Here are my guesses for the most valuable qualities:
Deep technical background and knowledge in longtermist topics, particularly in alignment.
Though I haven’t studied this area myself, my understanding of the history of good funding for new scientific fields (and other forms of research “leadership”/setting strategic direction in highly innovative domains) is that usually you want people who are quite good at the field you want to advance or fund, even if they aren’t the very top scientists.
Basically you might not want the best scientists at the top, but for roles that require complex/nuanced calls in a deeply technical field, you want second-raters who are capable of understanding what’s going on quickly and broadly. You don’t want your research agenda implicitly set by mediocre scientists, or worse, non-technical people.
Because we give more grants in alignment than other technical fields, I think a deep understanding of alignment and other aspects of technical AI safety should be prioritized over (eg) technical biosecurity or nuclear security or forecasting or longtermist philosophy.
The other skillsets are still valuable ofc, and would be a plus in a fund manager.
Consistency and reliability.
Because the LTFF chair can easily be a bottleneck, we want someone who can be quite reliable and is good at unblocking problems rather than have things slow down while waiting for their approval.
This both means fairly high consistency during “normal” weeks but also a decent degree of emotional resiliency etc during more stressful times, either a lack of frequent other professional/life commitments or a process to work around such commitments, etc.
I think some of LTFF’s past dysfunctions can be attributed to Asya (our current fund chair) genuinely being unsure whether LTFF work is higher EV than her day job at Open Phil.[1]
This is also the main reason I don’t think I should be chair. Otherwise I’m an okay fit (though not an amazing fit because I think my technical understanding isn’t sufficiently deep). But for health etc reasons (and also just looking at my own empirical track record), I don’t think I have enough reliability that the LTFF deserves.
Good generalist judgment.
Good grantmaking relies on a lot of judgment calls, some obvious, some more subtle. The LTFF chair will need to set policies, hire people, etc, in ways that result in consistently good judgment calls. Most likely, this means the chair ought to have rather good judgment themselves.
Here are some other qualities that I think are also valuable, but lower priority:
High professional integrity.
It is very very important that we hire someone who, in their role as LTFF chair, consistently prioritizes the common good over personal gain.
More than most other roles, there are a number of times where someone in the LTFF chair role can sacrifice the LTFF goals for short-term personal gain. We need someone who consistently tries their best to choose the higher-integrity option, whether for altruistic- or integrity- based reasons.
This can be both obvious stuff (COIs, incentives or personal biases compromising professional judgment) and more subtle effects (eg overlooking mistakes or potential negatives of LTFF when talking to funders, chasing shiny and more prestigious proxies rather than being grounded in serving the good).
I mention this below the top 3 not because I think this quality is less important than the other qualities, but because my guess is that it’s less rare, especially conditional upon good judgment. My guess is that most people who fulfill the above criteria would have sufficiently high professional integrity, though it’d be very bad if we hire a chair who is below that bar.
Vision
Ideally they can come in with a vision of how to make LTFF great, instead of being in reactive mode and just trying to do locally good and reasonable things.
Good project and people management
Being a good manager is probably good for running a good fund. Though actually I think running LTFF requires this less than for leading most multi-person longtermist projects; LTFF grantmakers and grantees are both fairly autonomous. Still, the bare minimum of good management you need is higher for being an LTFF fund chair than for (eg) being an independent longtermist researcher.
Good stakeholder management.
You should be the type of person who can understand and try to work with the priorities of funders, grantees, fund managers, advisors, etc. You don’t need to be stellar at it, and you don’t need to be loved, but at least you need most stakeholders to (correctly) believe that you care about their perspective and you’re willing to work with them.
Good communications ability
As with the above, a “nice-to-have” is for people to easily be able to understand your perspective. That said, this isn’t a critical ability as others on the fund (eg myself) can cover for a chair who is otherwise great but is not very good at written communication.
Solid professional network in areas of interest for the LTFF. You can probably come in without much of a network, but I imagine things will go more smoothly if the new chair has connections they can use to promote new active grantmaking projects and new jobs, ask for advice from experts on tricky grants, etc. But I think this is something someone can build up over time as well, and shouldn’t be a pre-requisite.
I’m pretty confused about how the numbers add up, naively the 5th hour on LTFF has to be more important than the 40th hour at OP; given the relative scales of the two organizations. But I don’t really know which projects Asya is responsible for, how much I’m underestimating OP giving due to anonymous donations, etc.
