A Peek Behind the Curtain Interview Series

People often look to others that they deem particularly productive and successful and come up with (often fairly ungrounded) guesses for how these people accomplish so much. Instead of guessing, I want to give a peek behind the curtain. 

I interviewed eleven people I thought were particularly successful, relatable, or productive. We discussed topics ranging from productivity to career exploration to self-care. 

The Peek behind the Curtain interview series is meant to help dispel common myths and provide a variety of takes on success and productivity from real people. To that end, I’ve grouped responses on common themes to showcase a diversity of opinions on these topics. 

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My guests include: 

  • Abigail Olvera was a U.S. diplomat last working at the China Desk. Abi was formerly stationed at the US Embassies in Egypt and Senegal and holds a Master's of Global Affairs from Yale University. Full interview. 

  • Ajeya Cotra is a Senior Research Analyst at Open Philanthropy where she worked on a framework for estimating when transformative AI may be developed, as well as various cause prioritization and worldview diversification projects. Ajeya received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley. Full interview. 

  • Ben Garfinkel was a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the time of the interview. He is now the Acting Director of the Centre for the Governance of AI. Ben earned a degree in Physics and in Mathematics and Philosophy from Yale University, before deciding to study for a DPhil in International Relations at the University of Oxford. Full interview. 

  • Daniel Ziegler researched AI safety at OpenAI. He has since left to do AI safety research at Redwood Research. Full interview. 

  • Eva Vivalt did an Economics Ph.D. and Mathematics M.A. at the University of California, Berkeley after a master’s in Development Studies at Oxford University. She then worked at the World Bank for two years and founded AidGrade before finding her way back to academia. Full interview. 

  • Gregory Lewis is a DPhil Scholar at the Future of Humanity Institute, where he investigates long-run impacts and potential catastrophic risk from advancing biotechnology. Previously, he was an academic clinical fellow in public health medicine and before that a junior doctor. He holds a master’s in public health and a medical degree, both from Cambridge University. Full interview. 

  • Helen Toner is Director of Strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). She previously worked as a Senior Research Analyst at Open Philanthropy. She is a member of the board of directors for OpenAI. Helen holds an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown. Full interview not available. 

  • Jade Leung is Governance Lead at OpenAI. She was the inaugural Head of Research & Partnerships with the Centre for the Governance of Artificial Intelligence (GovAI), housed at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. She completed her DPhil in AI Governance at the University of Oxford and is a Rhodes scholar. Full interview. 

  • Julia Wise serves as a contact person for the effective altruism community and helps local and online groups support their members. She serves on the board of GiveWell and writes about effective altruism at Giving Gladly. She was president of Giving What We Can from 2017-2020. Before joining CEA, Julia was a social worker, and studied sociology at Bryn Mawr College. Full interview. 

  • Michelle Hutchinson holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, where her thesis was on global priorities research. While completing that, she did the operational set-up of the Centre for Effective Altruism and then became Executive Director of Giving What We Can. She is currently the Assistant Director of One-on-One Programme at 80,000 Hours. Full interview. 

  • Rohin Shah is a Research Scientist at DeepMind studying methods that allow us to build AI systems that pursue the objectives their users intend them to pursue, rather than the objectives that were literally specified. Rohin completed his PhD at the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley and publishes the Alignment Newsletter to summarize work relevant to AI alignment. Full interview. 

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The interviews were done in late 2020 and early 2021, and may no longer accurately represent all of the guests’ views. 

The following quotes have been cleaned up and condensed from the original interviews, and then checked with the original speaker. Quotes have been grouped by common themes, but not necessarily the question they were said in response to. 

These answers were given during spoken interviews, usually without preparation, and transcribed. You can view many of the full interviews to see the quotes in context and read more about the guests’ experience and perspective. 

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