Thanks for posting, seems good to know these things! I think some of the numbers for non-technical research should be substantially lower—enough that an estimate of ~55 non-technical safety researchers seems more accurate:
CSET isn’t focused on AI safety; maybe you could count a few of their researchers (rather than 10).
I think SERI and BERI have 0 full-time non-technical research staff (rather than 10 and 5).
As far as I’m aware, the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence + CSER only have at most a few non-technical researchers in total focused on AI safety (rather than 10 & 5). Same for FLI (rather than 5).
I hear Epoch has ~3 FTEs (rather than 10).
GoodAI’s research roadmap makes no mention of public/corporate policy or governance, so I’d guess they have at most a few non-technical safety-focused researchers (rather than 10).
If I didn’t mess up my math, all that should shift our estimate from 93 to ~42. Adding in 8 from Rethink (going by Peter’s comment) and 5 (?) from OpenPhil, we get ~55.
I re-estimated counts for many of the non-technical organizations and here are my conclusions:
I didn’t change the CSET estimate (10) because there seems to be a core group of about 5 researchers there and many others (20-30). Their productivity also seems to be high: I counted over 20 publications so far this year though it seems like only about half of them are related to AI governance (list of publications).
I deleted BERI and SERI from the list because they don’t seem to have any full-time researchers.
Epoch: decreased estimate from 10 to 4.
Good AI seems to be more technical than non-technical (todo).
I have it on good word that CSET has well under 10 safety-focused researchers, but fair enough if you don’t want to take an internet stranger’s word for things.
I’d encourage you to also re-estimate the counts for CSER, Leverhulme, and the Future of Life Institute.
The Future of Life Institute seems more focused on policy and field-building than on research; they don’t even have a research section on their website. Their team page lists ~2 people as researchers.
Of the 5 people listed in Leverhulme’s relevant page, one of them was already counted for CSER, and another one doesn’t seem safety-focused.
I also think the number of “Other” is more like 4.
- full-time researchers: 3 - research affiliates: 4
FLI: counted 5 people working on AI policy and governance.
Levelhume Centre:
- 7 senior research fellows - 14 research fellows
Many of them work at other organizations. I think 5 is a good conservative estimate.
New footnote for the ‘Other’ row in the non-technical list of researchers (estimate is 10):
“There are about 45 research profile on Google Scholar with the ‘AI governance’ tag. I counted about 8 researchers who weren’t at the other organizations listed.”
[Edit: I think the following no longer makes sense because the comment it’s responding to was edited to add explanations, or maybe I had just missed those explanations in my first reading. See my other response instead.]
Thanks for this. I don’t see how the new estimates incorporate the above information. (The medians for CSER, Leverhulme, and FLI seem to still be at 5 each.)
(Sorry for being a stickler here—I think it’s important that readers get accurate info on how many people are working on these problems.)
Thanks for posting, seems good to know these things! I think some of the numbers for non-technical research should be substantially lower—enough that an estimate of ~55 non-technical safety researchers seems more accurate:
CSET isn’t focused on AI safety; maybe you could count a few of their researchers (rather than 10).
I think SERI and BERI have 0 full-time non-technical research staff (rather than 10 and 5).
As far as I’m aware, the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence + CSER only have at most a few non-technical researchers in total focused on AI safety (rather than 10 & 5). Same for FLI (rather than 5).
I hear Epoch has ~3 FTEs (rather than 10).
GoodAI’s research roadmap makes no mention of public/corporate policy or governance, so I’d guess they have at most a few non-technical safety-focused researchers (rather than 10).
If I didn’t mess up my math, all that should shift our estimate from 93 to ~42. Adding in 8 from Rethink (going by Peter’s comment) and 5 (?) from OpenPhil, we get ~55.
I re-estimated counts for many of the non-technical organizations and here are my conclusions:
I didn’t change the CSET estimate (10) because there seems to be a core group of about 5 researchers there and many others (20-30). Their productivity also seems to be high: I counted over 20 publications so far this year though it seems like only about half of them are related to AI governance (list of publications).
I deleted BERI and SERI from the list because they don’t seem to have any full-time researchers.
Epoch: decreased estimate from 10 to 4.
Good AI seems to be more technical than non-technical (todo).
Thanks for the updates!
I have it on good word that CSET has well under 10 safety-focused researchers, but fair enough if you don’t want to take an internet stranger’s word for things.
I’d encourage you to also re-estimate the counts for CSER, Leverhulme, and the Future of Life Institute.
CSER’s list of team members related to AI lists many affiliates, advisors, and co-founders but only ~3 research staff.
The Future of Life Institute seems more focused on policy and field-building than on research; they don’t even have a research section on their website. Their team page lists ~2 people as researchers.
Of the 5 people listed in Leverhulme’s relevant page, one of them was already counted for CSER, and another one doesn’t seem safety-focused.
I also think the number of “Other” is more like 4.
I re-estimated the number of researchers in these organizations and the edits are shown in the ‘EDITS’ comment below.
Copied from the EDITS comment:
- CSER: 5-5-10 → 2-5-15
- FLI: 5-5-20 → 3-5-15
- Levelhume Centre: 5-10-70 (Low confidence) → 2-5-15 (Medium confidence)
My counts for CSER:
- full-time researchers: 3
- research affiliates: 4
FLI: counted 5 people working on AI policy and governance.
Levelhume Centre:
- 7 senior research fellows
- 14 research fellows
Many of them work at other organizations. I think 5 is a good conservative estimate.
New footnote for the ‘Other’ row in the non-technical list of researchers (estimate is 10):
“There are about 45 research profile on Google Scholar with the ‘AI governance’ tag. I counted about 8 researchers who weren’t at the other organizations listed.”
[Edit: I think the following no longer makes sense because the comment it’s responding to was edited to add explanations, or maybe I had just missed those explanations in my first reading. See my other response instead.]
Thanks for this. I don’t see how the new estimates incorporate the above information. (The medians for CSER, Leverhulme, and FLI seem to still be at 5 each.)
(Sorry for being a stickler here—I think it’s important that readers get accurate info on how many people are working on these problems.)
New estimates:
CSER: 2-5-10 → 2-3-7
FLI: 5-5-20 → 3-4-6
Levelhume: 2-5-15 → 3-4-10
Thanks for the information! Your estimate seems more accurate than mine.
In the case of Epoch, I would count every part-time employee as roughly half a full-time employee to avoid underestimating their productivity.