Do take a look at my friends’ websites too!
Human exploration hacking | One potential failure mode of automating AI safety research (i.e., using existing models to align and monitor subsequent ones) is that the models we try to use for that purpose are misaligned, and actually end up sabotaging our work.
Four easy wins for interior design | This list focuses on interior design improvements you can make without too much effort, and which use items that are very easy to pack up into boxes when moving.
Some early lessons from the world of work | A scattered and lengthy collection of thoughts I might come back to tidy up in future.
Giving the first £10,000 | TL;DR: I’ve donated to some high-impact charities in animal welfare, malaria prevention, and poverty reduction, and it’d be amazing if you considered doing the same.
Some tips for making Freedom of Information requests | Learned over the course of writing a think-tank report, and getting frustrated with Oxford several times.
Reflections on running a weekend retreat | At the start of this month I co-organised Saddle Point, a three-night & 30-person retreat. (Duncan, my co-organiser, reviewed this post before I published it, but all opinions are mine alone.) Overall, things were a success!
You can select as well as be selected | Running hiring rounds or other application processes is extremely hard.
LLMs can be tool-finding tools | A lot of tools are what I would call intention multipliers: they help you achieve a particular goal more efficiently or easily.
RSVPs | You’ve probably gone to a few events in your life, and declined or ignored invitations to others.
Critiques of conferences | TL;DR: If you’re going to a conference and don’t have a very clear picture of what it going well looks like, I think you’ll probably be wasting your time.
Polite Notice | By default, I try to be polite: I think generally it’s the right thing to do, plus it’s a helpful way of developing virtue & maximising the good (two of my underlying ethical goals, with the former a heuristic for the latter).
love is embarrassing? | Some people aren’t remotely interested in dating, which makes perfect sense.
Suspending adulthood as a way to have fun | Something I noticed at the OULES New Year’s celebrations was that the people there were very good at having silly, joyous fun.
Thermostats | In machine learning, there’s the concept of “temperature”: a parameter which controls the amount of randomness that’s fed in to the model’s predictions.
Observations about dating apps | I’ve been working on building a dating service for Oxford students (Oxheart) this year, but as a friend pointed out, I’m not creating a product which is precisely tailored to what I’d like to have exist.
Asking questions and drinking games | I like being listened to.
Losing my sense of taste | Sometimes I look back over my journal to see what is repeatedly on my mind.
PMQs | In classic Sixth Form work experience fashion, I spent a week last summer shadowing an MP.
When the front page shouldn’t be the top priority | Lots of things are important, but some are more important than others – often by orders of magnitude (for example, causes of death).
I really hate Facebook | Not as a consumer; I don’t use it much.
Bureaucracy | I have spent much more time tangled in Facebook over the past week than I would like.
Advertising | You can make advertisements for things you’re working on!
PPE | TL;DR: I wouldn’t recommend studying PPE for the content – I think it’s unlikely that I will use any more than 5% of what I’ve learned from it in future – but if you want to spend most of your time on extracurricular activities and don’t mind forgoing learning about technical things, it’s a pretty good choice.
This essay will… | George Orwell has a famous essay “Why I Write”, where he presents four reasons that someone might do so: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose (in his words).
University admissions advice | People often ask me whether I have advice about applying to Oxford for PPE.