# Now <div class="pills-container"> <span class="pill">Last Updated: September 5, 2025</span> <span class="pill">Location: London, UK</span> <span class="pill">Inspired by <a href="https://nownownow.com/about">Derek Sivers</a></span>. </div> ## Where I am right now I've been asked too much in the past few months where I see myself in the future. I get it, I talk very vaguely about the future. But I think before we get there, **let's talk about 'now.'** - I am in uncharted territory. **This is the first time in my life that I've been in full control of my time and my decisions.** It is honestly so daunting, so I want to proceed with caution. That said, my commitments moving forward have been more intentional. I know the cost of being in a place where you are deeply dissatisfied. I'm not trying to repeat the [[Ethos#Mistakes I've made|same mistakes]]. - As it stands, I'm keen to work within the realm of emerging tech, whether in policy, engineering, or operations. Among all these, **I'm most excited about roles in research and product engineering, especially in (safe) AI**. - Though I know this line of work barely exists in the Philippines (if it exists at all), so I've been applying to data and policy roles that can help me gain career capital to build my expertise in AI. I deem it close enough to where I wanna be, that it's worth maximizing opportunities along these spaces. - For the meantime, venture building is how I survive. I don't want to do nothing and wait for opportunities to come. **If I can build opportunities for myself and for others, then I will.** To those who ask about my affiliations, I'm primarily independent. I have a registered business through which I do my freelance work. To those who ask about my interests: it's multi-agent value alignment (both AI and humans). To those who ask what my future plans are, see what's [[Next|next]]. ## What's keeping me busy I always seem to be doing a hundred things a once. I'm trying to avoid this [busyness trap](https://medium.com/swlh/avoiding-the-busyness-trap-15b0d77829d1) though, but it's taking a while. - Seventy percent of my time (previously one-third of my time in August 2025), I spend doing AI safety work. - Going through the [ARENA](https://www.arena.education/) curriculum as part of Cohort 6. - Facilitating a [course on AI policy](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FbbhWto1zrlCXyGjNQ_kd4l7sgsuMz053EXfL1ODfkg/edit?usp=sharing) that dives deep into AI governance frameworks. - Designing alignment benchmark environments as a continuation of [this project](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15zlRwVakF_iYSKgeasfOgS8GdBoyuFG7b_fWkGNIpiU/edit?usp=sharing) from [AI Safety Camp](https://www.aisafety.camp/). - Contributing to the [MIT AI Risk Repository](https://airisk.mit.edu/) as a research collaborator. - Curating a [database of AI safety papers](https://aisafetypapers.com) and [hosting a weekly reading group](https://paperclipminimizer.club/) to explore those papers in depth. Feel free to join the reading group by the way, though message me first if you do. - Ten percent of the time (previously one-third of my time in August 2025), I'm [building software tools to help small-business owners in the Philippines do their work better.](https://loomify.app/) For the many people who've asked: yes, I am doing this as a side business. - Twenty percent of my time (previously one-third of my time in August 2025) is spent figuring out what to do in life for the next few months (i.e., having an existential crisis). That means: - Investing in my physical wellbeing and actually going to the gym or doing some exercises. - [Talking to people](https://calendly.com/ramennaut/1-1) and actively shortening my feedback loop. - Reconnecting with old friends. ## What helped update my mental models A lot of folks have talked to me about how unconventional my worldview seems to be. This is not an "I'm-not-like-the-other-girls" post. I've just learned early (maybe due to the fact that I spent the past year anxious about everything) that much like a game, every level of life is supposed to get you more excited about reaching the next boss level. I'm listing here some media that helped me update my thinking. 1. AI systems do not need to be very very smart in order to disrupt the world to an irreversible scale: [What Multipolar Failure Looks Like, and Robust Agent-Agnostic Processes (RAAPs) (Critch, 2021)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LpM3EAakwYdS6aRKf/what-multipolar-failure-looks-like-and-robust-agent-agnostic) 2. Most of the time, it's better to have a general direction than a specific goal: [Explore More: A Bag of Tricks to Keep Your Life on the Rails (Tekofsky, 2024)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uwmFSaDMprsFkpWet/explore-more-a-bag-of-tricks-to-keep-your-life-on-the-rails) 3. Success means being at the top 1% of what you do among others at your level, and you get there by never letting yourself work within silos: [Tips for Empirical Alignment Research (Perez, 2024)](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/dZFpEdKyb9Bf4xYn7/tips-for-empirical-alignment-research) 4. Anything I do, especially learning, should not be done passively: [Social Tinkering: Why Collaborative Curiosity Beats Vibe-Coding (Morris, 2025)](https://blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/social-tinkering-why-collaborative) 5. Always try to do the obvious thing first before getting stuck in a decision paralysis rabbithole: [Trying the Obvious Thing (PranavG and Alfour, 2025)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zpqhds4dmLaBwTcnp/trying-the-obvious-thing) ## What I'm still learning I've always been a self-directed learner, but I'm learning that feedback loops and mentorship are force multipliers. If I want to grow, these are things I need to work on: - **Getting ideas to work quickly.** That means learning how to scope an idea in less than a day, and prototyping them within the next 24 hours. I've been working on this for maybe 4-ish months and I think I've improved. For reference, I'll list down my rate from idea to prototype deployment on stuff I did over the past month: - Writing a thousand words: 30 minutes is my fastest (so far) but note that I was extremely passionate about what I was writing about. I would probably spend a lot more time if I was starting from scratch. - Building a program proposal: ~2 hours - Learning a new programming language from "I've never seen this syntax before" to "I can build a simple app without AI as long as I still have access to Google": ~4 hours - Designing slides (including writing content): 4-8 hours - Coding a simple web app: 4-20 hours of work - Designing a simple web app: around a week - Technical research experiments: around 2 weeks - **Shortening my feedback loop.** It has been brought to my attention that my problem is not that I don't have skills, it's the fact that I don't have a mentor (or at least a person who consistently tells me what I'm doing well and what I'm doing wrong). To make matters worse, I'm such a people pleaser that I've managed to avoid constructive feedback by learning every possible skill that exists in the world and doing tasks by myself. That means I almost do not get feedback...ever. That also means I'm horrible at actually doing the tasks because one can only do so much if they're trying to learn everything. Well, I'm changing that by [talking to new people weekly](https://calendly.com/ramennaut/1-1) to ask for feedback, and sharing this [feedback form](https://bit.ly/FeedbackForLenz) around.