EA - Some talent needs in AI governance by Sam Clarke

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Some talent needs in AI governance, published by Sam Clarke on June 14, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.I carried out a short project to better understand talent needs in AI governance. This post reports on my findings.How this post could be helpful:If you’re trying to upskill in AI governance, this post could help you to understand the kinds of work and skills that are in demand.If you’re a field-builder trying to find or upskill people to work in AI governance, this post could help you to understand what talent search/development efforts are especially valuable.Key takeawaysI talked with a small number of people hiring in AI governance—in research organisations, policy think tanks and AI labs—about the kinds of people they’re looking for. Those hiring needs can be summarised as follows:All the organisations/teams I talked to are interested in hiring people to do policy development work—i.e. developing concrete proposals about what key actors (e.g. governments, AI labs) should do to make AI go well.There’s currently high demand for this kind of work, because windows of opportunity to implement useful policies have begun arising more frequently.There’s also a limited supply of people who can do it, partly because it requires the ability to do both (a) high-level strategising about the net value of different policies and (b) tactical implementation analysis about what, concretely should be done by people at the government/AI lab/etc. to implement the policy. This is an unusual combination of skills, but one which is highly valuable to develop.AI governance research organisations (specifically, GovAI and Rethink Priorities) are also interested in hiring people to do other kinds of AI governance research—e.g. carrying out research projects in compute governance or corporate governance, or writing touchstone pieces explaining important ideas.AI governance teams at policy think tanks and AI labs are interested in hiring people whose work would substantially involve engaging with people to do stakeholder management, consensus building and other activities to help with the implementation of policy actions.Also, there is a lot of work requiring technical expertise (e.g. hardware engineering, information security, machine learning) that would be valuable for AI governance. Especially undersupplied are technical researchers who can answer questions that are not yet well-scoped (i.e. where the questions require additional clarifying before they are crisp and well-specified). Doing this well requires an aptitude for high-level strategic thinking, along with technical expertise.MethodI conducted semi-structured interviews with a small number of people hiring in AI governance—in research organisations, policy think tanks and AI labs—about the kinds of people they’re looking for.I also talked with two people about talent needs in technical work for AI governance.FindingsTalent needsI report on the kinds of work that people I interviewed are looking to hire for, and outline some useful skills for doing this work.Note: when I say things like “organisation X is interested in hiring people to do such-and-such,” this doesn’t imply that they are definitely soon going to be hiring for exactly these roles. It should instead be read as a claim about the broad kind of talent they are likely to be looking for when they next open a hiring round.AI governance research organisationsCurrently, GovAI is especially interested in research agendas that contribute to policy development work—i.e. developing concrete proposals about what key actors (e.g. governments, AI labs) should do to make AI go well. There’s high demand for this kind of work and very few people who can do it.Researchers who can write touchstone pieces explaining, clarifying, and justifying important ideas...