Glad to hear that my post is resonating with some people!
I definitely understand the difficulty regarding time allocation when also working a full time job. As I gather resources and connections I will definitely make sure to spread awareness of them.
One thing to note, though, is that I found the more passive approach of waiting until I find an opportunity to be much less effective than forging opportunities myself (even though I was spending a significant amount of time looking for those opportunities).
A specific and more detailed recommendation for how to do this is going to be highly dependent on your level of experience with ML and time availability. My more general recommendation would be to apply to be in a cohort of BlueDot Impact's AI Governance or AI Safety Fundamentals courses (I believe that the application for the early 2024 session of the AI Safety Fundamentals course is currently open). Taking a course like this provides opportunities to gain connections, which can be leveraged into independent projects/efforts. I found that the AI Governance session was very doable with a full time position (when I started it, I was still full time at my current job). Although I cannot definitely say the same for the AI Safety Fundamentals course, as I did not complete it through a formal session (and instead just did the readings independently), it seems to be a similar time commitment. I think that taking the course with a cohort would definitely be valuable, even for those that have completed the readings independently.
Glad to hear that my post is resonating with some people!
I definitely understand the difficulty regarding time allocation when also working a full time job. As I gather resources and connections I will definitely make sure to spread awareness of them.
One thing to note, though, is that I found the more passive approach of waiting until I find an opportunity to be much less effective than forging opportunities myself (even though I was spending a significant amount of time looking for those opportunities).
A specific and more detailed recommendation for how to do this is going to be highly dependent on your level of experience with ML and time availability. My more general recommendation would be to apply to be in a cohort of BlueDot Impact's AI Governance or AI Safety Fundamentals courses (I believe that the application for the early 2024 session of the AI Safety Fundamentals course is currently open). Taking a course like this provides opportunities to gain connections, which can be leveraged into independent projects/efforts. I found that the AI Governance session was very doable with a full time position (when I started it, I was still full time at my current job). Although I cannot definitely say the same for the AI Safety Fundamentals course, as I did not complete it through a formal session (and instead just did the readings independently), it seems to be a similar time commitment. I think that taking the course with a cohort would definitely be valuable, even for those that have completed the readings independently.