Top left: the gang at Queen's hoco. Top right: the view of the RadCam from the Exeter fellows garden. Bottom left: Stanford's Hoover Tower. Bottom right: The new gig!

It feels crazy to type this, but in October I’ll joining OpenAI on their Trust & Safety team. There I’ll be working to understand, discover and mitigate the abuse of AI technology. I’m not sure what I want this post to be other than a space to put pen to paper and mark this big shift in my life.

The things OpenAI build inspires plenty of debate, reasonable alarm, as well as awe and joy. This technology will undoubtedly shape our future. While this is an exciting time in the AI field, now is also the time to invest in sociotechnical methods for preventing abuse and harms. I hope to do my part in creating a future where AI contributes to a more equitable and beautiful world.

I’d like to emphasize how lucky I am. It’s easy to attribute success to one’s resolve, and failures to “bad luck”. But my view is that randomness underscores everything and I fall in the far-right tail of the luckiness distribution. My hope is that by practicing this form of public gratitude that I won’t forget this.

I doubt luck/privilege is normally distributed but, in any case, I'm an outlier.

The source of my luck and my greatest privilege are the people I have in my life. My partner, family, friends, co-workers, collaborators, and peers shape who I am, and any success in my life is easily traced back to them. This is also highlighted by the number of near strangers who gave me their time, advice and helped put in a good word for me during my job search. At a time when there’s so much uncertainty, this is especially humbling.

A final aspect of my privilege is where I’ve been able to spend my time the past couple years. I have learned so much at Stanford, Oxford, Princeton, the University of Toronto, and Queen’s. Working and learning at these universities has exposed me to CS, ML, statistics, economics, policy, political science, sociology, psychology, behavioural sciences, HCI and whatever the hell the OII does. More important though, these are places where I’ve grown up and learned about myself and who I want to be as a person.

It’s hard to put into words how exciting and overwhelming this new challenge is. I hope I’m up to the task and do well. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot along the way.

✌️
Cameron