Students able to bring funding would be best-equipped to negotiate the best possible supervision from the best possible school with the greatest possible research freedom.
This seems like the key premise, but I’m pretty uncertain about how much freedom this sort of scholarship would actually buy, especially in the US (people who’ve done PhDs in ML please comment!) My understanding is that it’s rare for good candidates to not get funding; and also that, even with funding, it’s usually important to work on something your supervisor is excited about, in order to get more support.
In most of the examples you give (with the possible exceptions of the FHI and GPI scholarships) buying research freedom for PhD students doesn’t seem to be the main benefit. In particular:
OpenPhil has its fellowship for AI researchers who happen to be highly prestigious
This might be mostly trying to buy prestige for safety.
All of these groups are less likely to have other sources of funding compared with PhD students.
Having said all that, it does seem plausible that giving money to safety PhDs is very valuable, in particular via the mechanism of freeing up more of their time (e.g. if they can then afford shorter commutes, outsourcing of time-consuming tasks, etc).
it’s usually important to work on something your supervisor is excited about, in order to get more support.
You would fund students who are picking supervisors interested in safety, like Hutter, Steinhardt, whatever.
All of these groups are less likely to have other sources of funding compared with PhD students.
The proposal would be merely to open up 0-3 scholarships per year. So the question here is not which group is less likely to have other sources of funding, but how effective it it to fund the marginal unfunded person. There are many counts in favour of funding EA PhD students over masters students, early-career EAs and independent researchers. They require less supervision. They output material that is more academically respectable (and publishable). They are more likely to stick with AI safety as a career, …
This seems like the key premise, but I’m pretty uncertain about how much freedom this sort of scholarship would actually buy, especially in the US (people who’ve done PhDs in ML please comment!) My understanding is that it’s rare for good candidates to not get funding; and also that, even with funding, it’s usually important to work on something your supervisor is excited about, in order to get more support.
In most of the examples you give (with the possible exceptions of the FHI and GPI scholarships) buying research freedom for PhD students doesn’t seem to be the main benefit. In particular:
This might be mostly trying to buy prestige for safety.
All of these groups are less likely to have other sources of funding compared with PhD students.
Having said all that, it does seem plausible that giving money to safety PhDs is very valuable, in particular via the mechanism of freeing up more of their time (e.g. if they can then afford shorter commutes, outsourcing of time-consuming tasks, etc).
You would fund students who are picking supervisors interested in safety, like Hutter, Steinhardt, whatever.
The proposal would be merely to open up 0-3 scholarships per year. So the question here is not which group is less likely to have other sources of funding, but how effective it it to fund the marginal unfunded person. There are many counts in favour of funding EA PhD students over masters students, early-career EAs and independent researchers. They require less supervision. They output material that is more academically respectable (and publishable). They are more likely to stick with AI safety as a career, …