This kind of work does strike me as pretty early stage, so evaluation is difficult. The things I expect to pay most attention to in evaluating how this grant is going is just whether the people Logan is working with seem to benefit from it, and if they end up citing this program as a major influence on their future research practices and career choices (which seems pretty plausible to me).
In the long run, I would hope to see some set of ideas from Logan make its way “into the groundwater” so to speak. This has happened quite a bit with Gendlin’s focusing, and it seems to me that a substantial fraction of AI Alignment Researchers I interface with have learned a bunch focusing-adjacent techniques, and if something similar happens to techniques or ideas originating from Logan, that seems like a good signal that the work was valuable.
I did have some email exchanges where I shared some LTFF internal discussion with Logan about what we hope to see out of this grant, and what would convince others on the fund that it was a good idea, which captured some of the above.
I also expect I will just watch and read and engage with any material coming out of Logan’s program, try to apply them to my own research problems, and see whether they seem helpful or a waste of time. I might also end up getting some colleagues of mine, or some friends of mine who are active as researchers, to try out some of the material and see whether they find it useful, and debate with them what parts seem to work, and what parts don’t.
Now for a more thorough response for 2):
This kind of work does strike me as pretty early stage, so evaluation is difficult. The things I expect to pay most attention to in evaluating how this grant is going is just whether the people Logan is working with seem to benefit from it, and if they end up citing this program as a major influence on their future research practices and career choices (which seems pretty plausible to me).
In the long run, I would hope to see some set of ideas from Logan make its way “into the groundwater” so to speak. This has happened quite a bit with Gendlin’s focusing, and it seems to me that a substantial fraction of AI Alignment Researchers I interface with have learned a bunch focusing-adjacent techniques, and if something similar happens to techniques or ideas originating from Logan, that seems like a good signal that the work was valuable.
I did have some email exchanges where I shared some LTFF internal discussion with Logan about what we hope to see out of this grant, and what would convince others on the fund that it was a good idea, which captured some of the above.
I also expect I will just watch and read and engage with any material coming out of Logan’s program, try to apply them to my own research problems, and see whether they seem helpful or a waste of time. I might also end up getting some colleagues of mine, or some friends of mine who are active as researchers, to try out some of the material and see whether they find it useful, and debate with them what parts seem to work, and what parts don’t.