Hi
My name is Mikhail Samin (friends and family usually call me Misha, sometimes I use @Mihonarium on social media).
I'm 23. I'm an effective altruist, I worry about the future of humanity and want the universe not to lose most of its value.
I took the Giving What We Can pledge to donate at least 10% of my income for the rest of my life or until the day I retire (why?).
I have some intuitions about the AI alignment problem; some alignment researchers told me that they were able to improve their understanding of the problem from talking to me.
Some of my current project are related to EA & AI Alignment outreach. My research interests are focused on AI Alignment and governance. I'm trying to come up with ideas and projects that have a chance of having a large impact.
Also, I’m bi 🏳️🌈.
I'm 23. I'm an effective altruist, I worry about the future of humanity and want the universe not to lose most of its value.
I took the Giving What We Can pledge to donate at least 10% of my income for the rest of my life or until the day I retire (why?).
I have some intuitions about the AI alignment problem; some alignment researchers told me that they were able to improve their understanding of the problem from talking to me.
Some of my current project are related to EA & AI Alignment outreach. My research interests are focused on AI Alignment and governance. I'm trying to come up with ideas and projects that have a chance of having a large impact.
Also, I’m bi 🏳️🌈.
Projects
Printing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in Russian
I've launched a crowdfunding campaign to print a book by Eliezer Yudkowsky (in English: hpmor.com), which became the most funded Russian crowdfunding campaign with a record number of backers. As a result, 63 010 books were printed and hundreds of thousands of people read the book online.
A career guide that helps to find a fulfilling career that does good. I started a project to translate the Key Ideas series in Russian; we plan to promote it among individuals with high potential.
Music recognition API. For audio files and live streams. More than 75 million songs in the DB, modern technologies (neural networks and stuff).
As a result, I was able to donate dozens k$ to MIRI and other non-profit orgs.
Try the music recognition using the Chrome extension or visit audd.io for more info.
In the past, the impact and the effectiveness aside, I was the head of the Russian Pastafarian Church for a year, that was fun. And I was a political activist. I co-founded the Moscow branch of a "Vesna" democratic movement, coordinated election observers in a Moscow district, helped the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Telegram with internet censorship circumvention, and participated in protests. That felt important and was also mostly fun- except for spending time in jail after the protests; and the Russian authorities will possibly throw me in prison if I return to Russia.
I've also made things like backend services that responded to requests in fractions of milliseconds and bots that were handling millions of DMs every day.
Want to get in touch?
Email me (ms[аt]contact[dоt]ms) or contact me on social media. I'd love to help you with a project that seems to help humanity.
I'd also enjoy answering interesting questions, participating in podcasts, talking about AI Safety and the future or anything fascinating, or meeting interesting people.