EA Forum Podcast (All audio‪)‬ EA Forum Team

I asked the Constellation Slack channel how the technical AIS landscape has changed since I last spent substantial time in the Bay Area (September 2023), and I figured it would be useful to post this (with the permission of the contributors to either post with or without attribution). Curious if commenters agree or would propose additional changes!
This conversation has been lightly edited to preserve anonymity.
Me: One reason I wanted to spend a few weeks in Constellation was to sort of absorb-through-osmosis how the technical AI safety landscape has evolved since I last spent substantial time here in September 2023, but it seems more productive to just ask here "how has the technical AIS landscape evolved since September 2023?" and then have conversations armed with that knowledge. The flavor of this question is like, what are the technical directions and strategies people are most excited about, do we [...]
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First published:

July 26th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zsMnxJpeiiytDrAss/how-the-ai-safety-technical-landscape-has-changed-in-the

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

The purpose of this post is to share data from a survey that the EA Forum team ran last year. Though we used this survey as one of many sources of information for internal analyses, I did not include any particular takeaways from this survey data in this post. I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Overview
In August 2023, the EA Forum team ran a survey to learn more about how people use the Forum and how the Forum impacted them. We got 609 valid responses.
Thank you to everyone who responded - we really appreciate you taking the time. The results have been important for helping us understand the ways that the Forum creates value and disvalue that are otherwise hard for us to track. We’ve used it to evaluate the impact of the Forum and the marginal impact of our work, update our team's [...]
The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
The original text contained 10 images which were described by AI.
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First published:

July 26th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6hxMxCf3zcmfjtKeK/data-from-the-2023-ea-forum-user-survey

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Some rewards and challenges of working as an EA NYC community builder over the past two years
Motivations
I wanted to share these thoughts for a few reasons:
I hope this serves as a reference point for people considering careers in EA community building (though this is only one reference point, of course). EA NYC is hiring an Executive Director! If you're interested, apply here by the end of July 28th (Eastern Time). I think there's often value in people discussing their jobs.[1] By the way, I have a few relevant disclaimers/caveats that I encourage you to check out at the bottom of this post. For now, I'd just like to say that I'm writing this in a personal capacity and do not claim to represent the views of any of my employers, past, present, or future.
Otherwise, I may occasionally update this post to correct any misleading/inaccurate [...]
The original text contained 19 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:

July 25th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6jwMHczhX6ZXRMe7D/my-experience-as-a-full-time-ea-community-builder-in-nyc

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This post lays out a framework I’m currently using for thinking about when AI systems will seek power in problematic ways. I think this framework adds useful structure to the too-often-left-amorphous “instrumental convergence thesis,” and that it helps us recast the classic argument for existential risk from misaligned AI in a revealing way. In particular, I suggest, this recasting highlights how much classic analyses of AI risk load on the assumption that the AIs in question are powerful enough to take over the world very easily, via a wide variety of paths. If we relax this assumption, I suggest, the strategic trade-offs that an AI faces, in choosing whether or not to engage in some form of problematic power-seeking, become substantially more complex.
Prerequisites for rational takeover-seeking
For simplicity, I’ll focus here on the most extreme type of problematic AI power-seeking – namely, an AI or set of [...]
The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:

July 24th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dZ2WvJierisi8jzFi/a-framework-for-thinking-about-ai-power-seeking

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Version 1.1 - July 2024
Thanks to everyone who contributed directly or indirectly, e.g. our board, our peers from the Community Building Grants Program, our group organizers and community members.
Overview
This document offers an overview of the strategic vision for EA Switzerland. It is intended to be aspirational—a resource to guide our thinking when we consider our work on a higher level. We intend to review this document yearly. In this document, “we” is EA Switzerland's team.
Who?
We start with a brief history of EA Switzerland. Then, we follow with an analysis of the characteristics of Switzerland, and in particular the EA Switzerland subcommunity, that we anticipate to be comparative advantages and disadvantages. We describe our values as an association and a community. Why?
In this section, we describe our approach to Effective Altruism (EA) and community building.
We lay out our framework, based on the definition of EA [...] ---
Outline:
(00:22) Overview
(02:52) Who? - EA Switzerland
(02:56) Our History
(03:24) Our Comparative Advantages and Disadvantages
(03:30) Financial Comfort and Wealth
(05:22) Multicultural Community and International Hub
(06:38) Low Emigration
(07:49) Our Values
(09:32) Why? - Our approach to Effective Altruism and community building
(09:39) Our Framework
(09:50) Trajectories: What are people's journey to impact?
(13:07) Tracks: What structures do we build to support people in their journey?
(16:47) Our Priorities
(16:51) Track Portfolio
(19:06) Operational Work
(19:44) What? - Activities we want to be doing
(19:49) Our Theory of Change
(20:34) Annual Calendar
(21:02) Resources
(21:29) How? - Processes we follow
(21:36) Staff Handbook
(21:39) Impact Framework
(22:22) Team Framework
(24:17) Logistics
(24:28) Operational Handbook
(24:40) Annexes
(24:43) Annex 1: Strategizing Considerations
(24:49) Funding Considerations
(26:51) Additional Considerations
(28:33) Annex 2: Maintain and Improve vs. Develop and Create
(30:49) Annex 3: Social Support Ecosystems and EA Community Building
(33:23) Annex 4: Team Dynamics - Details
(37:05) Glossary
The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:

July 22nd, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dFFt62acoktuLDCvh/ea-switzerland-strategy-v2024

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Highlights since our last feature update:
People directory
Google Doc import
Card view for the Frontpage
User profile updates
Updates to sequences
We've also hosted 3 events, significantly improved the site speed, and made many more improvements across the Forum.
As always, we'd love feedback on these changes.
People directory
We’ve built a filterable database where anyone can find Forum users they might want to hire, collaborate with, or read.
You can filter the database by role, organization, interests and more.

If you want people to easily find you, consider adding more information to your Forum profile.
Google Doc import
You can now import posts directly from Google Docs. Footnotes and images will be imported along with the text.
How it works:
Write and format your post in Google Docs Share the Google doc with eaforum.posts@gmail.com Copy the link to [...] ---
Outline:
(00:41) People directory
(01:12) Google Doc import
(01:58) Card view for the Frontpage
(02:23) User profile updates
(03:12) Updates to sequences
(03:35) Other updates
(03:40) Forum performance is greatly improved
(04:05) Improved on-site audio experience
(04:39) We’ve fixed our Twitter bot
(05:18) Updated UI for post stats
(05:37) Self-service account deletion
(05:57) Events since March
(06:02) Draft Amnesty Week
(06:24) Ways the world is getting better banner
(06:53) AI Welfare Debate Week
(07:25) Bonus: April Fools
(07:40) Share your feedback
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First published:

July 24th, 2024


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/h2Gcxgvezf8io8mqr/forum-update-user-database-card-view-and-more-jul-2024

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