Here are my guesses for the most valuable qualities:
Deep technical background and knowledge in longtermist topics, particularly in alignment.
Though I haven’t studied this area myself, my understanding of the history of good funding for new scientific fields (and other forms of research “leadership”/setting strategic direction in highly innovative domains) is that usually you want people who are quite good at the field you want to advance or fund, even if they aren’t the very top scientists.
Basically you might not want the best scientists at the top, but for roles that require complex/nuanced calls in a deeply technical field, you want second-raters who are capable of understanding what’s going on quickly and broadly. You don’t want your research agenda implicitly set by mediocre scientists, or worse, non-technical people.
Because we give more grants in alignment than other technical fields, I think a deep understanding of alignment and other aspects of technical AI safety should be prioritized over (eg) technical biosecurity or nuclear security or forecasting or longtermist philosophy.
The other skillsets are still valuable ofc, and would be a plus in a fund manager.
Consistency and reliability.
Because the LTFF chair can easily be a bottleneck, we want someone who can be quite reliable and is good at unblocking problems rather than have things slow down while waiting for their approval.
This both means fairly high consistency during “normal” weeks but also a decent degree of emotional resiliency etc during more stressful times, either a lack of frequent other professional/life commitments or a process to work around such commitments, etc.
I think some of LTFF’s past dysfunctions can be attributed to Asya (our current fund chair) genuinely being unsure whether LTFF work is higher EV than her day job at Open Phil.[1]
This is also the main reason I don’t think I should be chair. Otherwise I’m an okay fit (though not an amazing fit because I think my technical understanding isn’t sufficiently deep). But for health etc reasons (and also just looking at my own empirical track record), I don’t think I have enough reliability that the LTFF deserves.
Good generalist judgment.
Good grantmaking relies on a lot of judgment calls, some obvious, some more subtle. The LTFF chair will need to set policies, hire people, etc, in ways that result in consistently good judgment calls. Most likely, this means the chair ought to have rather good judgment themselves.
Here are some other qualities that I think are also valuable, but lower priority:
High professional integrity.
It is very very important that we hire someone who, in their role as LTFF chair, consistently prioritizes the common good over personal gain.
More than most other roles, there are a number of times where someone in the LTFF chair role can sacrifice the LTFF goals for short-term personal gain. We need someone who consistently tries their best to choose the higher-integrity option, whether for altruistic- or integrity- based reasons.
This can be both obvious stuff (COIs, incentives or personal biases compromising professional judgment) and more subtle effects (eg overlooking mistakes or potential negatives of LTFF when talking to funders, chasing shiny and more prestigious proxies rather than being grounded in serving the good).
I mention this below the top 3 not because I think this quality is less important than the other qualities, but because my guess is that it’s less rare, especially conditional upon good judgment. My guess is that most people who fulfill the above criteria would have sufficiently high professional integrity, though it’d be very bad if we hire a chair who is below that bar.
Vision
Ideally they can come in with a vision of how to make LTFF great, instead of being in reactive mode and just trying to do locally good and reasonable things.
Good project and people management
Being a good manager is probably good for running a good fund. Though actually I think running LTFF requires this less than for leading most multi-person longtermist projects; LTFF grantmakers and grantees are both fairly autonomous. Still, the bare minimum of good management you need is higher for being an LTFF fund chair than for (eg) being an independent longtermist researcher.
Good stakeholder management.
You should be the type of person who can understand and try to work with the priorities of funders, grantees, fund managers, advisors, etc. You don’t need to be stellar at it, and you don’t need to be loved, but at least you need most stakeholders to (correctly) believe that you care about their perspective and you’re willing to work with them.
Good communications ability
As with the above, a “nice-to-have” is for people to easily be able to understand your perspective. That said, this isn’t a critical ability as others on the fund (eg myself) can cover for a chair who is otherwise great but is not very good at written communication.
Solid professional network in areas of interest for the LTFF. You can probably come in without much of a network, but I imagine things will go more smoothly if the new chair has connections they can use to promote new active grantmaking projects and new jobs, ask for advice from experts on tricky grants, etc. But I think this is something someone can build up over time as well, and shouldn’t be a pre-requisite.
I’m pretty confused about how the numbers add up, naively the 5th hour on LTFF has to be more important than the 40th hour at OP; given the relative scales of the two organizations. But I don’t really know which projects Asya is responsible for, how much I’m underestimating OP giving due to anonymous donations, etc.