Thank you for your thoughts! I'm reluctant to quit the part-time job, because I feel like I need to be saving up money right now, but I'll consider the idea, along with your other suggestions. The help is appreciated!

Hi; thanks so much for doing this! So, for a long time I had planned to try to become a congressional staffer in order to do good with my career, with my fallback being working as a software engineer at an organization working on one of the world's most pressing problems. After I finished an undergrad degree in applied mathematics, about 2 years went by, and though I was able to find some work in that time, I wasn't able to get a job on a congressional staff, so I decided to pivot to the software engineer plan. I started a master's program in computer science, which I'm currently about halfway through, but when I began the master’s program I didn't realize how quickly AI was advancing, or how much of the work done by software engineers would get automated. Between the master’s program and my part-time job, I have very little time for other things, like setting up my own, private projects to demonstrate my abilities to future employers, networking, and volunteering; and I'm starting to worry that things like those might be more conducive to me finding a stable, relatively-AI-resistant career than continuing in the master's program. However, there is something I should note, which might be a good reason to finish the master's degree: I currently have something that's not technically a scholarship, but for all practical purposes it is; so funding the master’s degree isn't an issue. If I leave without finishing, I'd say there's a 60-80% chance I could get the “sort-of scholarship” again; but of course that means there's a 20-40% chance I couldn't. In light of all that, would you recommend that I leave the degree program before finishing, and/or try for a different career path than software engineer? I'm currently on track to finish in about August 2026; though we're allowed to skip summer semesters if we want to, so I could also finish in December 2026. In case that affects your answers.

Thanks so much for your help! I really appreciate some guidance on this stuff.

I'm sorry; I'll keep her, and those close to her, in my prayers.

Well, I'm told the states Washington, California, New York, and New Jersey all have laws that limit what such clauses can require, but they probably only protect employees who report crimes, sexual harassment, and that sort of thing, which probably isn't that helpful in the AI alignment field, since I figure most of the risk in that area would come from companies developing AIs which are extremely powerful, but still (for now) legal to develop.

I think you're wise to point out the potential risk of increasing the effectiveness of changing others' beliefs. Like any technology or technique, when we consider whether to contribute to its development, we have to consider both the potential harm it could do in the wrong hands and the potential good it could do in the right ones. I'm not sure enough people in the education and debiasing communities realize that.