The Plan
Plans mean nothing, but planning is everything
This was initially published on 10/25/23 on my personal site, adityaaswani.com. However, as managing a personal site proved more difficult than expected, I have moved my posts to Substack.
Hmmm, where to begin? I wanted to describe something of a detailed plan for how I am going become an AI safety engineer and a meditation teacher. However, I think I will start with a brief update.
This past week has been largely spent on struggling with how to set up a proper blog. After much trial and error, I am happy to say I finally have something I am happy with. Thank you so much, Tyler Moore! Your YouTube tutorial was truly a lifesaver. Before watching that tutorial, the process of setting up my own website honestly felt like I was trying to push an immovable object with all my strength. I also want to express gratitude to the Astra theme, the Starter Templates plugin, and the Elementor website builder. It’s amazing how I was able to build my website without writing any code! Best of all, it was all free!
Now then, moving onto the plan itself. I will start with the meditation teacher part. I think I have laid out the next steps fairly clearly:
So that’s essentially the status of things! I am actually tracking more tasks on a personal Notion workspace (which I am a huge fan of 😀 ). I was considering sharing a link to that here, but maybe I will do that at some later point 😛.
Hmmm, let me see, is there anything else I would like to add regarding the status of my journey towards becoming a meditation teacher? Hmmm, I don’t think so! I guess one think I would like to add is that I feel a lot of gratitude right now for this blogging practice! It is common for me to feel like I am not “working hard enough” or that I am not “making enough progress.” But in reality, I am doing well! In fact, I am going to acknowledge this by saying good job, Aditya! I am very proud of you 🙂. Wow, it feels so nice to give myself positive affirmations like that, especially on a public place like this…it even feels a bit scary! What if people read this and think I’m a cringey weirdo! 😛 Oh well, I can’t please everyone, and if I had to pick, I will always prioritize pleasing myself! 😤
On a side note, I want to add that I cannot remember the last time my dad told me that he was proud of me, so I think it’s important for me to remember that even if important people in my life cannot give me the positive affirmations I crave, I can always give them to myself!
Anyways, side notes aside (not that I particularly mind side notes, to be honest 😛), let’s move on to the next section! The status of my quest towards becoming an AI safety engineer!
Admittedly, I have made relatively less progress on this, I think because I have been prioritizing setting up the site. I would make a table for this though I don’t believe it’s necessary. In a nutshell, I did a few tasks related to making connections in the AI safety community and also did one top secret task that I may or may not disclose at some later point 😛. Aside from that, I got some clarity about this interesting AI Safety learning program that I would like to apply for! I would mention it, but that’s also a secret. You may be asking, “Aditya, why are you keeping so many secrets?” Well, my response to that is….that’s also a secret! Anyways, if you really want to know, then just be patient and I may or may not reveal more details in the future!
Anyways, applying for this program requires me to learn quite a bit of information on a variety of research areas in AI safety! The cool thing about this application process is that I am confident that I will learn quite a bit regardless of whether or not I get accepted. Of course, I do hope I get accepted, but who knows. Admittedly, I am feeling a bit discouraged about my odds. Regardless, I will do my best! Even if I fail to get into this program, that doesn’t mean my journey to become an AI safety engineer needs it end! It simply means I will need to take a detour 😉.
The deadline for this program is November 17th (one of the streams has a deadline on November 10th) so I gratefully have much time to prepare at least one strong application, though I hope to do more. Once again, I want to express so much gratitude that there are paths being created for those interested in AI safety research outside of the need to do a four to five year PhD program.
Hmmm, let me see, is there anything else I want to add? No I think that should be it! Thank you for sticking along and reading this second post! Stay tuned for more at some later undetermined point. Admittedly though, I have high hopes that I will post soon considering I last intended to only post once a month but know we have posted again within a week! Let’s just hope I didn’t jinx things 😛.