Salad days
ai
LessWrong recounts how the University of Chicago’s AI alignment research group got its start in 2022, convening in the concrete stairwells of the Woodlawn dorms because they lacked rooms, money, or official status. The founders wrote notes on the walls with chalk and even cooked their own pasta to avoid spending the modest grant from OpenPhil. Today, many university safety groups enjoy dedicated office space and stipends that can reach a thousand dollars per week, and internships at firms like Anthropic pay around one hundred dollars an hour. The piece urges the community to remember those humble “salad days” as a cultural touchstone for genuine altruistic commitment.
Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xuh4Hqaza25f4jryb/salad-days
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