Master Chief

For context, I’m a student trying to choose a career where they can have maximum impact. One path I’m considering is founding a cleantech startup. However, I’m worried that even if I found a startup, I might not actually increase the total amount of socially impactful work being done in...

For context, I have always had music playing in my head constantly, whether studying or just generally in daily life. (I know the music's internally generated, i.e. it’s not externally generated.) Throughout my life, this constant music has made it near impossible for me to study. Essentially everytime I sit...

For context, I have always had music playing in my head constantly, whether studying or just generally in daily life. I know the music's internally generated, not an external sound. Throughout my life, this constant music has made it near impossible for me to study. Essentially every time I sit...

I’m considering whether to work on accelerating automated scientific labs. My main concern: if the time until the next future AI escape is roughly fixed (say like, hypothetically, 6 months), then faster progress on automated labs means there will be more scientific infrastructure available for that AI to exploit when...

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the implications of a world where general-purpose robots are developed before AGI. (In such a world, I imagine, trillions of robots would permeate society, replace factory workers, work in homes, etc.) One implication could be increased AI takeover risk. Intuitively, widespread robots might make takeover...

Note: I am referring only to technical biosecurity in this post, i.e. engineering, not policy roles. I’m an engineering undergrad thinking about contributing to the engineering side of biosecurity as a career —things like developing better disease sensors and bioaerosol monitoring systems (and other work that is not molecular biology-heavy)....

One potential risk of developing general-purpose robots is that they could greatly reduce the friction required to establish a totalitarian regime. If robots became physically capable of manufacturing additional copies of themselves, a small group of bad actors could potentially manufacture millions of general-purpose robots and use them to establish...