Three Weeks at the EA Hotel, Blackpool

In January I spent three weeks at the EA Hotel in Blackpool. It was a really good experience overall.

Blackpool itself was nicer than its reputation suggests. I enjoyed walking around during the day and it has a pretty nice city center with lots of cafes, shops and restaurants. Living with twenty other people turned out to be very motivating, mostly because they were doing similar things to me. Career transitions, AI safety, adjacent cause areas. I got a lot of project ideas and fit test ideas just from being around them.

It was a pretty close-knit community. During the day we’d work in various spots around the building. Some people worked from their rooms but I stuck to the main office since it had a monitor and a desk. Basically a full co-working setup, which suits me. It’s both motivating and keeps me from getting distracted.

Every day at 6pm we’d have dinner together, always a freshly cooked vegan meal. People would arrange events throughout the week too, roughly one a day, maybe slightly less. These included things like:

• Movie nights
• Going to the pub
• Presentations
• A pilates class at one point
• Reality TV (I originally joined to sit in the background and mock this but ended up quite enjoying it)
• Circling (a mix between meditation and group councilling)
• Acoustic Kareoke

There was also a decent climbing gym nearby, a communal bike anyone could use, lots of board games + chess, snacks & protein shakes, meeting rooms, a projector and a tv + bean bags in the loft.

Staying there is free if you’re working on EA-aligned causes or transitioning to an EA-style job. I decided to pay half the cost of hosting me since I was also using some of the time for contract work and £300 for 3 weeks with bills and evening meals included is cheaper than I’d be paying for rent elsewhere. The only obligations are three to four hours of communal housework per week (I did all of mine in the kitchen, helping whoever was cooking. Chopping vegetables for twenty people is no small task.) and a mandatory presentation night on Fridays where everyone shares what they’ve been working on.

If you like co-living and co-working, and you’re working on a career transition towards AI safety, animal welfare or global health, I’d highly recommend it. I believe you can book for anything from a week to three months. I was only there for three weeks but I might go back in summer for a longer stay.

I got a decent amount done in those three weeks:

• Started building an evaluation using Inspect
• Worked on fixing a bug in an ablation tool
• Built a collection of open source projects to help with fit testing
• Updated my weighted factor model
• Got some contract work done to help fund the career switch