[spacebear]

Many of the jobs on the 80,000 hours board actually seem quite evil:

"Research Scientist, AI. Facebook"

"Data Scientist, Technology and Resource Investment Decision-making. US Government, Central Intelligence Agency"

"Deep Learning Researcher, Computer Vision Algorithms. Baidu"

[exdsq]

So a few things here.

1. ML at Facebook and Baidu pay well so you could use that money to fund more effective things.

2. By working in these roles you have the ability to change how things are done. Certainly more than you usually could from the outside.

3. There's a big push in the effective altruism group on safe AI/ML. I disagree with this but that's a factor in their weightings.

[heavyset_go]

> 2. By working in these roles you have the ability to change how things are done. Certainly more than you usually could from the outside.

No salaried employee is going to change Facebook's incentives to profit from violating privacy and selling their users' data.

[striking]

There are other high paying jobs out there, and I'd like to know where this "change from the inside" thing comes from. I've not seen anything that indicates that that's true for Facebook, and have seen a few things that show the opposite[1][2].

Working at a company that does these things is no lesser evil in my book.

1: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employ...

2: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mqw86u/i_am_sophie_zh...

[exdsq]

So the argument does take it to the slight extreme but assume you're good enough to eventually be promoted to lead the department; at that point you're going to be able to introduce change. Certainly the change you could introduce would be greater than taking a similar paid job at a different organization. I appreciate this isn't the case for a lot of people but it's a non-zero chance and therefore a factor to consider!

[striking]

I disagree that this is even a factor to consider, and that we should be rigorous when assigning probabilities to events.

Seriously, what meaningful and controversial change has the rank-and-file (or even the managerial staff) at Facebook managed to accomplish? I'm not really asking for your opinion here as much as I am asking if you have any reports or information on the matter that contradicts the things I've heard or seen or read.

Why are you so certain? Their own employees feel that public pressure is the only way out, evidenced by their employees publicly speaking out or leaking things to the press to effect change. How, in your eyes, does this come anywhere close to a degree of certainty that change from within is possible?

[exdsq]

I'm not suggesting software developer #1034643 at Alphabet will be able to influence their AI safety policies, I am suggesting Lead AI Safety Researcher #17 at Alphabet will be able to influence their AI safety policies - possibly not, but there's a strong non-zero chance there. Certainly their chances of influencing AI safety policies at Alphabet, which people argue is important, is far greater than if they were a finance engineer earning the same salary at Jane Street. You could argue that Timnit Gebru was unable to introduce change because she was fired before publishing the paper about Google Brain, but nine congressmen have asked for an investigation and it's hardly over so who knows what'll happen there.

I've read similar evidence about people not being able to do much, but someone (or some committee) is having an impact on research direction somewhere within the company (else they wouldn't have even started that research department to begin with).

[striking]

> nine congressmen have asked for an investigation

Is that change from within? Is this not proving my point?

> else they wouldn't have even started that research department to begin with

You couldn't think of a single other reason to start a research department? Like, say, to say you're doing research but without regard for the results?

[vendiddy]

These all feel a bit indirect on how they might have a positive impact.

For a job board like this, I would prefer that the companies themselves are directly working on high impact problems that are a benefit to society and the environment.

Would also be nice to see a quick description of the impact each company is trying to have.

[shubik22]

Can't point 1 be used to justify any unethical job that pays a lot? What's the point of having a job board with "ethical" jobs then?

[lupire]

Get the job, and slow walk it, generate good looking but bad analysis.