum, did I miss it? If you don't plan to post it there, mind if I do? I'm sure they're interested as well. 

2Daniel Kokotajlo
Oops, yeah, forgot about that -- sure, go ahead, thank you!

I talked to one Lightcone staff a few weeks ago and they said they are not currently hiring for this role, so while the application form is technically still open, it seems not worth applying. 

I'd appreciate if the post could be updated accordingly, else people just waste time applying. 

I've been following Sam Altman's messaging for a while, and it feels like Altman does not have one consistent set of beliefs (like an ethics/safety researcher would) but tends to say different things in different times and places, depending on what seems currently most useful for achieving his goals. Many CEOs do that, but he seems to do that more than other OpenAI staff or executives at Anthropic or Deepmind. I agree with your conclusion, to pay less attention to their messaging and more to their actions. 


 

https://clay.earth  looks interesting! Are you still using it now (7 months later)? Would you still recommend it? 

FYI: The link in the first line didn't work for me ("Invalid URL: https://ai-plans.com"). This link works: https://www.ai-plans.com/

2Iknownothing
Thank you! Changed it to that!

Using ChatGPT etc gives people such an advantage in (some) jobs and is easy to use "secretly" that it seems highly unlikely that a significant amount of people would boycott it.

My guess is that at most maybe 1-10% of a population would actually adhere to a boycott, and those who do would be in a much worse position to work on AI Safety and other important matters.

What about democratically elected non-profit boards?

Most national EA organisations with paid staff (like EA France, EA Norway or EA Germany just to mention a few) are registered associations that have their board (re-)elected by its members every 1-2 years. That way board members can be fired by the association members they represent.

I don't think this is perfect, the average member often does not have enough info to judge the performance of a board member and elections have their own downsides (like sometimes favoring popular and charismatic candidates ov... (read more)

6JenniferRM
Years ago, as part of my youth that was actually well spent, I was elected to the board of a non-profit student cooperative, and "education" was broadly part of our mission, with specifically "education in self-governance" as a goal we aimed for in all resident student members, to at least some degree. Electing board members and then teaching them to be good board members was explicitly part of what was going on. I. Good Theory Seems Rare I wish I could transmit Holden's text back in time to my younger self (or maybe this one from another comment) because it would have been useful to have almost any coherent theory back then when I was theory-less and "just trying to help" perhaps using the vague idea that "showing up is 90% of success". Something in the by-laws of that co-op, which I came to admire greatly, was the idea of multiple kinds of board seats selected in various ways.  We had an 8 seat board to govern a co-op that owned 4 houses, with the smallest house (which in retrospect maybe we should have sold and bought a bigger one) having 7 bedrooms. Two of the seats were appointed by institutions the co-op wanted to stay friendly with and the "grown-ups" that these institutions sent to our institution were fantastic members, and great role models. Two seats were filled by "at large" elections, and then 1 seat each was filled by each house, to ensure universal representation. II. Some Wise, Some New? From the perspective of very wise members who came in based on their skills, their power to provide rhetorical "ballast" on the board involves noticing obviously false-or-bad proposals or ideas, and then helping people see alternatives that are better or wiser or more based in theories not ruled out by plainly visible observable. They can shape the whole discourse in deep ways simply by letting it breathe and nudging rarely. One of the tricks here is to TEACH new young board members WHILE ALSO obeying the precept "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't

In case the organiser does not update this anymore, we'll now meet on Saturday (15 January) from 1pm onwards at Baobab in Santa Cruz, Tenerife. So far seven LWers indicated interest. Feel free to join! :) 

 Address: C. Antonio Domínguez Alfonso, 30, 38003 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
Google Maps Link: https://g.page/baobab-santa-cruz?share

1George3d6
Do you mind if I make you the organizer? (I think I can) I ended up not having the time to manage this due to recent developments. Though I'd like to attend the Los Cristianos followup this weekend if it happens.

Thanks for writing this up! 

This seems really useful for aspiring rationality organisers, will forward it to those I meet. 

Thanks a lot for compiling this! This is useful - I'll forward it to some friends who are looking into ML programs right now. 

I think a lot of EA community members would be interested in this as well, but many of them may not be active on the LW forum. Maybe it's worth reposting this on the EA forum? Just this post with links to the LW posts should be enough - don't think you need to repost everything on the EA forum. In case you think it's useful but can't repost it yourself for some reason I can also do it, just let me know (though I think it's better if you repost it). 

 

1Master Programs ML/AI
Hey Manuel, sorry for the late reply! I have now reposted it at the EA forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2veWrFqMaGipFGiCM/european-master-s-programs-in-machine-learning-artificial If the link doesn't yet work, it might be since the article is still awaiting moderator approval.