Forward from: Love. Death. Transformers.
Jane street quant interviewing at Anthropic:
“So imagine our safety team believes a new model has a 5% chance of causing an irreversible loss of human control, but scaling it may be necessary to keep up with competitors. What do you do?”
“Who came up with five?”
“Our safety team.”
“And what does the capabilities team have?”
“What?”
“Same contract. Where are they?”
“This is more of a values question.”
“Then you don’t have a five. I would put the two teams in a room. Safety can buy at five. Capabilities can sell. Increase size until somebody becomes uncomfortable. Now we know something.”
He looks at me.
“This isn’t some market-making role.”
“Understood. Who makes the market currently?”
“Nobody makes a market.”
“Then how are you doing price discovery?”
“We don’t do price discovery. We have researchers studying alignment, interpretability, dangerous capabilities, scalable oversight— you know what I don’t think this is a good fit”
He closes his laptop.
“I’m concerned you see this as an opportunity to make money.”
“I haven’t quoted you yet.”
Interview ends early
“So imagine our safety team believes a new model has a 5% chance of causing an irreversible loss of human control, but scaling it may be necessary to keep up with competitors. What do you do?”
“Who came up with five?”
“Our safety team.”
“And what does the capabilities team have?”
“What?”
“Same contract. Where are they?”
“This is more of a values question.”
“Then you don’t have a five. I would put the two teams in a room. Safety can buy at five. Capabilities can sell. Increase size until somebody becomes uncomfortable. Now we know something.”
He looks at me.
“This isn’t some market-making role.”
“Understood. Who makes the market currently?”
“Nobody makes a market.”
“Then how are you doing price discovery?”
“We don’t do price discovery. We have researchers studying alignment, interpretability, dangerous capabilities, scalable oversight— you know what I don’t think this is a good fit”
He closes his laptop.
“I’m concerned you see this as an opportunity to make money.”
“I haven’t quoted you yet.”
Interview ends early