Hello, Reader

Erik Shuttlesworth
Jul 22, 2017 · 2 min read

Welcome to the first of this irregularly updated series of mostly technical blog posts. I will interview myself in case you’re here from the future and mildly curious about where this (grandly gesturing at the great repository of knowledge this blog has become) started.

Who are you?

I’m a programming student at Fullstack Academy.

Why?

Why what? Why am I studying programming or why at Fullstack?

Uh, both.

I’m studying programming because when I was doing some life-planning research at 80,000 Hours, I learned that the risk of superintelligent AI is one of the greatest problems humanity is facing. I decided to help, and I thought becoming a software engineer would be a good first step.

I picked Fullstack Academy because it seemed like the best programming bootcamp out there.

Super AI, huh… So did you just drop whatever you were doing before?

Well, funny story. There actually wasn’t much to drop. I moved back from Japan to become an Air Force pilot, but some hearing loss disqualified me, so I basically wasted a year on that application process.

OK, but what have you been doing since college?

After college I moved to Japan, where I taught English, worked at an international logistics company, and spent nearly two years at a mobile game company where I did translation, QA, community management, and a little bit of design. So I have an idea of what making software is like. I even started learning C# but came back to America before I got anywhere useful.

While working on the pilot application, I was an inventory auditor and pizza delivery guy since I was under the impression it would only take a few months… But I’m glad things have turned out this way. I’m truly blessed.

What now?

My current plan is to learn the crap out of Javascript (and HTML, CSS, React, Node.js, etc.), get a programming job, and somehow find my way to AI safety research. Still fleshing out step #3.

Alright, that’ll do. Good luck with all that.

Thank you!

Erik Shuttlesworth

Written by

Current software engineering apprentice. Future AI safety research master.

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