Thanks for this post. I think it makes some great suggestions about how AI Safety Camp could become a more favorable funding target. One thing I’ll add, I think it would be valuable for AI Safety Camp to refresh its website in order to make it look more professional and polished. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to make it a project in the next round.
Regarding research leads, I don’t think they should focus too much on prestige as they wouldn’t be able to compete on this front, and I think a core part of their value proposition is providing the infrastructure to host “wild and ambitious projects”. That said, I’m not suggesting that they should only host projects along these lines. I think it’s valuable for AI Safety Camp to also host a bunch of solid and less speculative projects for various reasons (not excessively distorting the ecosystem towards wild ideas, reducing the chance that people bouncing off doing an AI safety completely, providing folk with the potential to be a talented research lead with the opportunity to build the cred to be a lead for a more prestigious program), but more for balance, rather than this being the core value that they aim to deliver.
Regarding the funding, I suspect that setting the funding goal to $300,000 likely depresses fundraising as it primes people towards thinking their donation wouldn’t make a difference. It’s very easy for people to overlook that the minimum funding required is only $15,000.
One last point: you can only write “this may be the last AI Safety camp” so many times. Donors want to know that if they donate to keep it alive, you’re going to restructure the program towards something more financially viable. So I’d encourage the organizers to take on board some of the suggestions in this post.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Chris, I think you made some great additional suggestions. I also agree that that AISC shouldn’t try to compete with on the prestige front too much, and they complement each other nicely with SPAR that takes a more top-down approach and only(?) hosts established researches as leads.
Donors want to know that if they donate to keep it alive, you’re going to restructure the program towards something more financially viable
Most of these suggestions are based on speculations. I’d like a bit more evidence that it would actually make a difference, before re-structuring. Funders are welcome to reach out to us.
Funding is currently especially bad. It’s possible that if AISC can just survive a bit longer, things will get better.
AISC has survived each year since the program started in 2017. Which means just doing what we think is the best program, has a pretty good track record of being funded.
I think it would be valuable for AI Safety Camp to refresh its website in order to make it look more professional and polished. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to make it a project in the next round.
No it wouldn’t. Leading a project is a lot of work, significantly more work than it’s worth putting into our website, and we’re almost guaranteed to end up with something that is significantly higher work to maintain. We recently moved from WordPress to Google Site because it’s the lowest effort platform to work with.
Most of these suggestions are based on speculations. I’d like a bit more evidence that it would actually make a difference, before re-structuring. Funders are welcome to reach out to us.
Responding to my self.
There is one thing (that is mentioned in the post) we know is getting in the way of funding, which is Remmelt’s image. But there wouldn’t be and AISC without Remmelt.
I don’t expect pretending to be two different programs would help much.
However, donating anonymously is an option. We have had anonymous donations in the past from people who don’t want to entangle their reputation with ours.
Thanks for this post. I think it makes some great suggestions about how AI Safety Camp could become a more favorable funding target. One thing I’ll add, I think it would be valuable for AI Safety Camp to refresh its website in order to make it look more professional and polished. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to make it a project in the next round.
Regarding research leads, I don’t think they should focus too much on prestige as they wouldn’t be able to compete on this front, and I think a core part of their value proposition is providing the infrastructure to host “wild and ambitious projects”. That said, I’m not suggesting that they should only host projects along these lines. I think it’s valuable for AI Safety Camp to also host a bunch of solid and less speculative projects for various reasons (not excessively distorting the ecosystem towards wild ideas, reducing the chance that people bouncing off doing an AI safety completely, providing folk with the potential to be a talented research lead with the opportunity to build the cred to be a lead for a more prestigious program), but more for balance, rather than this being the core value that they aim to deliver.
Regarding the funding, I suspect that setting the funding goal to $300,000 likely depresses fundraising as it primes people towards thinking their donation wouldn’t make a difference. It’s very easy for people to overlook that the minimum funding required is only $15,000.
One last point: you can only write “this may be the last AI Safety camp” so many times. Donors want to know that if they donate to keep it alive, you’re going to restructure the program towards something more financially viable. So I’d encourage the organizers to take on board some of the suggestions in this post.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Chris, I think you made some great additional suggestions. I also agree that that AISC shouldn’t try to compete with on the prestige front too much, and they complement each other nicely with SPAR that takes a more top-down approach and only(?) hosts established researches as leads.
Most of these suggestions are based on speculations. I’d like a bit more evidence that it would actually make a difference, before re-structuring. Funders are welcome to reach out to us.
Funding is currently especially bad. It’s possible that if AISC can just survive a bit longer, things will get better.
AISC has survived each year since the program started in 2017. Which means just doing what we think is the best program, has a pretty good track record of being funded.
No it wouldn’t. Leading a project is a lot of work, significantly more work than it’s worth putting into our website, and we’re almost guaranteed to end up with something that is significantly higher work to maintain. We recently moved from WordPress to Google Site because it’s the lowest effort platform to work with.
Responding to my self.
There is one thing (that is mentioned in the post) we know is getting in the way of funding, which is Remmelt’s image. But there wouldn’t be and AISC without Remmelt.
I don’t expect pretending to be two different programs would help much.
However, donating anonymously is an option. We have had anonymous donations in the past from people who don’t want to entangle their reputation with ours.
Fwiw www.aisafetyanz.com.au was a pretty easy setup using wix. Maybe 10 hours of work (initially).