This concept and terminology was spawned out of a conversation a few years ago with my friend Skyler. I finally decided to write it up. Any mistakes here are my own.

Every once in a while, I find myself at yet another rationalist/EA/whatever-adjacent social event. Invariably, someone walks up to me:

Hi, I'm Bob. I'm pretty new here. What do you work on?

Hi Bob, I'm Alice. I work on preventing human extinction from advanced AI. If you'd like, I'm happy to talk a bit more about why I think this is important.

Bob is visibly nervous.

Yeah, I've already gotten the basic pitch on AI safety, it seems like it makes sense. People here all seem to work on such important things compared to me. I feel a sort of moral obligation to help out, but I feel stressed out about it and don't know where to start.

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First published:

Source:

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.